Dehumanization can also range from blatant and severe to subtle and relatively mild Haslam and Loughnan, Such relatively mild dehumanizing behaviors can manifest themselves in the form of subtle disrespect, condescension, neglect, social ostracism and other relational slights Bastian and Haslam, , often only evident in looks, gestures, and tones of voices.
These subtle, everyday forms of dehumanization are often viewed as innocent and inconsequential e. How does this view compare to the scientific evidence? There is overwhelming evidence for the wide-reaching negative consequences of relatively mild dehumanizing attitudes and behaviors.
Dehumanizing others leads to increased anti-sociality towards them in the form of increased aggressive behaviors such as bullying Obermann, and harassment Rudman and Mescher, , as well as hostile avoidance behaviors such as social rejection Martinez et al.
This increased hostility and aggression are accompanied by reduced moral worth attributed to those who are dehumanized Opotow, ; Haslam and Loughnan, and they are therefore judged less worthy of protection from harm Gray et al. The perpetrators of such interpersonal maltreatments themselves may experience negative emotions such as guilt and shame Baumeister et al. Such dehumanization in response to guilt has been demonstrated in intergroup contexts Castano and Giner-Sorolla, A vicious cycle may emerge, whereby dehumanization promotes maltreatment and aggression, which further promotes dehumanization.
The negative consequences for those who are dehumanized are also striking. Everyday interpersonal maltreatments can leave its victims feeling degraded, invalidated, or demoralized Hinton, ; Sue et al. There is extensive research into the negative consequences of being denied autonomy Ryan and Deci, , betrayed Finkel et al. Experiencing this form of dehumanization leads to pervasive feelings of sadness and anger.
Also dehumanizing are status-reducing interpersonal maltreatments such as condescension, degradation, or being treated as embarrassing, incompetent, unintelligent, or unsophisticated Vohs et al. Such dehumanizing maltreatments are likely to have a detrimental effect on psychological wellbeing. According to self-determination theory Ryan and Deci, , psychological wellbeing requires that the basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness are met.
Dehumanizing maltreatments, however subtle, lead to impaired ability to satisfy these needs and may therefore directly contribute to mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, and stress-related disorders. In short, the scientific evidence does not support the view of everyday dehumanization as an innocent and inconsequential phenomenon; on the contrary, the evidence clearly demonstrates a range of significant negative consequences.
Another commonly held view about dehumanization concerns the relationship between empathy and problem solving. According to this view, there is a trade-off between empathy and problem solving e. To what extent does psychological and neuroscientific research support this view? Human thinking and problem solving can be said to occur in two distinct domains: the physical domain, which involves reasoning about the mechanical properties of inanimate objects, and the social domain, which involves thinking about the mental states of others Jack et al.
On the other hand, is there evidence that empathy is incompatible with problem solving in the physical domain? A distinction between social and physical problem solving has been suggested at the neural level. More recently however, neuroscientists have realized that the exact nature of the neural relationship between these two networks is much more complex than a simple obligatory negative reciprocity e.
Positive correlations or lack of anti-correlations between the two networks have been observed during creative thinking Ellamil et al. Furthermore, it has become apparent that reduced recruitment in one network does not necessarily lead to increased recruitment in the other. While this field is new and still growing, the neuroscientific evidence so far does not support the notion that reduced empathy or dehumanization automatically and necessarily leads to improved mechanistic reasoning at the cognitive level.
There is some evidence, however, that the social and physical domains may become incompatible at higher levels of reasoning complexity. The process of relational integration, or considering multiple relations simultaneously, characterizes complex forms of reasoning Halford et al.
Problem solving in the two domains may, therefore, become incompatible at higher levels of reasoning complexity due to competition for access to the same neural and cognitive resources. In short, scientific evidence suggests that the distinction between reasoning in the social and physical domains may be crucial for determining the relationship between empathy and problem solving. In the physical domain, on the other hand, there is some suggestive evidence that empathy and mechanistic problem solving may interfere, especially at higher levels of reasoning complexity see also Dixon et al.
