Metadehumanization erodes democratic norms during the 2020 presidential election

Abstract

The present research directly replicates past work suggesting that metadehumanization, the perception that another group dehumanizes your own group, erodes Americans' support for democratic norms. In the days surrounding

Dehumanization: trends, insights, and challenges

“…Using similar measures, other scholars found that the blatant dehumanization of Muslim and Mexican immigrants predicted support for hostile policies towards them (e.g., Muslim ban; solitary confinement of undocumented immigrants), controlling for affective prejudice [90]. Similarly, work finds that partisan blatant dehumanization predicts obstructionism and outgroup spite controlling for prejudice [62,63]. Examining implicit dehumanization, one group found that the implicit association between African Americans and apes predicted the condoning of violence directed by police officers at a Black suspect controlling for explicit racial prejudice [53].…”

“…Individuals' meta-perceptions generally tend to be more negative than reality warrants (e.g., [106]). The same is true of dehumanization: American political partisans think members of the other party dehumanize them nearly three times more than is actually the case [62,63]. Fortunately, meta-dehumanization appears to be corrigible: informing non-Muslim Westerners that Muslims in the Middle East consider them fully human reduces their blatant dehumanization of Muslims [104,107], particularly among those who perceive Muslims to be most threatening at baseline [107].…”

“…Overt blatant dehumanization has now been observed across a number of domains, including in American political partisans' attitudes toward the other party [61][62][63], alt-right adherents' attitudes towards a wide range of minority groups [64], attitudes toward Asian-Americans during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic [65,66], and even among young children considering hypothetical outgroups [67]. A growing body of research further considers targets' experience of feeling blatantly dehumanized, finding that such meta-dehumanization can contribute to vicious cycles of intergroup hostility (Box 1).…”

“…For instance, Muslim Americans who felt dehumanized by non-Muslim Americans expressed more emotional hostility and were more reluctant to report potential terrorist activity to law enforcement [90]. Similarly, American political partisans who feel dehumanized by the other party expressed reciprocal dehumanization and a willingness to use antidemocratic means to hurt their opponents (e.g., using government institutions to shut down the other party's media outlets [62,63]).…”

Reducing Explicit Blatant Dehumanization by Correcting Exaggerated Meta-Perceptions

“…These considerations inspired our attempt to reduce dehumanization in a context marked both by high levels of dehumanization and highly inaccurate meta-dehumanization. 1 Exaggerated Meta-Dehumanization Among American Partisans Substantial numbers of Democrats and Republicans explicitly, blatantly dehumanize one another (Cassese, 2021;Landry, Ihm, Kwit & Schooler, 2021;Moore-Berg et al, 2020). Perhaps because of its overt nature, partisans recognize that out-partisans explicitly, blatantly dehumanize them and even think they do so to a far greater extent than is actually the case.…”