Dehumanization: An Integrative Review

The concept of dehumanization lacks a systematic theoretical basis, and research that addresses it has yet to be integrated. Manifestations and theories of dehumanization are reviewed, and a new model is developed. Two forms of dehumanization are proposed, involving the denial to others of 2 distinct senses of humanness: characteristics that are uniquely human and those that constitute human nature. Denying uniquely human attributes to others represents them as animal-like, and denying human nature to others represents them as objects or automata. Cognitive underpinnings of the “animalistic” and “mechanistic” forms of dehumanization are proposed. An expanded sense of dehumanization emerges, in which the phenomenon is not unitary, is not restricted to the intergroup context, and does not occur only under conditions of conflict or extreme negative evaluation. Instead, dehumanization becomes an everyday social phenomenon, rooted in ordinary social-cognitive processes.

[1]  J. Gasset..  The dehumanization of art , 2019, The Dehumanization of Art and Other Essays on Art, Culture, and Literature.

[2]  E. Goffman.  Stigma; Notes On The Management Of Spoiled Identity , 1964 .

[3]  J A WILLIAMS,et al.  From mice to men? , 1992 .

[4]  T. Soper.  Understanding Economics , 1967, Nature.

[5]  Cognitive aspects of prejudice. , 1969 .

[6]  T. Szasz.  Ideology and Insanity: Essays on the Psychiatric Dehumanization of Man , 1970 .

[7]  Sherry B. Ortner.  Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture , 1972 .

[8]  L. Kohlberg.  A Cognitive-Developmental Approach to Moral Education. , 1972 .

[9]  Herbert G. Kelman.  Violence without Moral Restraint: Reflections on the Dehumanization of Victims and Victimizers , 1973 .

[10]  SZASZ: Ideology and Insanity: Essays on the Psychiatric Dehumanization of Man. , 1973, British Journal of Psychiatry.

[11]  S. Silverstein.  Woman, Culture and Society , 1975, African Studies Review.

[12]  A. Bandura,et al.  Disinhibition of aggression through diffusion of responsibility and dehumanization of victims , 1975 .

[13]  S. Modgil,et al.  The cognitive-developmental approach to morality , 1976 .

[14]  Psychiatry's role in the dehumanization of health care. , 1982 .

[15]  Psychiatry's role in the dehumanization of health care. , 1982, The Journal of clinical psychiatry.

[16]  A. Montagu,et al.  The Dehumanization Of Man , 1983 .

[17]  L. Lemoncheck.  Dehumanizing Women: Treating Persons as Sex Objects , 1985 .

[18]  Suzanne K. Damarin,et al.  The second self: Computers and the human spirit , 1985 .

[19]  David A. Wilder,et al.  Social Categorization: Implications for Creation and Reduction of Intergroup Bias , 1986, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology.

[20]  Catharine A. MacKinnon,et al.  Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law , 1987 .

[21]  Steven J. Taylor,et al.  Relationships with Severely Disabled People: The Social Construction of Humanness , 1989 .

[22]  S. Schwartz,et al.  Intergroup aggression: its predictors and distinctness from in-group bias. , 1989, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[23]  Shalom H. Schwartz,et al.  Values, Stereotypes, and Intergroup Antagonism , 1989 .

[24]  A. Palmer,et al.  The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies , 1990 .

[25]  Susan V. Opotow.  Moral Exclusion and Injustice: An Introduction , 1990 .

[26]  K. Gergen.  The saturated self : dilemmas of identity in contemporary life , 1991 .

[27]  L. Wrightsman.  Assumptions about Human Nature: Implications for Researchers and Practitioners , 1991 .

[28]  J. Sheehan,et al.  The Boundaries of Humanity: Humans, Animals, Machines , 1991 .

[29]  P. Hutton.  The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas , 1992 .

[30]  J. Hoberman.  Mortal Engines: The Science of Performance and the Dehumanization of Sport , 1992 .

[31]  M. Rothbart,et al.  Category labels and social reality: Do we view social categories as natural kinds? , 1992 .

