Some conceptual deficits of psychological models of dehumanization

Abstract

This paper examines the conceptual adequacy of three major accounts of dehumanization: Haslam's “dual model,” Waytz and Epley's “mind perception” model, and Fiske's “stereotype content” model. Taking Nazi antisemitism as a paradigmatic example of dehumanization, all three of these are found to be conceptually inadequate. Further, all three represent humanness as attributed incrementally, which is inconsistent with a causally essentialist account of the category of the human, which is needed to account for dehumanizers’ assertions that although dehumanized people appear human, they are not really human “on the inside.” The three accounts also fail insofar as they do not have the resources to explain why dehumanized people are often represented as monstrous or demonic beings. Finally, making sense of dehumanization requires one to move beyond experimental social psychology to take seriously the sociohistorical factors that produce dehumanization.

Keywords

• Dehumanization
• Essentialism
• Categorization
• Antisemitism
• Nazis
• Monsters