Dehumanisation Flashcards
1
Q
Dehumanisation
A
- Perception of others as belonging to a lower order of humanity
- Extreme form: denial of humanness of others
- Examples:
- Black people seen as monkeys
- Jewish people seen as rats (Nazi Germany)
- Immigrants coming in to Europe with rats
- Criminals seen as less than human with less rights
2
Q
Theories of dehumanisation
A
- Early theories (70s, 80s, 90s): Kelman, Bar-Tal, Bandura
- WWII, genocides
- Infrahumanisation (2000): Leyens et al.
- Intergroup
- Dual model of dehumanisation (2006): Haslam
- Distinction between human and animal/objects/machines
- Mind perception (2007): Gray et al.
- Characteristics attributed to human mind
3
Q
Infrahumanisation theory
A
- Leyens et al., 2001
- Uniquely human characteristics:
- Intelligence
- Language
- Reasoning
- Focus area: Sentiments
- Primary emotions: biologically based and shared with other primates e.g anger, joy, fear, sadness, disgust
- Secondary emotions: related to social interaction and are specific of human being, less evident, longer e.g. admiration, contempt, resentment, love
- Based on this, secondary emotions will be attributed differrently based on the individual/group (in-group/out-group)
4
Q
Dual model humanisation
A
- Haslam, 2006
- Two types of dehumanisation:
- Animalistic dehumanisation: denying human uniqueness (refinement, intelligence, rationality, self-control) to others, viewing them as more animal-like
- Mechanistic dehumanisation: denying human nature (warmth, emotional, agency, flexibility) to others, viewing them as more machine-like
5
Q
Mind perception model
A
- Gray et al., 2007
- Two dimensions of the mind:
- Agency: dehumanisation as a denial of individuals’ ability to think, self-control, or communicate, perceiving them as more animal-like
- Experience: dehumanisation as a denial of individuals’ ability to have emotions, consciousness or personality, perceiving them as more machine-like
- Criticism of this model:
- There are more mind dimensions e.g. consciousness about the body
6
Q
Measures of dehumanisation
A
- Metaphor-based measures (groups/individuals linked to animals/machines → more explicit):
- Visual - likert scale of Darwin evolution (most explicit measure)
- Metaphors - language e.g. rats, apes
- Attribute-based measures (characteristics attributed differently to group/individuals → more implicit):
- Emotions - primary/secondary emotions
- Words - animal vs human words
- Traits - human uniqueness vs human nature, priming, implicit measures
7
Q
Consequences of dehumanisation
A
- Violence (Goff et al., 2008)
- Participants were primed with pictures of apes and then witnessed videos of violence of cops against a Black or a White suspect.
- After being prime with dehumanisation related stimuli (ape) → higher justification of violence toward the Black suspect
- Help
- Vaes et al., 2002: email erroneously sent to wrong recipient with two versions: one expressing primary emotions and the second expressing secondary emotions. Study 1 showed that the expression of secondary emotions made people more willing to respond. Study 2 showed that the use of secondary emotions made people more likely to respond with informal pronouns as they wanted to maintain less distance
- Vaes et al., 2004: similar study this time comparing an in-group (academics) to an out-group (private sector) reception. Findings showed more solidarity to ingroup if the person used a secondary emotion.
- Andrighetto et al., 2014: studied Italians response to humanitarian crisis in Haiti and Japan, following deathly eartquakes. Findings showed that Haitians were more prone to animalistic dehumanisation whereas Japanese were more prone to mechanistic dehumanisation. Dehumanisation leads to less empathy that, in turns, decreased prosocial behaviour.
8
Q
Triggers of dehumanisation
A
- Threat - Viki et al., 2013
- Study of dehumanisation of Muslims by Christian participants and impact on torture justification → Perception of group as a threat emphasised negative consequences of dehumanisation
- Disgust - Buckels & Trapnell, 2013
- Participants were divided in two fictional groups. Priming of digust was found to lead to increased dehumanisation (measured using implicit attribution task)
- Language - Fasoli et al., 2016
- Exposure to different types of language (category label, derogatory label, generic insult) made participants attribute different levels of humanness to homosexuals → homophobic label led participants to attribute less human-related words to homosexuals
- Behaviours - Rodrigues et al., 2017
- Study of mogamous vs non-monogamous couples. Monogamous were attributed more secondary (human) emtions than non-monogamous who were attributed more primary (animal) emotions
9
Q
Attribution of humanness to self
A
- Individuals usually perceive themselves as more human than others → self-humanization (Haslam et al., 2005).
- unless you commit a wrongdoing… remembering an experience of ostracising someone lead individuals to perceive themselves as less human (Bastian & Haslam, 2010; Bastian et al., 2013).
10
Q
Objectification
A
- Nussbaum, 1995
- When we perceive humans as objects as opposed to human beings
- Components of objectification:
- Instrumentality: individual becomes an instrument for the goal of others
- Denial of autonomy: inability to plan things
- Inertness: lacking agency
- Fungibility: individuals are interchangeable
- Violability: your rights can be violated
- Ownership: you are owned by someone else
- Denial of subjectivity: no personality or individual characteristics
11
Q
Sexual objectification
A
- Sexual objectification occurs whenever people’s bodies, body parts or sexual functions are separated out from their identity, reduced to the status of mere instruments. In other words, individuals are treated as bodies that exist for the use and pleasure of others (Fredrickson et al., 1998)
-
Langton, 2009 added 3 dimensions to Nussbaum’s components that are specific to sexual objectification:
- Reduction to body
- Reduction to appearance
- Silencing: individual does not have anything interesting to say
12
Q
Sexual objectification experimental example 1
A
- Bernard et al., 2012
- Study that investigated the cognitive processes involved in processing sexualised images of women
- Sexualized-body Inversion hypothesis: inverted stimuli picturing humans are more difficult to be recognize than upright ones, but objects are not affected by inversion (Reed et al., 2003)
- If sexualized women are perceived as objects they must be processed as object → Sexualized women should be easily recognized as women when presented upright as when inverted.
- Findings showed participants made significantly more mistakes when the picture of the sexualised man was inverted, than the woman’s → sexualised women are perceived as object-like
13
Q
Sexual objectification experimental example 2
A
- Vaes et al., 2011
- Study 1: findings showed that objectified women were associated with less human-related words but there was no difference for men
- Study 2:
- Women dehumanized objectified women as they perceived them as vulgar and superficial (distancing motive)
- Men dehumanized objectified women when they were sexually attracted to them
- Study 3: Sex goals led men to focus on women’s appearance more than personality and elicit dehumanization but sex goals did not have such effect on women
14
Q
Sexual objectification example 3
A
- Objectification → mind perception (Loughnan et al., 2011)
- Women portrayed in a objectified fashion were perceived as having less mind and were rated as less moral than when the same target was presented as non-objectified.
- The same results were found for male targets → objectification led to perceive the target as less competent and moral, and as having less mind. Also participants were more likely to induce pain to objectified than non-objectified targets.
15
Q
Consequences of objectification
A
- Men who associated women with animals or objects reported higher levels of rape proclivity and more negative judgments toward a rape victim (Rudman & Mescher, 2012)
- Women portrayed in a sexualized way were perceived as having less mind and moral concern and were blamed more for being victims of sexual harassment (Loughnan et al., 2013).
- Exposed to objectified portrayal of women → slower in recognize a case of harassment and less willingness to help (Galdi et al., 2014, 2017)
