Dehumanisation Flashcards
What is dehumanisation?
Perception of others belonging to a lower order of humanity
What is Leyens et al’s model of infrahumanisation?
Leyens said that humanness is made of 4 parts: language, sentiments, intelligence and reasoning. Within sentiments it was split up so we have both primary and secondary emotions and the secondary emotions are what make us human. Primary emotions can be seen in other species such as anger, joy, fear, disgust. Whereas secondary emotions are seen just in humans such as admiration, contempt, resentment and love.
What is the dual model of dehumanisation?
We can dehumanise people based on human uniqueness or human nature. If we dehumanise someone based on human uniqueness it is more animalistic - meaning that they are lower in intelligence, rationality and self control. Whereas if we dehumanise them based on mechanistic characteristics it means they are incapable of warmth, emotions, agency, and flexibility.
What are the 5 different measures we have for dehumanisation?
- Metaphors - eg. calling people rats or monkeys
- Emotions - primary emotions vs secondary emotions used
- Words - animal words vs human words
- Traits - priming, implicit measure
- Visual - using diagrams and asking people how human they think individuals are
what are attribute based measures?
Characteristics are attributed differently to groups/individuals
What are metaphor based measures?
Groups/individuals are linked to animals/machines
How does humanness change between cultures?
European Australians - deny human nature to east Asian faces
Chinese people - deny human uniqueness to white faces
How is violence a consequence of dehumanisation?
Goff, Eberhardt, Williams & Jackson - participants were primed of an image of either a lion or gorilla, then shown a video of either a white or black criminal. It was found that peoplee who had been primed with the gorilla had a higher violence justification towards the black suspect.
How is helping affected by dehumanisation?
Vaes, Paladino, Castelli & Leyens - More willingness to help if a secondary emotion was used in addressing the reader in an email
What are the 4 triggers of dehumanisation?
- Threat
- Disgust
- Language
- Behaviours
How can threat level be a trigger for dehumanisation?
Viki, Osgood, Phillips - participants that saw the Muslims as a low threat in general had a low torture proclivity, whereas participants who did see the group as a threat had much higher torture proclivity when they were described with non human related words than when they were not.
How can disgust be a trigger for dehumanisation?
Those groups who usually elicit disgust and contempt are more likely to be a target of dehumanisation.
How do we attribute humanness to ourselves?
We as humans perceive ourselves are more human than others, unless we commit a wrong doing and then we perceive ourselves as less human.
What are the components of objectification?
- Instrumentality
- Denial of autonomy
- Inertness
- Fungibility
- Violability
- Ownership
- Denial of subjectivity
What are the components of sexual objectification?
- Reduction to body
- Reduction to appearance
- Silencing
