Dehumanization During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

David M Markowitz,Michael C Silverstein,Brittany Shoots-Reinhard,Raleigh Goodwin,Ellen Peters,Pär Bjälkebring

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.634543

David M Markowitz, Michael C Silverstein + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.634543

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Abstract

Communities often unite during a crisis, though some cope by ascribing blame or stigmas to those who might be linked to distressing life events. In a preregistered two-wave survey, we evaluated the dehumanization of Asians and Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our first wave (March 26–April 2, 2020; N = 917) revealed dehumanization was prevalent, between 6.1% and 39% of our sample depending on measurement. Compared to non-dehumanizers, people who dehumanized also perceived the virus as less risky to human health and caused less severe consequences for infected people. They were more likely to be ideologically Conservative and believe in conspiracy theories about the virus. We largely replicated the results 1 month later in our second wave (May 6–May 13, 2020; N = 723). Together, many Americans dehumanize Asians and Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic with related perceptions that the virus is less problematic. Implications and applications for dehumanization theory are discussed.

Highlights

Consequences of Dehumanization People who dehumanize are often less prosocial toward perceived outgroups (Haslam and Loughnan, 2014)
In this work we evaluate rates of dehumanization during the COVID-19 pandemic toward Asians and Asian Americans, understand the relationship between dehumanization and risk perceptions during the early stages of the pandemic, and profile those who dehumanize Asians and Asian Americans
Rates of Dehumanization Using absolute dehumanization scores, we observed that 39.0% of our sample dehumanized Asians and 37.6% dehumanized Asian Americans

Summary

Introduction

Consequences of Dehumanization People who dehumanize are often less prosocial toward perceived outgroups (Haslam and Loughnan, 2014). Cuddy et al (2007) revealed that those who denied secondary emotions (e.g., anguish, remorse) to Hurricane Katrina victims reported they would be less likely to volunteer time to help needy individuals. Other work finds people who perceived Muslims as animals were less likely to support reparation policies for them (Zebel et al, 2008). People who dehumanize attend to outgroups less and support them less compared to nondehumanizers (Dickert and Slovic, 2009; Harris and Fiske, 2011)

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