Not Just Disgust: Fear and Anger Also Relate to Intergroup Dehumanization

Abstract

One of the most extreme expressions of prejudice is likening groups to non-human beings. Previous research relates disgust to dehumanization of social groups. However, prior studies have not examined other negative emotions in relation to dehumanization. We examined whether three emotions – anger, disgust, and fear – are associated with dehumanization of social groups. In Experiments 1 and 2 we tested these relationships measuring reactions to real groups. We found that all three emotions were uniquely related to animalistic and humanity-denial dehumanization, but only fear was related to mechanistic dehumanization. Using an orthogonal emotion grid measure in Experiment 3, we showed anger to play a primary role in dehumanization among a variety of target groups. Finally, in Experiment 4 we manipulated whether a novel group was abnormal or harmful, and found that both groups elicited more dehumanization than the control group; however, the harmful group elicited dehumanization mediated by anger and the abnormal group elicited dehumanization mediated by disgust. From this evidence, we argue that other emotions besides disgust play an important part in the dehumanization of outgroups.

Keywords

• dehumanization
• emotion
• anger
• disgust
• fear