Dehumanization: trends, insights, and challenges

Dehumanization: trends, insights, and challenges. Nour S. Kteily, Alexander P. Landry. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, January 15 2022. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2021.12.003

Highlights

To deny or overlook the humanity of others is to exclude them from one of the core category memberships that all people share. Still, research suggests that individuals engage in dehumanization surprisingly often, both in subtle ways and, in certain contexts, by blatantly associating other groups with ‘lower’ animals.

We review evidence highlighting the plethora of distinct ways in which we dehumanize, the consequences dehumanization imposes on its targets, and intervention efforts to alleviate dehumanization.

We provide a framework to think about different operationalizations of dehumanization and consider how researchers’ definitions of dehumanization may shape the conclusions they draw about key questions such as the association between dehumanization and violence.

We address a number of theoretical challenges to dehumanization research and lay out several important questions dehumanization researchers need to address in order to propel the field further forward.

Despite our many differences, one superordinate category we all belong to is ‘humans’. To strip away or overlook others’ humanity, then, is to mark them as ‘other’ and, typically, ‘less than’. We review growing evidence revealing how and why we subtly disregard the humanity of those around us. We then highlight new research suggesting that we continue to blatantly dehumanize certain groups, overtly likening them to animals, with important implications for intergroup hostility. We discuss advances in understanding the experience of being dehumanized and novel interventions to mitigate dehumanization, address the conceptual boundaries of dehumanization, and consider recent accounts challenging the importance of dehumanization and its role in intergroup violence. Finally, we present an agenda of outstanding questions to propel dehumanization research forward.

Keywords: dehumanizationmoralityprejudiceaggressionconflict

Concluding remarks

Dehumanization has attracted renewed and widespread interest amidst prominent examples of overtly dehumanizing rhetoric and rising hate crimesxii. We reviewed advances in research on subtle dehumanization, highlighting new conceptualizations ranging from the ways we visually process faces to our attributions of individuals’ psychological (versus physiological) needs. We also highlight the revived scholarly attention to blatant forms of dehumanization in which individuals openly liken some groups to lower animals, noting that such dehumanization may be more prevalent than previously assumed, and documenting its stronger association (versus subtle dehumanization) with hostile attitudes and behaviors. Additionally, we point to new work on the experience of being dehumanized and on intervention efforts that seek to reduce the prevalence of dehumanization. Despite its growth, dehumanization research has recently faced several important challenges, with scholars wondering whether certain conclusions may have been overstated and questioning the role of dehumanization in facilitating violence. We use these debates to advance a broader perspective on dehumanization, arguing that several of the critiques arrive at their conclusions on the basis of operationalizations of dehumanization that may not capture the breadth of the phenomenon. Still, these challenges place an onus on dehumanization researchers to better specify the contours of psychological processes underlying dehumanization and to clarify its causal contributions to violent conflict (see Outstanding questions). By rising to this challenge, dehumanization researchers will be better positioned to help address one of the most pressing issues of our time.

Outstanding questions

To what extent are the various measures of dehumanization inter-related? For example, how closely associated are the tendency to downplay a target’s capacity for agency and experience; the tendency to process a target’s face using featural (versus holistic) processing; and the tendency to consider a target group ‘savage’ or ‘unevolved’, like lower animals? Under what conditions are these associations stronger versus weaker? Can they be considered interchangeable measures of a singular underlying construct, or is it more useful to think of them as assessing distinct aspects of a multifaceted phenomenon?

Under what conditions are dehumanization and dislike more likely to converge versus diverge? Given that they appear to be less associated among children versus adults, how (and why) does the degree of convergence develop over time?

What is the full set of traits and qualities that comprise individuals’ concept of an ‘ideal human’? What comes spontaneously to mind when individuals are asked to define membership in the human category and to what extent are the relevant traits desirable versus undesirable? Which attributions carry particular weight in influencing perceptions of humanness?

What is the threshold at which falling short of the human ideal becomes meaningful and precisely how do the consequences of slipping away from the human ideal track with distance from it? Although this remains an (testable) empirical question, we posit that the consequences may not track linearly; there may be a particular ‘hump’ at the threshold at which the target is seen to cross from just within the category human (even if at its ‘lower limits’) to just outside it.

How does dehumanization contribute to violent aggression? Is this association causal? Does dehumanization precede violence, follow violence, or both? To what extent are the answers to these questions dependent on the type of dehumanization assessed? Experiments and longitudinal studies (perhaps leveraging natural language at scale) considering multiple forms of dehumanization and aggression would be ideal to address these questions.