[32]  R. Curtis.  The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life , 1992 .

[33]  Alan Wolfe.  The Human Difference: Animals, Computers, and the Necessity of Social Science , 1993 .

[34]  W. Lambert,et al.  Structures of Social Life: The Four Elementary Forms of Human Relations. ALAN PAGE FISKE , 1993 .

[35]  Assessment in Higher Education: Politics, Pedagogy, and Portfolios , 1993 .

[36]  L. F. Barrett,et al.  Handbook of Emotions , 1993 .

[37]  B. Cocroft,et al.  Book reviewStructures of social life: the four elementary forms of human relations: Alan Page Fiske New York: Macmillan Inc., 1991, 480 pp., $29.95 (cloth) , 1994 .

[38]  William Brennan.  Dehumanizing the Vulnerable: When Word Games Take Lives , 1995 .

[39]  R. Blair,et al.  A cognitive developmental approach to morality: investigating the psychopath , 1995, Cognition.

[40]  A. Bandura,et al.  Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement in the Exercise of Moral Agency , 1996 .

[41]  B. Fredrickson,et al.  Objectification Theory: Toward Understanding Women's Lived Experiences and Mental Health Risks , 1997 .

[42]  Leroy D. McDermott.  The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion and Science , 1997, American Antiquity.

[43]  William Ian Miller,et al.  The Anatomy of Disgust , 1997 .

[44]  R. Blair,et al.  The psychopathic individual: a lack of responsiveness to distress cues? , 1997, Psychophysiology.

[45]  S. Baron-Cohen.  Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind , 1997 .

[46]  G. Jahoda.  Images of Savages , 1998 .

[47]  Helen Nissenbaum,et al.  Will computers dehumanize education? A grounded approach to values at risk , 1998 .

[48]  M. Banaji,et al.  Perceptions of the Collective Other , 1998, Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

[49]  R. Cancro.  The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion and Science , 1998 .

[50]  Lawrence A. Hirschfeld,et al.  How biological is essentialism , 1999 .

[51]  G. V. O'brien.  Protecting the social body: use of the organism metaphor in fighting the "menace of the feebleminded". , 1999, Mental retardation.

[52]  B. Malle,et al.  How People Explain Behavior: A New Theoretical Framework , 1999, Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

[53]  P. Rozin,et al.  The CAD triad hypothesis: a mapping between three moral emotions (contempt, anger, disgust) and three moral codes (community, autonomy, divinity). , 1999, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[54]  Amy J. C. Cuddy,et al.  (Dis)respecting versus (Dis)liking: Status and Interdependence Predict Ambivalent Stereotypes of Competence and Warmth , 1999 .

[55]  G. Fair.  Sex and Social Justice , 1999 .

[56]  D. Cicchetti,et al.  Stigma and mental disorder: Conceptions of illness, public attitudes, personal disclosure, and social policy , 2000, Development and Psychopathology.

[57]  D. Bar-Tal.  Shared Beliefs in a Society: Social Psychological Analysis , 2000 .

[58]  N. Haslam,et al.  Essentialist beliefs about social categories. , 2000, The British journal of social psychology.

[59]  L. F. Barrett,et al.  Handbook of emotions, 2nd ed. , 2000 .

[60]  Deborah D. Kaspin.  Images of Savages: Ancient Roots of Modern Prejudice in Western Culture , 2000 .

[61]  Free market assertions should not trump ethical reflections. , 2001, The American journal of forensic psychiatry.

[62]  Brian A. Nosek,et al.  THE GO/NO-GO ASSOCIATION TASK , 2001 .

[63]  S. Gosling.  From mice to men: what can we learn about personality from animal research? , 2001, Psychological bulletin.

[64]  Jeroen Vaes,et al.  Psychological essentialism and the differential attribution of uniquely human emotions to ingroups and outgroups , 2001 .

[65]  Henk G. Schmidt,et al.  The structure of computer anxiety: a six-factor model , 2001, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[66]  Jacques-Philippe Leyens,et al.  Differential Association of Uniquely and Non Uniquely Human Emotions with the Ingroup and the Outgroup , 2002 .

