Dehumanization

Behaviorally, dehumanization describes a disposition towards others that debases the others' individuality as either an "individual" species or an "individual" object, e.g. someone who acts inhumanely towards humans. As a process, it may be understood as the opposite of personification, a figure of speech in which inanimate objects or abstractions are endowed with human qualities; dehumanization then is the disendowment of these same qualities or a reduction to abstraction.

In almost all contexts, dehumanization is used pejoratively along with a disruption of social norms, with the former applying to the actor(s) of behavioral dehumanization and the latter applying to the action(s) or processes of dehumanization. For instance, there is the case of dehumanization for those who are perceived lacking in culture or civility, which are concepts that are believed to distinguish humans from animals.[6] As social norms define what humane behavior is, reflexively these same social norms define what human behavior is not, or what is inhumane. Dehumanization differs from inhumane behaviors or processes in its breadth to include the emergence of new competing social norms. This emergence then is the action of dehumanization until the old norms lose out to the competing new norms, which will then redefine the action of dehumanization. If the new norms lose acceptance then the action remains one of dehumanization and its severity is comparative to past examples throughout history. However, dehumanization's definition remains in a reflexive state of a type-token ambiguity relative to both scales individual and societal.

Two Japanese officers in occupied China competing to see who could kill (with a sword) one hundred people first.

Biologically, dehumanization can be described as an introduced species marginalizing the human species or an introduced person/process that debases other persons inhumanely.

In political science and jurisprudence, the act of dehumanization is the inferential alienation of human rights or denaturalization of natural rights, a definition contingent upon presiding international law rather than social norms limited by human geography. In this context, specialty within species need not apply to constitute global citizenship or its inalienable rights; these both are inherit by human genome.

It is theorized to take on two forms: animalistic dehumanization, which is employed on a largely intergroup basis, and mechanistic dehumanization, which is employed on a largely interpersonal basis.[7] Dehumanization can occur discursively (e.g., idiomatic language that likens certain human beings to non-human animals, verbal abuse, erasing one's voice from discourse), symbolically (e.g., imagery), or physically (e.g., chattel slavery, physical abuse, refusing eye contact). Dehumanization often ignores the target's individuality (i.e., the creative and interesting aspects of their personality) and can hinder one from feeling empathy or properly understanding a stigmatized group of people.[8]

Dehumanization may be carried out by a social institution (such as a state, school, or family), interpersonally, or even within the self. Dehumanization can be unintentional, especially on the part of individuals, as with some types of de facto racism. State-organized dehumanization has historically been directed against perceived political, racial, ethnic, national, or religious minority groups. Other minoritized and marginalized individuals and groups (based on sexual orientation, gender, disability, class, or some other organizing principle) are also susceptible to various forms of dehumanization. The concept of dehumanization has received empirical attention in the psychological literature.[9][10] It is conceptually related to infrahumanization,[11] delegitimization,[12] moral exclusion,[13] and objectification.[14] Dehumanization occurs across several domains; is facilitated by status, power, and social connection; and results in behaviors like exclusion, violence, and support for violence against others.

“Dehumanisation is viewed as a central component to intergroup violence because it is frequently the most important precursor to moral exclusion, the process by which stigmatized groups are placed outside the boundary in which moral values, rules, and considerations of fairness apply.”[15]

David Livingstone Smith, director and founder of The Human Nature Project at the University of New England, argues that historically, human beings have been dehumanizing one another for thousands of years.[16] In his work “The Paradoxes of Dehumanization,” Smith proposes that dehumanization simultaneously regards people as human and subhuman. This paradox comes to light, as Smith identifies, because the reason people are dehumanized is so their human attributes can be taken advantage of. [17]

Reproduction of a handbill advertising a slave auction, in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1769.

Several lines of psychological research relate to the concept of dehumanization. Infrahumanization suggests that individuals think of and treat outgroup members as "less human" and more like animals;[11] while Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeld uses the term pseudo-speciation, a term that he borrowed from the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, to imply that the dehumanized person or persons are being regarded as not members of the human species.[25] Specifically, individuals associate secondary emotions (which are seen as uniquely human) more with the ingroup than with the outgroup. Primary emotions (those that are experienced by all sentient beings, both humans and other animals) and are found to be more associated with the outgroup.[11] Dehumanization is intrinsically connected with violence. Often, one cannot do serious injury to another without first dehumanizing him or her in one's mind (as a form of rationalization.) Military training is, among other things, a systematic desensitization and dehumanization of the enemy, and servicemen and women may find it psychologically necessary to refer to the enemy as animal or other non-human beings. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman has shown that without such desensitization it would be difficult, if not impossible for someone to kill another human, even in combat or under threat to their own lives.[26]

