Dehumanization

The denial of full humanness to others, and the cruelty and suffering that accompany it, is an all too familiar phenomenon. However, the concept of dehumanization has rarely received systematic theoretical treatment. In social psychology, it has attracted only scattered attention. In this article, I review the many domains in which dehumanization appears in recent scholarship and present the main theoretical perspectives that have been developed. I argue that a theoretically adequate concept of dehumanization requires a clear understanding of “humanness” the quality that is denied to others when they are dehumanized and that most theoretical approaches have failed to specify one. Two distinct senses of humanness are proposed, and empirical research establishing that they are different in composition, correlates, and conceptual bases is presented. I introduce a new theoretical model, in which two forms of dehumanization corresponding to the denial of the two forms of humanness are proposed, and I discuss their distinct psychological foundations. The new model...