Fiske and Rai base their theory on analysis of a wide range of scholarly research on violence, including thousands of interviews with violent offenders.
The book itself contains quotes from real-life violent criminals as well as those from works of fiction, ranging from The Iliad to Huckleberry Finn. They even uncovered moral motivations behind suicide, war and rape, and the authors say the findings transcend modern and historical cultures.
“When we started writing this book, we thought, ‘We’ll never figure out what really motivates perpetrators of violent acts,'” said Fiske. “But actually it turned out not to be that hard.”
The authors accept that not every criminal has “virtuous motivations” for their violent acts. Fiske and Rai say that those exceptions are mostly psychopathic criminals and represent only a small percentage of the general population, accounting for only a small proportion of violent crime. The authors also say that, when people with other mental illnesses commit acts of violence, they often do so in the belief that they are acting morally and “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.”