However, the notion that reductions in empathy automatically lead to improved mechanistic problem solving is not supported by the evidence. Dehumanization is sometimes presented as both necessary and beneficial. For example, it has been argued that dehumanization and moral disengagement allows physicians to inflict pain on their patients—pain which is sometimes necessary for diagnosis and treatment Lammers and Stapel, ; Haque and Waytz, Dehumanizing their patients seems, in comparison, a much more negative and, arguably, much more dys functional way of coping—especially considering the profoundly negative consequences it can have for the doctor-patient relationship Benedetti, Similarly, avoiding burnout in health care workers can be achieved without requiring them to dehumanize their patients; instead, health care workers could be provided with reduced workload and better support.
Furthermore, continually having to suppress their naturally occurring empathic response may create an additional form of stress in some health care workers. Moral reasoning and decisions making by definition require that we use our emotions and our experiences of being human—emotional and otherwise.
A much more constructive and ethically acceptable way to ease the burden of such difficult moral decisions would be to relieve the person in power of the decision making responsibility and to place it where it rightfully belongs: with the person who will bear the greatest consequences of the decision.
On the rare occasions when a patient is unable to make such decisions and there is no available substitute decision maker, physicians could seek moral support and advice from others and could allow the necessary time and emotional expenditure it takes to respect the moral and ethical nature of medical decision making.
Within this newer model, dehumanization would be expected to impair medical problem solving by causing the relevance of psychological and social factors to be neglected. Far from being necessary, dehumanization in medical contexts can be replaced by superior strategies that are ethically much more acceptable and do not entail the negative consequence that become apparent when dehumanization is viewed from a broader perspective.
Many of our beliefs about the role of dehumanization are based on implicit empirical claims that can be examined in light of the scientific evidence.
Here I examined a number of such beliefs and found relatively little support for them. First, contrary to the commonly held belief that everyday forms of dehumanization are innocent and inconsequential, the evidence shows profoundly negative consequences of such milder forms of dehumanization for both victims and perpetrators. Second, the belief that reductions in empathy automatically lead to improved mechanistic problem solving is not supported by the evidence.
Overall, there seems to be a need to reassess our beliefs about the role of dehumanization in organizational settings. Dehumanization in organizational settings is a highly complex phenomenon with far-reaching implications, from individual, to societal, to global environmental levels.
Although scientific evidence can be brought to bear in examining the validity of commonly held beliefs in this area, the present analysis also shows that many of those beliefs carry significant moral and ethical implications. Furthermore, those beliefs may also have implicit normative aspects that have remained unexamined so far. An interesting case of a complex mixture of an empirical claim and an implicit normative statement may be presented by the argument that suppressing empathy is necessary for problem solving in organizational settings.
Therefore, this argument privileges the value of mechanistic problem solving over the value of problem solving in the social domain, thus making an implicit normative statement. Such implicit normative statements may sometimes lie at the basis of what may appear to be empirically-based arguments. It is therefore impossible to attribute any one motivation to why people kill, let alone to why the same individual kills over time, during a genocide. That said, important patterns are emerging in identifying the many mechanisms that draw ordinary people into, or away from, genocidal violence.
A full review of all the scholarship on civilian mobilization for genocidal violence is beyond the scope of this essay, but, suffice it to say, this is a dynamic time for social scientific research on genocide as old assumptions are either being challenged, complicated, or extended with new data and via new methodical strategies all the time.
Of course not. Rather, contemporary research on genocide is striving to understand precisely how dehumanizing discourse matters in light of the findings discussed above. Even if people do not believe what they hear on the radio, dehumanizing propaganda can increase the perceived risks of verbal and behavioral disagreement with extremists. Alternatively, dehumanizing propaganda can persuade some with already-negative perceptions of others to act violently and then trigger a contagion effect whereby, as a result of social interactions, these people then motivate others to join.
