Many violent criminals driven by a desire to do the right thing: Researchers

just a small fraction of the general population and account for a small portion of violence. Also, when people with other mental illnesses commit acts of violence, they often do so believing they are doing the right thing.

“Except for a few psychopaths, hardly anybody harming anybody else is doing something that they intend to be evil,” Fiske said. “On the contrary, they intend to be doing something right and good.”

Probably the most familiar example in the book is beating children. Increasingly frowned on today, the spare-the-rod-spoil-the-child approach to child rearing was once widely condoned by parents and educators as a disciplinary tool. Fiske and Rai quote parents from days gone by expressing fear of shortchanging a child’s moral development on occasions when they withheld corporal punishment.

While the impetus is slightly different for spousal abuse, the perpetrator also is convinced he or she is in the right. Fiske and Rai found that many abusers feel entitled — even obligated — to use violence to redress wrongs that they perceive themselves to have suffered, and to sustain what seems to them to be the right kind of relationship.

Indeed, using violence to redress wrongs has been ubiquitous throughout history, they point out, citing burning of witches, killing of adulterers and honor suicides by those who believed they had failed to do their duty.

Fiske is best known for developing “relational models,” a widely cited theory of behavior that describes all human interactions in one of four simple kinds of relationships. He and Rai argue in the new book that it is often a terribly misguided impulse to rectify a perceived violation of one of those relationship structures that compels someone to commit a violent act. For example, they explain, a perceived breach of the “hierarchical relationship” is often at the root of rape.

Violent acts might usually appear unjustifiable to outsiders, but peers, family members, or other members of the perpetrator’s social circle likely view them as necessary measures. Indeed, close relations accuse the perpetrator of being weak and cowardly if he does not act. An example is the gang member who retaliates for an attack on of one of his own.

“Social workers and newspaper readers don’t think gang members should be killing each other, but within the gang they do,” Fiske said.

The authors emphasize that they do not condone violence, but they believe that stemming violence requires that we first understand what motivates it. They note that successful gang and spousal abuse intervention programs concentrate on convincing perpetrators that, contrary to their beliefs, their actions are widely viewed as immoral and unacceptable.

“All you have to do,” Fiske said, “is convince the people who are violent that what they’re doing is wrong.”

— Read more in Alan Page Fiske and Tage Shakti Rai, Virtuous Violence: Hurting and Killing to Create, Sustain, End, and Honor Social Relationships (Cambridge University Press, 2015)