[67]  Michael Billig,et al.  Henri Tajfel's 'cognitive aspects of prejudice' and the psychology of bigotry. , 2002, The British journal of social psychology.

[68]  Jacques-Philippe Leyens,et al.  Intergroup relations and the attribution of emotions: control over memory for secondary emotions associated with the ingroup and outgroup , 2002 .

[69]  M. Foddy,et al.  Self and Identity : Personal, Social, and Symbolic , 2002 .

[70]  N. Haslam,et al.  Are essentialist beliefs associated with prejudice? , 2002, The British journal of social psychology.

[71]  Javier Zamora Bonilla,et al.  Ortega y Gasset , 2002 .

[72]  S. Preston,et al.  Empathy: Its ultimate and proximate bases. , 2001, The Behavioral and brain sciences.

[73]  M. Foddy,et al.  Time and Self: The Historical Construction of the Self , 2002 .

[74]  A. Bandura.  Selective Moral Disengagement in the Exercise of Moral Agency , 2002 .

[75]  Yaacov Trope,et al.  Temporal construal. , 2003, Psychological review.

[76]  Jeroen Vaes,et al.  On the behavioral consequences of infrahumanization: the implicit role of uniquely human emotions in intergroup relations. , 2003, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[77]  K. Perryman,et al.  Disrupted Facial Empathy in Drawings from Artists With Frontotemporal Dementia , 2003, Neurocase.

[78]  People with cognitive disabilities: the Argument from Marginal Cases and social work ethics. , 2003, Social work.

[79]  G. V. O'brien,et al.  Indigestible Food, Conquering Hordes, and Waste Materials: Metaphors of Immigrants and the Early Immigration Restriction Debate in the United States , 2003 .

[80]  Susan T. Fiske,et al.  Emotional prejudice, essentialism, and nationalism - The 2002 Tajfel lecture , 2003 .

[81]  D. Schulman-Green.  Coping Mechanisms of Physicians Who Routinely Work with Dying Patients , 2003 .

[82]  D. Medin,et al.  The native mind: biological categorization and reasoning in development and across cultures. , 2004, Psychological review.

[83]  M. Mendez,et al.  Alterations of the Sense of “Humanness” in Right Hemisphere Predominant Frontotemporal Dementia Patients , 2004, Cognitive and behavioral neurology : official journal of the Society for Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology.

[84]  N. Haslam,et al.  Essentialist Beliefs about Personality and Their Implications , 2004, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[85]  Alan Page Fiske,et al.  Four Modes of Constituting Relationships: Consubstantial Assimilation; Space, Magnitude, Time, and Force; Concrete Procedures; Abstract Symbolism. , 2004 .

[86]  H. Weinstein,et al.  Rehumanizing the Other: Empathy and Reconciliation , 2004 .

[87]  J. Leyens,et al.  Motivated reasoning and the attribution of emotions to ingroup and outgroup , 2004 .

[88]  The uniquely human in human nature , 2004, Daedalus.

[89]  Nick Haslam,et al.  Relational Models Theory : A Contemporary Overview , 2004 .

[90]  J. Dovidio,et al.  Dimensions of “uniquely” and “non‐uniquely” human emotions , 2004 .

[91]  N. Haslam,et al.  More human than you: attributing humanness to self and others. , 2005, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[92]  Jacques-Philippe Leyens,et al.  Infrahumanization or Familiarity? Attribution of Uniquely Human Emotions to the Self, the Ingroup, and the Outgroup , 2005, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[93]  K. Locke.  Connecting the Horizontal Dimension of Social Comparison With Self-Worth and Self-Confidence , 2005, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[94]  N. Haslam,et al.  Conceptual beliefs about human values and their implications: human nature beliefs predict value importance, value trade-offs, and responses to value-laden rhetoric. , 2006, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[95]  R. Giner-Sorolla,et al.  Not quite human: infrahumanization in response to collective responsibility for intergroup killing. , 2006, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[96]  N. Haslam,et al.  Animals and Androids , 2007, Psychological science.