Dehumanization, Retributive and Restorative Justice, and Aggressive Versus Diplomatic Intergroup Conflict Resolution Strategies

Leidner, Bernhard; Castano, Emanuele; Ginges, Jeremy

doi:10.1177/0146167212472208

Cited by 81 publications

(92 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…These findings seem to run counter to the literature that has linked dehumanization to willingness to punish, torture, rape, and kill out-groups, women, and minorities (51)(52)(53)(54). In this tradition, even our enemies and other "thin" relations must be perceived as human to prevent excessive violence toward them (55).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 61%

Dehumanization increases instrumental violence, but not moral violence

Tage

Valdesolo

Graham

2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

140

100

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Across five experiments, we show that dehumanization-the act of perceiving victims as not completely human-increases instrumental, but not moral, violence. In attitude surveys, ascribing reduced capacities for cognitive, experiential, and emotional states to victims predicted support for practices where victims are harmed to achieve instrumental goals, including sweatshop labor, animal experimentation, and drone strikes that result in civilian casualties, but not practices where harm is perceived as morally righteous, including capital punishment, killing in war, and drone strikes that kill terrorists. In vignette experiments, using dehumanizing compared with humanizing language increased participants' willingness to harm strangers for money, but not participants' willingness to harm strangers for their immoral behavior. Participants also spontaneously dehumanized strangers when they imagined harming them for money, but not when they imagined harming them for their immoral behavior. Finally, participants humanized strangers who were low in humanity if they imagined harming them for immoral behavior, but not money, suggesting that morally motivated perpetrators may humanize victims to justify violence against them. Our findings indicate that dehumanization enables violence that perpetrators see as unethical, but instrumentally beneficial. In contrast, dehumanization does not contribute to moral violence because morally motivated perpetrators wish to harm complete human beings who are capable of deserving blame, experiencing suffering, and understanding its meaning.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 61%

Dehumanization increases instrumental violence, but not moral violence

Tage

Valdesolo

Graham

2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

140

100

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…social class, gender); but also circumstantial factors like emotional state, a sense of power, or self-focus [22]. Interestingly, although agents high on HN traits are seen as more deserving of protection, animalistic dehumanisation is still related to a decrease in empathy [8] and both types of dehumanisation are related to increased aggression [22,33].…”

Section: Humanness and Aggressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mindless Robots get Bullied

Keijsers

Bartneck

2018

Proceedings of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction

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Humans recognise and respond to robots as social agents, to such extent that they occasionally a empt to bully a robot. e current paper investigates whether aggressive behaviour directed towards robots is in uenced by the same social processes that guide human bullying behaviour. More speci cally, it measured the e ects of dehumanisation primes and anthropomorphic qualities of the robot on participants' verbal abuse of a virtual robotic agents. Contrary to previous ndings in human-human interaction, priming participants with power did not result in less mind a ribution. However, evidence for dehumanisation was still found, as the less mind participants a ributed to the robot, the more aggressive responses they gave. In the main study this e ect was moderated by the manipulations of power and robot anthropomorphism; the low anthropomorphic robot in the power prime condition endured signi cantly less abuse, and mind a ribution remained a signi cant predictor for verbal aggression in all conditions save the low anthropomorphic robot with no prime. It is concluded that dehumanisation occurs in human-robot interaction and that like in human-human interaction, it is linked to aggressive behaviour. Moreover, it is argued that this dehumanisation is di erent from anthropomorphism as well as human-human dehumanisation, since anthropomorphism itself did not predict aggressive behaviour and dehumanisation of robots was not in uenced by primes that have been established in human-human dehumanisation research.

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“…A second plausible mechanism is moral disengagement (see Bandura, 1999;Castano & Giner-Sorolla, 2006;Haslam & Loughnan, 2014;Leidner et al, 2013;Leidner, Castano, Zaiser, & Giner-Sorolla, 2010). Perceivers may deny agency to harmful agents as a means of legitimating any aggressive action taken against the agent as retribution for their crime.…”

Section: Moral Typecasting Dehumanization and Defining Agencymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The second putative mechanism we tested was moral disengagement, a motivational process whereby observers may deny an offender agency or humanness in order to justify punishing or aggressing towards them (see Bandura, 1999;Castano & Giner-Sorolla, 2006;Leidner et al, 2013;Leidner et al, 2010). To test this idea, in Study 5 we manipulated participants' motivations to punish the offender, to see if participants would deny the agent agentive qualities even more strongly when motivated to punish the offender.…”

Section: Theoretical Implications Limitations and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…From a different perspective, however, harmful agents should not be typecasted as agents, but denied agency, as an extension of the human inclination to dehumanize cruel agents (Bastian et al, 2013;Haslam & Loughnan, 2014;Leidner, Castano, & Ginges, 2013;Viki, Fullerton, Raggett, Tait, & Wiltshire, 2012). According to work on dehumanization, harmful agents are often seen by others as lacking basic aspects of humanity or "humanness" (Haslam, 2006;Haslam, Kashima, Loughnan, Shi, & Suitner, 2008), such as civility and warmth, and at times may even be imbued with animalistic or machine-like traits (Bastian et al, 2013;Vasquez et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Perceiving the agency of harmful agents: A test of dehumanization versus moral typecasting accounts

2016

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It is clear that harmful agents are targets of severe condemnation, but it is much less clear how perceivers conceptualize the agency of harmful agents. The current studies tested two competing predictions made by moral typecasting theory and the dehumanization literature. Across six studies, harmful agents were perceived to possess less agency than neutral (non-offending) and benevolent agents, consistent with a dehumanization perspective but inconsistent with the assumptions of moral typecasting theory. This was observed for human targets (Studies 1-2b, and 4-5) and corporations (Study 3), and across various gradations of harmfulness (Studies 3-4).Importantly, denial of agency to harmful agents occurred even when controlling for perceptions of the agent's likeability (Studies 2a and 2b) and while using two different operationalizations of agency (Study 2a). Study 5 showed that harmful agents are denied agency primarily through an inferential process, and less through motivations to see the agent punished. Across all six studies, harmful agents were deemed less worthy of moral standing as a consequence of their harmful conduct and this reduction in moral standing was mediated through reductions in agency. Our findings clarify a current tension in the moral cognition literature, which have direct implications for the moral typecasting framework.

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Dehumanization, Retributive and Restorative Justice, and Aggressive Versus Diplomatic Intergroup Conflict Resolution Strategies

Cited by 81 publications

References 40 publications

Dehumanization increases instrumental violence, but not moral violence

Dehumanization increases instrumental violence, but not moral violence

Mindless Robots get Bullied

Perceiving the agency of harmful agents: A test of dehumanization versus moral typecasting accounts

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