Social neuroscience evidence for dehumanised perception

Abstract

Dehumanisation describes perceiving a person as nonhuman in some ways, such as lacking a mind. Social psychology is beginning to understand cognitive and affective causes and mechanisms—the psychological how and why of dehumanisation. Social neuroscience research also can inform these questions. After background on social neural networks and on past dehumanisation research, the article contrasts (a) research on fully humanised person perception, reviewing studies on affective and cognitive factors, specifically mentalising (considering another's mind), with (b) dehumanised perception, proposing neural systems potentially involved. Finally, the conclusion suggests limitations of social neuroscience, future research directions, and real-world consequences of this all-too-human phenomenon.

Keywords:

• Dehumanisation
• Social neuroscience
• Stereotype content model (SCM)
• Disgust
• Morality

Acknowledgments

We thank Phil Goff and Jennifer Eberhardt for sharing their stimuli, and Rafael Escobedo and Jack Gelfand for their assistance and instruction in gathering the EEG data.

Notes

¹We follow an inter-group bias model, so we discuss dehumanisation, a form of extreme inter-group bias, distinguishing among cognition, affect, and behaviour. We use the term dehumanisation to describe behaviour, dehumanising prejudice to describe affect, and dehumanised perception to describe cognitions throughout this article.