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A shot from the Korean drama TV show called “Squid Game”. In the scene that this shot is in, the main character Gi-Hun opens his hand out to his childhood friend, Cho Sang-Woo. This is after the two long-time friends fight each other to win millions of prize money. Gi-Hun here could’ve killed his childhood friend after beating him in the fight and getting the money. Instead, he opens out his hand, showing mercy to his childhood friend.

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Two images from the movie adaptation of Bryan Stevenson’s novel called “Just Mercy”. In these images, Stevenson (played by Michael B. Jordan) defends Walter McMillan in court after being convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. This is Stevenson humanizing McMillan, as he is defending this innocent man that people think is a murderer.

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Another image from the movie adaptation of Bryan Stevenson’s “Just Mercy”. In this image, a black man is being led to an execution chamber. This does not show mercy, nor humanization, but rather dehumanization. Executing someone (who is possibly innocent) is dehumanizing. Humans shouldn’t put down other humans like this.

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Another image from the movie adaptation of Bryan Stevenson’s “Just Mercy”. This image is another example of dehumanization. Walter McMillan (played by Jamie Foxx) is locked in his death row cell, similar to how an animal would be locked in a cage.

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Posts about dehumanization of people are mostly portrayed towards peoples race/gender, statements/opinions, and historical events such as the Civil Rights Movement and The Holocaust.

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Posts about religion, optimistic and compassion (peace, love and understanding).

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Posts of the current within the justice system, events (protests, riots, etc.), statements/opinions upon the justice system.

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Posts of current status of the death penalty in different states and/or countries.

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Posts about racial discrimination, statements/opinions on racism, societal challenges, dehumanization that deprives from racism.

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McMillian was finally freed!

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The justice system uses dehumanization to dominate people of color to the point of no mercy.

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“We’ve given up on rehabilitation, education, and services for the imprisoned because providing assistance to the incarcerated is a apparently too kind and compassionate” (Stevenson 15)

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“As soon as I openEd my car door and got out, the police officer who had started walking toward my vehicle drew his weapon and pointed it at me.” (Stevenson 40)

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“He was also confused. They said he was being arrested for raping another man, but they were throwing questions at him about the murder of Ronda Morrison.” (Stevenson 48)

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“They made alterations and electrocuted Mr. Dunkins again, and this time it worked. They killed him.” (Stevenson 71)

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"'I feel like they done put me on death row, too. What do we tell these children about how to stay out of harm’s way when you can be at your own house, minding your own business surrounded by your entire family, and they still put some murder on you that you ain’t do and send you to death row?'" (Stevenson 93)

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"Many of my Alabama clients were on death row for crimes they were accused of committing when they were sixteen- or seventeen-years-old children." (Stevenson 115)

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“We discovered that Bill Hooks had been paid by Sheriff Tate for his testimony against Walter- … also paid Hooks money to travel back and forth out of the county around the time of the trial.” (Stevenson 131)

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“...Trina never received any financial aid or services from the state to compensate her for being violently raped by one of its 'correctional' officers." (Stevenson 151)

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“ … I asked Ralph to acknowledge once again that his trial testimony was false and that he had knowingly put an innocent man on death row.” (171 Stevenson)

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"...over 50 percent of prison and jail inmates in the United States have a diagnosed mental illness…” (188 Stevenson)

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"First time I fully reckoned with the truth that the conviction, the death sentence, and the heartbreak and devastation of this miscarriage of justice had created permanent injuries” (Stevenson 222)

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"With no credible scientific evidence that a crime has occured, the State introduced inflammatory evidence that Marsha was poor, a prior drug user, and obviously a bad mother for not seeking prenatal care.” (Stevenson 232)

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“... brought hundreds of people to his home to celebrate his freedom, but I knew that not everyone... was overjoyed. I didn’t tell Walter about the death threats and bomb threats we’d received until he was free,...” (Stevenson 243)

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"He then lamented that the law no longer authorized the execution of children because he just couldn't wait to put this fourteen-year-old boy in the electric chair and kill him." (Stevenson 265)

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“I drove down to speak with his doctor, who told me that Walter had advancing dementia, likely trauma-induced, and that he would need constant care.” (Stevenson 276)

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“He [Caston] lost several fingers working in a prison factory and was now disabled as a result of his forced labor at Angola. (Stevenson 304)

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- This website goes into what dehumanization is and how it could affect a person’s psychology.
- Going into the psychology of dehumanization could show how it could be used to manipulate someone.

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Originally published in July 2003, updated by Heidi Burgess in June 2020.

Current Implications

Everything in this article is still true. The only thing that is missing is an example from the United States. The examples provided in 2003 were the Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide, Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia. In 2003, we were not thinking such a process was happening or was likely to happen in the United States.

But here we are! More...

What it Means to Dehumanize

Dehumanization is a psychological 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 Hutus (in the Rwandan genocide) are but two examples. Protracted conflict strains relationships and makes it difficult for parties to recognize that they are part of a shared human community. Such conditions often lead to feelings of intense hatred and alienation among conflicting parties. The more severe the conflict, the more the psychological distance between groups will widen. Eventually, this can result in moral exclusion. Those excluded are typically viewed as inferior, evil, or criminal.[1]

We typically think that all people have some basic human rights that should not be violated. Innocent people should not be murdered, raped, or tortured. Rather, international law suggests that they should be treated justly and fairly, with dignity and respect. They deserve to have their basic needs met, and to have some freedom to make autonomous decisions. In times of war, parties must take care to protect the lives of innocent civilians on the opposing side. Even those guilty of breaking the law should receive a fair trial, and should not be subject to any sort of cruel or unusual punishment.