Delegitimization is the "categorization of groups into extreme negative social categories which are excluded from human groups that are considered as acting within the limits of acceptable norms and/or values."[12]

Moral exclusion occurs when outgroups are subject to a different set of moral values, rules, and fairness than are used in social relations with ingroup members.[13] When individuals dehumanize others, they no longer experience distress when they treat them poorly. Moral exclusion is used to explain extreme behaviors like genocide, harsh immigration policies, and eugenics, but it can also happen on a more regular, everyday discriminatory level. In laboratory studies, people who are portrayed as lacking human qualities have been found to be treated in a particularly harsh and violent manner.[27][28][29]

Dehumanized perception has been indicated to occur when a subject experiences low frequencies of activation within their social cognition neural network.[30] This includes areas of neural networking such as the superior temporal sulcus and the medial prefrontal cortex.[31] A study by Frith & Frith in 2001 suggests the criticality of social interaction within a neural network has tendencies for subjects to dehumanize those seen as disgust-inducing leading to social disengagement.[32] Tasks involving social cognition typically activate the neural network responsible for subjective projections of disgust-inducing perceptions and patterns of dehumanization. "Besides manipulations of target persons, manipulations of social goals validate this prediction: Inferring preference, a mental-state inference, significantly increases MPFC and STS activity to these otherwise dehumanized targets."[33] A 2007 study by Harris, McClure, van den Bos, Cohen & Fiske suggest a subject's mental reliability towards dehumanizing social cognition due to the decrease of neural activity towards the projected target, replicating across stimuli and contexts.[34]

While social distance from the outgroup target is a necessary condition for dehumanization, some research suggests that it is not sufficient. Psychological research has identified high status, power, and social connection as additional factors that influence whether dehumanization will occur. If being an outgroup member was all that was required to be dehumanized, dehumanization would be far more prevalent. However, only members of high status groups associate humanity more with ingroup than the outgroup. Members of low status groups exhibit no differences in associations with humanity. Having high status makes one more likely to dehumanize others.[35] Low status groups are more associated with human nature traits (warmth, emotionality) than uniquely human traits, implying that they are closer to animals than humans because these traits are typical of humans but can be seen in other species.[36] In addition, another line of work found that individuals in a position of power were more likely to objectify their subordinates, treating them as a means to one's own end rather than focusing on their essentially human qualities.[37] Finally, social connection, thinking about a close other or being in the actual presence of a close other, enables dehumanization by reducing attribution of human mental states, increasing support for treating targets like animals, and increasing willingness to endorse harsh interrogation tactics.[38] This is surprising because social connection has documented benefits for personal health and well-being but appears to impair intergroup relations.

Neuroimaging studies have discovered that the medial prefrontal cortex—a brain region distinctively involved in attributing mental states to others—shows diminished activation to extremely dehumanized targets (i.e., those rated, according to the stereotype content model, as low-warmth and low-competence, such as drug addicts or homeless people).[39][40]

Race and ethnicity

U.S. government propaganda poster from WWII featuring a Japanese soldier depicted as a rat

Dehumanization often occurs as a result of conflict in an intergroup context. Ethnic and racial others are often represented as animals in popular culture and scholarship. There is evidence that this representation persists in the American context with African Americans implicitly associated with apes. To the extent that an individual has this dehumanizing implicit association, they are more likely to support violence against African Americans (e.g., jury decisions to execute defendants).[41] Historically, dehumanization is frequently connected to genocidal conflicts in that ideologies before and during the conflict link victims to rodents/vermin.[7] Immigrants are also dehumanized in this manner.[42] In the 1900s, the Australian Constitution and British Government partook in an Act to federate the Australian states. Section 51 (xxvi) and 127 were two provisions that dehumanised Aboriginals. 51. The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to: (xxvi) The people of any race, other than the Aboriginal people in any state, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws. 127. In reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth, or of a state or other part of the Commonwealth, Aboriginal natives shall not be counted. In 1902 the Commonwealth Franchise Act was passed, this categorically denied Aboriginals from the right to vote. Indigenous Australians were not allowed social security benefits e.g. Aged pensions and maternity allowances. However, these benefits were provided to other non-Indigenous Australians by the Commonwealth Government. Aboriginals in rural areas were discriminated and controlled as to where and how they could marry, work, live, and their movements were restricted.[43]

Paintings on the walls of the Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities in North Korea

Sociologists and historians often view dehumanization as essential to war. Governments sometimes represent "enemy" civilians or soldiers as less than human so that voters will be more likely to support a war they may otherwise consider mass murder. Dictatorships use the same process to prevent opposition by citizens. Such efforts often depend on preexisting racist, sectarian, or otherwise biased beliefs, which governments play upon through various types of media, presenting "enemies" as barbaric, as undeserving of rights, and as threats to the nation. Alternatively, states sometimes present an enemy government or way of life as barbaric and its citizens as childlike and incapable of managing their own affairs. Such arguments have been used as a pretext for colonialism.

