W5: Measures of Blatant Dehumanisation Flashcards
(21 cards)
What does research define as dehumanisation and what has the theory focused on researching?
Research conceptualised it as a psychological process that strips others of group identity, places them outside of normal moral consideration and highlights incongruence of values which facilitate violence against the group. Recent work has broadened focus to more subtle expression- operationalised as the attribution of fewer human traits and emotions to others.
What was Kteily et al’s (2015) ‘ascent of man’ measure of dehumanisation?
Asked ppts to rate the ‘least’ to ‘most’ evolved humans for categories inc Americans, Arabs, Muslims, Europeans etc using only white caucasian ppts.
What did Kteily et al (2015) find in their measure of blatant dehumanisation?
They found that Americans and Europeans were rated as highly evolved and some were rated much less (Muslims and Arabs) at around 75/100. They also conducted a similar experiment using roles and found doctors were rated highest.
How did Kersbergen and Robinson (2019) measure dehumanisation and obesity in their first study and what did they find?
Examined the possibility that prejudiced beliefs about obesity run deeper than previously assumed and that people with obesity are blatantly dehumanisaed- recruited 100 ppts in 1 study and 600 in study 2- asked to rate how evolved they thought obese Americans were
Found that non-obese Americans were rated much higher than obese Americans
What did Kersbergen and Robinson (2019) add in their second study on dehumanisation and obesity and how did this affect their findings?
They added a charity donation measure- ppts told they could donate to an animal charity or a human charity. Depending on condition, the human charity was either to benefit obese people or not. They found that most people donated to the animal charity or US citizens charity, rather than the obese citizens category.
What did Kersbergen and Robinson (2019) find in their third study on dehumanisation, obesity and culture?
Compared effects across countries: India, UK and US. Ppts were given the option to donate to their country’s charity, an animal charity or an obesity charity.
They found that obese Indians were rated as the least ‘human’ so the effect of blatant dehumanisation was larger. 60% preferred to give money to the animal charity in the US but no effect was seen in donation for India or UK
What did Boysen et al (2020) find when investigating blatant dehumanisation and mental illness?
Stereotypes about people with mental illness often portray them as lacking both warmth and competence
Found that compared to Americans, Christians, immigrants and violent criminals, mentally ill people were rated as the second least evolved.
Second study- they specified each mental illness- people rated lowest inc violent criminals, people w intellectual disabilities, drug addictions and anorexia. All mental illnesses ranked as ‘less human’ than non mentally ill ppts
Exp 3- essentially replicated what they found in exp 1
How did Harris and Fiske (2006) aim to measure the neuroscience behind dehumanisation?
Ppts in a neruoimaging study were presented w images of people from a marginalised group perceived to be low in warmth + competence e.g. drug addicts and people w high warmth + competence e.g. doctors
What did Harris and Fiske (2006) find when measuring neuroscience behind dehumanisation?
Differences in brain activation were found- less activity in the medial prefrontal cortex when passively viewing images of low warmth and low competence group members compared to high warmth and high compentence members.
What is the function of the medial PFC and what may damage to this region manifest as?
A person with damage to the MPFC may have blunted emotional responses and may become more aggressive
What is the Stereotype Content Model (SCM) proposed by Harris and Fiske (2006)?
SCM model predicts a fundamental warmth-competence judgement, creating four combinations of groups and how people react to them. These are:
Pity (high warmth low competence)
Pride (high warmth high competence)
Disgust (low warmth, low competence)
Envy (low warmth, high competence)
How does the SCM relate to activity in the mPFC?
Social groups falling into low warmth and low competence category may not significantly activate the mPFC- people dehumanise these groups. Compared w the ingroup and other outgroups, extreme out groups may not promote signif mpfc activation if they are not processed primarily as human beings
How did Harris and Fiske (2006) investigate their SCM?
Used external colleagues to rate what the pictures made them feel and then put ppts into an MRI scanner and asked them to rate them from 1-5 (pride pity envy digust).
What did Harris and Fiske (2006) find when investigating their SCM on brain activation?
Higher brain activation compared to baseline for pride and envy but this did not occur for disgust. Activation for brain areas was similar to objects and all images categorised into disgust were associated with dehumanisation.
Exaggerated amygdala and insula reactions (consistent with disgust) when seeing people of low warmth and low competence
How did Bruneau at al (2018) investigate brain activation in dehumanisation?
Tried to depict brain activation for dehumanisation- his primary goal was to test the hypothesis that judgements of blatant dehumanisation are neurally distinct from judgements of dislike -assessed using ‘feeling’ thermometers (likert scale). Groups assessed inc high status human groups, low status groups and animals (animals were inc in order to separate dislike from dehumanisation). Ppts either used the dehumanisation scale or liking scale and recorded brain activation in response to this.
What did Bruneau at al (2018) find when investigating brain activation in dehumanisation?
They found that when making dehumanisation judgements, inferior parietal cortex (IPC) regions responded more strongly to animals than to humans that were both low and high status.
Neural responses in the inferior frontal cortex (IFC) and posterior cingulate cortex were higher when making dehumanisation ratings of animals than low and high status groups.
Critical result was that there was no difference for dislike or like in response to categorisation but when looking at brain activation scale, they found a signif difference + were able to find a neural index of dehumanisation behaviour through measure of blatant dehumanisation.
How did Sellaro et al 2015 examine the role of mPFC in counteracting implicit social stereotypes?
Used tDCS to induce specific changes of excitability on the mPFC and evaluate the behavioural effects of these changes on ppt performance in a task assessing implicit based attitudes towards social out groups. They either received anodal stimulation, cathodal stimulation or sham. Anode or cathode was centred over Fpz and return electrode placed over Oz. For active stimulation - constant current of 1 mA was delivered for 20 min- for sham, stimulation turned off after 35 seconds. Ppts were presented with an IAT and categorised in/out group with pos or neg attributes depending on condition.
They hypothesised that if people held implicit neg stereotypes then they would produce slower responses to trials that are inconsistent with their implicit associations i.e. the congruent block, because, when confronted with incongruent associations, people experience a time consuming response conflict where the selection of correct response requires to counteract the overbearing one.
What did Sellaro et al 2015 find when examining the role of mPFC in counteracting implicit social stereotypes?
Anodal condition made ppts better in incongruent trials and implicit bias was reduced. Suggests tDCS could be applied to dehumanisation to reduce effects seen earlier
How did Gardiner et al (2011) measure stigma and autism and what did they find?
University students read an extract describing a person with symptoms of autism before completing a measure of openness towards the person- the majority stigmatised the target person by reporting a preference to have a distanced relationship with them
How did Civile et al (2019) investigate dehumanisation and autism? (2 part experiment)
Ppts told they would be presented with a set of regular faces and some were told these faces were of people with autism, even though these sets of faces were the same.
New ppts were then recruited and half were told either humanising info about autism or dehumanising info about autism e.g. impairments, empathy issues
What did Civile et al (2019) find when investigating dehumanisation and autism?
Results found that simply telling people the faces they would see were autistic made them much worse at recognising upright faces and the inversion effect reduced significantly, (disrupts recognition) but had no impact on dehumanisation with simple labelling.
In experiment 2, giving humanising info about autism helped to decrease the inversion effect and did have an impact on dehumanisation
