Dehumanized Perception: A Psychological Means to Facilitate Atrocities, Torture, and Genocide?
Level 4 - case-series / case-control
Laboratory behavioural and fMRI neuroimaging studies (Level 4 by design analogy, non-clinical).
PubMed 24511459 · doi:10.1027/2151-2604/a000065
What was done
The authors conducted two experimental studies examining dehumanized perception regarding traditionally dehumanized social targets (homeless persons and drug addicts). In Study 1, participants imagined a day in the life of these targets and provided ratings across several human-perception dimensions to evaluate spontaneous consideration of others' minds. In Study 2, the authors correlated these human-perception ratings with functional neuroimaging (fMRI) brain activation patterns.
What was found
The abstract provides no quantitative figures, sample sizes, or test statistics. Directionally, Study 1 found that participants failed to spontaneously consider the internal mental states of dehumanized targets when imagining their daily experiences and rated them differently on human-perception dimensions compared to other social groups. Study 2 found that ratings on these human-perception dimensions correlated with neural activation in areas outside the canonical social-cognition network, specifically brain regions associated with disgust, attention, and cognitive control.
Why it matters
This paper links the psychological failure to engage social cognition (theory of mind) with broader neural networks involving disgust and cognitive control, suggesting a potential neurocognitive mechanism underlying extreme social exclusion, mistreatment, and atrocities.
Limits
The abstract reports no sample sizes, effect sizes, or statistical significance metrics. The studies rely on laboratory proxies (ratings and brain responses to extreme outgroups) rather than real-world acts of severe harm, making the generalization to actual atrocities, torture, and genocide inferential and indirect.
Cited by
- supports Dehumanizing an out-group by describing them as animals, pests, or non-human entities turns off prefrontal cortical networks responsible for empathy and social interaction with other humans.