Dehumanization

In 1942, a pamphlet hit the German newsstands, entitled The Subhuman, edited by Heinrich Himmler and published under the imprimatur of the SS. Its purpose was to educate the German public about the threat supposedly posed by “mulattos and Finn-Asian barbarians, gypsies and black skin savages…headed by…the eternal Jew…creatures that are beasts in human form.”

The Nazis were able to justify their ethnic superiority with one word – untermensch, or “inferior people.” Himmler fortified this ideology in the pamphlet, stating:

“The subhuman is a biological creature, crafted by nature, which has hands,…legs, eyes, and mouth, even the semblance of a brain. Nevertheless, this terrible creature is only a partial human being…not all those that appear human are in fact so.”

This is an example of dehumanization. As used in social psychology, dehumanization is a scientific concept describing a cognitive process whereby opponents view each other as less than human and thus not deserving of moral consideration. Jews in the eyes of Nazis, and Tutsis in the eyes of militant Hutus, are but two examples. Dehumanization is part of the process of developing an “enemy image” of the opponent. When we dehumanize others, we come to classify them as inferior, as deficient in moral value and, in the extreme, as dangerous monsters.

The 18th century philosopher David Hume was the first person to describe dehumanization as a psychological phenomenon, but scientific research into the psychology of dehumanization did not really get going until the turn of the twenty-first century. Today, we can access robust research and literature on the cognitive nature of dehumanization, including efforts to understand the neurological processes that are at work when we strip other Homo sapiens of their humanity.

In his book, Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, the philosopher David Livingstone Smith argues that dehumanizing others functions to disable inhibitions against harming them. All social mammals are biologically programmed to avoid harming members of their own community. It’s what helps keep the social glue intact. Cooperation and passivity is a survival strategy. Homo sapiens are vastly more social than any other mammal; we thrive on cooperation. But we are also uniquely intelligent animals, and this allows us to recognize that there are times when violence is necessary. According to Livingstone Smith, representing enemies as dangerous or despicable subhuman creatures both frees us and motivates us to perpetrate atrocities. Conceiving of other people as no longer human makes it easier to treat them inhumanely.

This tragic dimension of human existence would be impossible if we could make the distinction between how things seem and how they really are. Unfortunately, the reality is that facts and evidence are unlikely to mean much to those who believe in their gut that their enemy is less than human.

Political psychologists call this phenomenon “motivated reasoning.” It goes something like this: I dislike all redheads. Even though I’ve come to learn positive things that should change my opinion about redheads, I react by disliking them as much or even more than before. All redheads become my enemy and I have a strong desire to eliminate them. Even the innocence of childhood does not deceive me, they still have redhead blood and therefore must be destroyed too.

This is clearly irrational, but the reasoning of dehumanizers about their rivals is suffused with emotion and driven by specific interests. Moreover, dehumanizers usually conceive of their task primarily as a moral one. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, sincerely believed that Jews were evil subhuman creatures. In his mind, destroying them was not an act of cruelty; it was his moral duty.

When dealing with dehumanizing cognition, we are dealing with individuals who are driven by emotion: subjects bristling with prejudice and motivated by their own self-deception.

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky first described the concept of motivated reasoning in the 1960’s. These pioneers demonstrated proving that reason and emotion are inseparable, but that our feelings arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts. Since then research into motivated rationality has expanded greatly.

The concept of dehumanization is in itself troubling, but what’s worse is how we unconsciously reinforce this perspective through cognitive bias. In their book Three Steps Toward a Theory of Motivated Political Reasoning Milton Lodge and Charles Tabor introduce an empirically supported model in which affect is intricately tied to cognition, and information processing is biased towards support for positions that the individual already holds. Zina Kunda in her work The Case For Motivated Reasoning developed a theoretical model to explain the mechanism by which motivated reasoning results in a cognitive bias.

This research points to something that is especially worrisome about dehumanization. It suggests that in the process of exerting effort to deal with cognitive dissonance produced by conflicting evidence, dehumanizers build new neural connections that further strengthen their original convictions. In the words of Neil DeGrasse Tyson: “When facts are what people want to be true, in spite of contrary evidence, witness the beginning of the end of an informed democracy.”

So where does this leave us? There is a viral image circulating on the web that says it well. The image depicts eight gravestones, each with an epitaph:
“Armenia 1915-1918 NEVER AGAIN. Ukraine 1932-1933 NEVER AGAIN. Nanking 1937-1938 NEVER AGAIN. The Holocaust 1938-1945 NEVER AGAIN. Cambodia 1975-1979 NEVER AGAIN. Bosnia 1992 – 1995 NEVER AGAIN. Rwanda 1994 NEVER AGAIN. Darfur 2003 – .”

Universities, governments and nongovernmental organizations should put money, time and talent into figuring out exactly how dehumanization works and how to prevent it, and this needs to be done from an interdisciplinary standpoint, enriching the research undertaken by psychologists with the insights provided by philosophers, historians, anthropologists and biologists. We need to make the concepts of dehumanization and motivated reasoning known all around the world. Maybe then can we use this knowledge to build a future where the phrase “NEVER AGAIN” is never again needed.