Lecture 8 - Dehumanisation

Question 1

Dehumanisation

Answer 1

• people fail to apply human like emotions to people of other groups in societies and therefore see them as less human
• e.g. holocaust
• rwanda
• uigurs
• dehumanisation can take the form of extreme racial prejudice

Question 2

social identity and self-categorisation theory

Answer 2

• SCT has a number of principles into how we categorise info and links this with the idea of group memberships via SIT forming the social identity approach
• SCT is more cog - we have a schema for how things work in society and how we see things. we also have ideal examples
• SCT proposes that:
  1. categorisaiton is based upon cog need for schemas
  2. people cog represent categories as prototypes (set of attributes that define a typical member)
  3. to make sense of the world we max difs between groups and min difs within groups (accentuation process)
  4. we strive for entitativity - to establish coherence and unique entities
  5. people self categorise into groups - we depersonalise and self stereotype
  6. leads to pos feelings of warmth and bias to ingroup
• if this is all true it is not just about using dehumanisation to justify harm but is about what we actually think. people humanise ingroups more than outgroups.

Question 3

early theories of dehumanisation

Answer 3

• early approaches focus on mass genocide and morality (dehumanisation as a tool)
  > kelman and staub (1976, 1989) focus on dehumanisation to explain genocide
  > opotow (1990) deumanisation not a denial but moral exclusion
  > bandura (1999) dehumanisation allows aggressors to disengage from morality
• Leyen et al (2001) conceptualised it differently. propose dehumanisation is not unique to specific conflicts but generic. we view outgroups differently to ingroups and effects can be subtle (infrahumanisation)

Question 4

infrahumanisation theory (theory 1 - leyen et al 2001)

Answer 4

• dehumanisation is related to how we see the outgroup vs ingroup. it is a group process involving cog categorisation
• what distinguishes humans from animals is our inteligence, languages and emotions
• humans have unique emotions e.g. joy or embarrassment
• we see outgroups as less nuanced than ingroup on range of sentiments or secondary emotions eg less extremities of guilt, anger joy. more simple emotions for outgroups.
• since secondary emotions can be pos or neg this proposes dehumanisation is not always tied to neg prej. instead is a function of how we see groups
• this argues that dehumanisation is a group categorisation process.

Question 5

evidence supporting the theory of infrahumanisation

Answer 5

• paladino et al (2002) - pps assign different or fewer unique emotions to outgroup members e.g. hope. demonstrated on paper tasks and IAT
• viki and abrams (2003) - pps had to assign secondary emotions e.g. melancholy or compassion towards women & completed sexism scales. found male students who scores higher on hs more likley to deny secondary emotions to women. men who scored high on bs more likely to assign pos secondary emotions = less about group membership but saliency matters.
• should we focus on subtle dehumanisation? - ktiely et al 2015 call for research on blatant dehumanisation. found evidence of dehumanisation using ascent of man scale and blatant dehumanisation predicted violence beyond prejudice. pp’s would score lower for arabs than americans on ascent of man scale.
• Forscher et al (2020) follow up study. surveyed far right extremists on range of topics. over half agreed we need to stop mixing white race with other races. rates muslims, feminists and democrats and black people lower than white people on ascent of man scale.

Question 6

subtle infrahumanisation can explain helping decisions and polcy support

Answer 6

• there is evidence we see outgroup members as suffering less pain (cuddy et al 2007) - white pp’s assigned fewer unique secondary emotions to black outgroup huricane victims and less willing to help them.
• infrahumanisation could predict policy support for topics e.g. attitudes to immigrants
• explains helping differences?

Question 7

The dual model of dehumanisation (theory 2)

Answer 7

• Haslam (2006) argued infrahumanisation did not fully explain dehumanisation as it focuses on what makes us distinct from animals.
• model agrees we offer fewer complex emotions to outgroup & that dehumanisaiton is function of group processes but alsowe see humans as different from machines (human nature) as well as different from animals (human uniqueness)
• animals lack uniqueness and higher functions/thinking

Question 8

evidence in support of the dual model

Answer 8

• Haslam (2005) - in anthropology human nature is a common concept across cultures, whereas what makes humans unique develops later and differs across cultures
• halsam (2008) - both traits predict humanness but are statistically unique from each other
• several studies support the dual model albeit without explicitely setting out to do so e.g. many studies show black people and immigrants associated with apes or dogs (haslam and loughlan 2014) 0 also useful for prej reduction arguments
• we see certain groups as colder e.g. germans vs spanish, or conservatives (harris and fiske 2006)

Question 9

The stereotype content model (Theory 3)

Answer 9

• Fiske & Harris & Fiske 2006 - SCM initially developed to explain stereotyping
• SCM uses social neuroscience to understand how neural activations can account for stereotyping, which in turn lead to prej and dehumanisation
• the medial pfc and temporal sulcus fail to activate for certain outgroups meaning we vary in terms of how much warmth and competence we apply to certain groups. activates more when you think of yourself and ingroups.
• These constructs serve evolutionary functions (reproductive fitness) - warmth is related to nurturing, competence related to ability to provide benefits - can then define groups based on warmth & competence forming orthogonal constructs

Question 10

evidence supporting the stereotype content model

Answer 10

• Russell and Fiske (2008) - student pps show less warmth towards groups they were in competition with but viewed high status targets (upper class) as more competent
• cuddy et al (2009) - surveyed across 10 countries. warmth and competence predict dif types of social groups. high status seen as competent and competitive groups seen as lacking warmth. outgroups tend to be high on one dimension and lower on another
• krings et al 2010 - older people perceived as less competent but warmer than younger workers. show age bias against older workers mediated by competence belief

Question 11

criticisms of dehumanisation approach

Answer 11

• Over (2021)
  1. if we dehumanise then why specifically engage in actions that are relevant for human beings. e.g. say someone is a criminal
  2. why do we compare our ingroups to animals e.g. in sport
  3. evidence of people being associated with animals doesnt prove they believe a black person is a monkey eg
• outgroup members are assigned different traits not denied all traits
  5. outgroup members often assigned uniquely human attributes
  6. groups sometimes persecuted because of their humanity
  7. we treat many animals with dignity and spend resources to save animals so why would associating people with them cause hostility
• describing someone as rat may not indicate dehumanisation but a move to denigrate that group

Question 12

the neuroscience underlying dehumanised perception towards people who are homeless

Answer 12

• Tan and harris 2021 - dehumanisation can be explained by brain function espec with regards to similarity perception
• denny et al 2012 - found activity in mPFC when participant mentalise about themselves or another. may be more mpfc activation when we think about ourselves
• mitchell et al 2015 - found that inc perceptions of familiarity led to inc mPFC activity. suggests similar others (ingroup) are more humanised compared to outgroups.
• our brains may not think about outgroups the same = help outgroups in special ways?

Question 13

what cognitive processes underpin dehumanisaiton?

Answer 13

• dehumanisation mediates effect of perceived outgroup variability on attitudes to homeless
• if dehumanisation is a cog group process the degree to which we see outgroup members as all the same will inc likelihood of stereotyping and prej
• tested 3 models of dehumanisation & used context of homelesness
• outgroup homogeneity - degree to which you think all members of outgroup are the same
• study showed posters and manipulated whether homless people were described as the same or unique -
  > OH and dehumanisation model predicted prej towards homeless but not infrahumanisation
  > OH and dehumanisation predicted disgust towards homeless and predicted prosociality
  > dual model predicted OH
• study 2 replicated and only theory that mediated this process was dual model theory in predicting attitudes to different groups (exp)