Extreme perspectives can become normalized when dehumanization becomes central to political discourse. Finally, in my own research, I find that dehumanization is more often an outcome of participation in violence rather than a precursor.
But the more they kill, the easier killing becomes, and this is partly due to shifts in social perception. Although participants in genocide describe reactions that include vomiting, shaking, nightmares, and trauma the first few times they kill, over time, their physical and emotional horror at killing subsides.
My research suggests this cognitive adaptation to violence goes hand-in-hand with a transformation in how ordinary killers perceive their victims.
Dehumanizing propaganda can help with this process by providing participants with cultural narratives that frame violence as the morally right thing to do, and it can help them overcome their initial resistance to killing neighbors as a result. My point is that dehumanizing propaganda rarely leads to genocide on its own—a common misconception often asserted by those who wish to decry the violence of such language. This is good. It means that anytime we hear dehumanizing discourse in the media, there is still time to intervene, to promote alternative narratives, and to counter leaders who wish to mobilize their constituents for violence by organizing resistance.
If the link between dehumanizing propaganda and genocide were direct, none of this would be possible. In contrast, anytime a member of the Trump administration, media pundit, or political commentator uses dehumanizing language, there is an opportunity for others, especially those of similar status who can affect public opinion, to object. On the other hand, and quite sadly, the evidence above also suggests that dehumanizing language is not necessary for mass violence and genocide to transpire.
Dehumanizing discourse can pave the way for violence to occur, but violence does not require it. Her research and teaching interests include comparative-historical and political sociology, war and violence, social boundary processes, and cognition. Her empirical work, based on the Holocaust in France and the Rwandan genocide, examines how formal institutions, social affiliations, and individual desires intersect and shape decision-making in times of war.
You can learn more about her research and publications here and her current book project here. Social Science Research Council. The SSRC is an independent, international, nonprofit organization. Instead, it was designed to figure out what happens inside the mind of someone who feels dehumanized. The more Muslims felt dehumanized by Trump, the more they dehumanized Trump. The research predicts a vicious cycle.
That provokes a more violent response from certain individuals in the Muslim community. Trump responds. And suddenly the whole country is a more hostile, less safe place for everyone, the researchers conclude in a paper that was recently published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Ben Herzig, a clinical psychologist in the Boston area who specializes in treating people from the Muslim community, says some of his patients are responding by withdrawing.
Counter-jihad lumps all 1. And it suggests that Muslims are unable to separate themselves from their group as individual thinkers. Dalia Mogahed, the director of research at Institute for Social Policy and Understanding , a nonprofit that studies Islamophobia, says dehumanizing rhetoric against Muslims is becoming more acceptable to Americans in the Trump era. And it was especially acute during the presidential election.
Ben Carson compared Muslims to dogs. Donald Trump Jr. There are signs that anti-Islamic sentiment is getting stronger. Reports of hate crimes against Muslims in the US are at their highest levels since In the past seven weeks, there have been four mosque burnings across America.
Meanwhile, Trump still has in place a temporary ban on refugees. He just signed a new ban on issuing visa to travelers from six Muslim-majority countries. If Trump can stoke perceptions of threat, he can stoke dehumanization. After the attack, blatant dehumanization of Muslims jumped up significantly.
Support for seeking vengeance and conducting drone strikes in Muslim countries grew too. We as a planet need to wipe them off this world. Every one of them. Inside us all is the same mental machinery that fueled the atrocities of the past century. Part of the reason some Americans dehumanize Muslims is because they think Muslims dehumanize us.
But this assumption is wrong. In the book she wrote with John L. Esposito, Who Speaks For Islam? What a billion Muslims really think , Mogahed lay out data from 50, interviews from Muslims around the world.
And she finds that the Muslim world does hold a lot of admiration for American values. But they actually love and admire our freedom. This intervention is also remarkably simple. In many ways, they admire it.
It also helps to get white Americans to think through their hypocrisy.
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