The Holocaust during World War II and the Rwandan genocide have both been cited as atrocities facilitated by a government sanctioned dehumanization of its citizens. In terms of the Holocaust, government proliferated propaganda created a culture of dehumanization of the Jewish population. Crimes like lynching (especially in the United States) are often thought of as the result of popular bigotry and government apathy.

Anthropologists Ashley Montagu and Floyd Matson famously wrote that dehumanization might well be considered "the fifth horseman of the apocalypse" because of the inestimable damage it has dealt to society.[47] When people become things, the logic follows, they become dispensable, and any atrocity can be justified.

Dehumanization can be seen outside of overtly violent conflicts, as in political debates where opponents are presented as collectively stupid or inherently evil. Such "good versus evil" claims help end substantive debate (see also thought-terminating cliché).

Jewish twins kept alive in Auschwitz for use in Josef Mengele's medical experiments. The Red Army liberated these children in January 1945.

Relatively recent history has seen the relationship between dehumanization and science result in unethical scientific research. The Tuskegee syphilis experiment and the Nazi human experimentation on Jewish people are two such examples. In the former, Africans Americans with syphilis were recruited to participate in a study about the course of the disease. Even when treatment and a cure were eventually developed, they were withheld from the Black participants so that researchers could continue their study. Similarly, Nazi scientists conducted horrific experiments on Jewish people during the Holocaust. This was justified in the name of research and progress which is indicative of the far reaching affects that the culture of dehumanization had upon this society. When this research came to light, efforts were made to protect participants of future research, and currently institutional review boards exist to safeguard individuals from being taken advantage of by scientists.

In a medical context, the passage of time has served to make some dehumanizing practices more acceptable, not less. While dissections of human cadavers was seen as dehumanizing in the Dark Ages (see History of anatomy), the value of dissections as a training aid is such that they are now more widely accepted. Dehumanization has been associated with modern medicine generally, and specifically, has been suggested as a coping mechanism for doctors who work with patients at the end of life.[7][56] Researchers have identified six potential causes of dehumanization in medicine: deindivudating practices, impaired patient agency, dissimilarity (causes which do not facilitate the delivery of medical treatment), mechanization, empathy reduction, and moral disengagement (which could be argued, do facilitate the delivery of medical treatment).[57]

From the patient point of view, in some states in America, controversial legislation requires that a woman view the ultrasound image of her fetus before being able to have an abortion. Critics of the law argue that simply seeing an image of the fetus humanizes it, and biases women against abortion.[58] Similarly, a recent study showed that subtle humanization of medical patients appears to improve care for these patients. Radiologists evaluating X-rays reported more details to patients and expressed more empathy when a photo of the patient's face accompanied the X-rays.[59] It appears that inclusion of the photos counteracts the dehumanization of the medical process.

Dehumanization has applications outside traditional social contexts. Anthropomorphism (i.e., perceiving in nonhuman entities mental and physical capacities that reflect humans) is the inverse of dehumanization, which occurs when characteristics that apply to humans are denied to other humans.[60] Waytz, Epley, and Cacioppo suggest that the inverse of the factors that facilitate dehumanization (e.g., high status, power, and social connection) should facilitate anthropomorphism. That is, a low status, socially disconnected person without power should be more likely to attribute human qualities to pets or electronics than a high-status, high-power, socially connected person.

Researchers have found that engaging in violent video game play diminishes perceptions of both one's own humanity and the humanity of the players who are targets of the violence in the games.[61] While the players are dehumanized, the video game characters that play them are likely anthropomorphized.

Dehumanization has occurred historically under the pre-tense of "progress in the name of science". During the St. Louis World's fair in 1904 human zoos exhibited several natives from independent tribes around the globe, most notably a young Congolese man, Ota Benga. Benga's imprisonment was put on display as a public service showcasing “a degraded and degenerate race”. During this period religion was still the driving force behind much political and scientific action, and because of this, eugenics were widely supported among the most notable US scientific communities, political figures, and industrial elites. After allocating to New York in 1906, public outcry led to the permanent ban and closure of human zoos in the United States.[62]

Francisco Goya, famed Spanish painter and printmaker of the romantic period, often depicted subjectivity involving the atrocities of war and brutal violence conveying the process of dehumanization. In the romantic period of painting martyrdom art was most often a means of deifying the oppressed and tormented, and it was common for Goya to depict evil personalities performing these unjust horrible acts. But it was revolutionary the way the painter broke this convention by dehumanizing these martyr figures. "…one would not know whom the painting depicts, so determinedly has Goya reduced his subjects from martyrs to meat."[63]

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