Abstract
Dehumanization is a topic of significant interest for academia and society at large. Empirical studies often have people rate the evolved nature of outgroups and prior work suggests immigrants are common victims of less-than-human treatment. Despite existing work that suggests who dehumanizes particular outgroups and who is often dehumanized, the extant literature knows less about why people dehumanize outgroups such as immigrants. The current work takes up this opportunity by examining why people dehumanize immigrants said to be illegal and how measurement format affects dehumanization ratings. Participants (N = 672) dehumanized such immigrants more if their ratings were made on a slider versus clicking images of hominids, an effect most pronounced for Republicans. Dehumanization was negatively associated with warmth toward illegal immigrants and the perceived unhappiness felt by illegal immigrants from U.S. immigration policies. Finally, most dehumanization is not entirely blatant but instead, captured by virtuous violence and affect as well, suggesting the many ways that dehumanization can manifest as predicted by theory. This work offers a mechanistic account for why people dehumanize immigrants and addresses how survey measurement artifacts (e.g., clicking on images of hominids vs. using a slider) affect dehumanization rates. We discuss how these data extend dehumanization theory and inform empirical research.
Highlights
Dehumanization is a pervasive social and psychological phenomenon that affects groups of people around the world [1,2,3]
We examine how moving a slider across a numbered line versus clicking on the image of evolving hominids impacts ratings of illegal immigrants
We evaluated how close people felt toward illegal immigrants using the Inclusion of the Other in the Self (IOS) scale [29], since prior work suggests people who blatantly dehumanize immigrants tend to feel more social distance toward them [7]
Summary
Dehumanization is a pervasive social and psychological phenomenon that affects groups of people around the world [1,2,3]. Immigrants, for example, are viewed as less-than-human compared to ingroups in the US and treated inhumanely through cruel metaphors (e.g., immigrants are animals) [4]. Detainment policies treat migrants in dehumanizing ways by separating families at country borders [5] and forcing individuals into poorly-resourced detention sites [6]. Who tends to dehumanize immigrants in the US? People who believe immigrants are less-than-human can be characterized by a range of social, psychological, and demographic traits [7], including conservative ideology and the endorsement of seemingly unrelated social harms (e.g., the death penalty for convicted murderers).
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