A/75/179 also to collective identities based on nationality, family, language, culture, religion, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability or any other group -based factor. Particularly in combination with subconscious instincts and impulses, perceived identity can be one of the most powerful motivators for decision-making. In effect, humans are prepared to work, live, suffer and often even die for persons, groups, values and objects they identify with, be it their own physical body, their political convictions, their status, reputation and possessions, or their family, community, nation or religion. Arguably, even empathy and altruistic acts can be conceived as being rooted in identification with another’s needs and emotions. Group identity is particularly powerful as a unifying, but also as a potentially discriminatory, factor. 6 13. Every person establishes and maintains numerous parallel and consecutive identifications defining their role, orientation, interests and predispositions in their natural and social environment. While some identifications can be fleeting and shortlived, others are deeply rooted and tend to be maintained for an entire lifetime. To the extent that it is mentally conceived, identity is not necessarily constant, but can be influenced or changed, expanded or narrowed, emphasized or suppressed, ignored or manipulated and experienced as more or less dominant and as socially honouring or devaluing, at different moments in time. 14. The more importance that is given to a certain aspect of identity, the stronger it s association with the perceived “self” tends to be and the more aggressive the defence or pursuit of its perceived interests. For instance, historical exaggerations of ethnic, racial or cultural identity have produced structural racism, settler-colonial violence and discrimination of enormous proportions. Even where different ethnic groups peacefully coexist in a country for multiple generations without attaching virtually any importance to their ethnic identity in their daily interactions, political narra tives emphasizing the differences and linking them to opposing group interests can trigger fear-based exaggerations of ethnic identification, eventually escalating into ethnic tension and violence or even genocide, such as, most infamously, the Holocaust during the Second World War and the genocides in Rwanda in 1994 and in the former Yugoslavia from 1992 to 1995. 15. Importantly for the dynamics enabling torture and ill-treatment worldwide, through conscious emphasis, any previously dormant or neglected as pect of identity can easily become a predominant criterion for determining who or what is included in or, just as importantly, excluded from the perceived individual or collective “self” whose interests are to be defended or pursued. B. System justification 16. Beyond the physical body and psychological identity, human “self”-interest also relates to the systemic environment that is perceived as essential to personal survival, security and stability. Thus, the predominant human impulse in resp onse to “system threats” endangering the existence, reliability or credibility of social, economic and political support systems is to adopt unconscious, emotionally charged strategies of defence and denial known as “system justification”. In practice, the largely unconscious tendency of humans not to question the systems upon which they depend can be very compelling and render officials, journalists and ordinary citizens __________________ 6 6/25 Rupert Brown and Samuel Gaertner, eds., Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology: Intergroup Processes (Blackwell, 2008). 20-09728