However, for individuals viewed as outside the scope of morality and justice, "the concepts of deserving basic needs and fair treatment do not apply and can seem irrelevant."[2] Any harm that befalls such individuals seems warranted, and perhaps even morally justified. Those excluded from the scope of morality are typically perceived as psychologically distant, expendable, and deserving of treatment that would not be acceptable for those included in one's moral community. Common criteria for exclusion include ideology, skin color, and cognitive capacity. We typically dehumanize those whom we perceive as a threat to our well-being or values.[3]

Psychologically, it is necessary to categorize one's enemy as sub-human in order to legitimize increased violence or justify the violation of basic human rights. Moral exclusion reduces restraints against harming or exploiting certain groups of people. In severe cases, dehumanization makes the violation of generally-accepted norms of behavior regarding one's fellow man seem reasonable, or even necessary.

Tamra D'Estree describes a conflict where one side was forced to change his identity in order to acheive personal legitimacy.

The Psychology of Dehumanization

Dehumanization is actually an extension of a less intense process of developing an " enemy image" of the opponent. During the course of protracted conflict, feelings of anger, fear, and distrust shape the way that the parties perceive each other. Adversarial attitudes and perceptions develop and parties begin to attribute negative traits to their opponent. They may come to view the opponent as an evil enemy, deficient in moral virtue, or as a dangerous, warlike monster. Such images can stem from a desire for group identity and a need to contrast the distinctive attributes and virtues of one's own group with the vices of the "outside" group.[4] In some cases, evil-ruler enemy images form. While ordinary group members are regarded as neutral, or perhaps even innocent, their leaders are viewed as hideous monsters.[5]

Enemy images are usually black and white. The negative actions of one's opponent are thought to reflect their fundamental evil nature, traits, or motives.[6] One's own faults, as well as the values and motivations behind the actions of one's opponent, are usually discounted, denied, or ignored. It becomes difficult to empathize or see where one's opponent is coming from. Meaningful communication is unlikely, and it becomes difficult to perceive any common ground.

Once formed, enemy images tend to resist change, and serve to perpetuate and intensify the conflict. Because the adversary has come to be viewed as a "diabolical enemy," the conflict is framed as a war between good and evil.[7] Once the parties have framed the conflict in this way, their positions become more rigid. In some cases, zero-sum thinking develops as parties come to believe that they must either secure their own victory, or face defeat. New goals to punish or destroy the opponent arise, and in some cases more militant leadership comes into power.

Enemy images are accentuated, according to psychologists, by the process of "projection," in which people "project" their own faults onto their opponents. This means that people or groups who tend to be aggressive or selfish are likely to attribute those traits to their opponents, but not to themselves. This improves one's own self-image and increases group cohesion, but it also escalates the conflict and makes it easier to dehumanize the other side.

Deindividuation facilitates dehumanization as well. This is the psychological process whereby a person is seen as a member of a category or group rather than as an individual. Because people who are deindividuated seem less than fully human, they are viewed as less protected by social norms against aggression than those who are individuated.[8] It then becomes easier to rationalize contentious moves or severe actions taken against one's opponents.

Dangers of Dehumanization

While deindividuation and the formation of enemy images are very common, they form a dangerous process that becomes especially damaging when it reaches the level of dehumanization.

Once certain groups are stigmatized as evil, morally inferior, and not fully human, the persecution of those groups becomes more psychologically acceptable. Restraints against aggression and violence begin to disappear. Not surprisingly, dehumanization increases the likelihood of violence and may cause a conflict to escalate out of control. Once a violence break over has occurred, it may seem even more acceptable for people to do things that they would have regarded as morally unthinkable before.

Parties may come to believe that destruction of the other side is necessary, and pursue an overwhelming victory that will cause one's opponent to simply disappear. This sort of into-the-sea framing can cause lasting damage to relationships between the conflicting parties, making it more difficult to solve their underlying problems and leading to the loss of more innocent lives.

Indeed, dehumanization often paves the way for human rights violations, war crimes, and genocide. For example, in WWII, the dehumanization of the Jews ultimately led to the destruction of millions of people.[9] Similar atrocities have occurred in Rwanda, Cambodia, and the former Yugoslavia.

It is thought that the psychological process of dehumanization might be mitigated or reversed through humanization efforts, the development of empathy, the establishment of personal relationships between conflicting parties, and the pursuit of common goals.

Current Implications

Everything in this article is still true. The only thing that is missing is an example from the United States. The examples provided in 2003 were the Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide, Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia. In 2003, we were not thinking such a process was happening or was likely to happen in the United States.

But here we are!

Read this excerpt by Alexander Theodoridis and James Martherus in the Washington Post [10] from May 2018:

President Trump's comments during a roundtable on California's "sanctuary" law have prompted an uproar. "We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in - and we're stopping a lot of them - but we're taking people out of the country," Trump said. "You wouldn't believe how bad these people are. These aren't people. These are animals." The White House heightened this phrasing in a news release, even as pundits like E.J. Dionne pushed back on the dangers of such language. [10]

But the article continues to explain that it isn't just President Trump, nor is it just Republicans. Reporting on a survey Theodoridis and Martherus did,

Seventy-seven percent of our respondents rated their political opponents as less evolved. [They asked respondents to rank members of their own and the opposing party on a scale from zero to 100. Accompanying the scale was an image of the evolution of humans, with 0 being apes and 100 being a modern human (with Neanderthal and other primitive humanoids in between.] Respondents who considered themselves strong partisans were more likely to dehumanize opposing partisans, and Republicans and Democrats were equally likely to dehumanize their opponents. [10]

Indeed, Democrats do dehumanize Republicans, particularly Trump supporters, when they accuse them of being ignorant, hateful, or "deplorables" as was famously once said by Hillary Clinton in the last Presidential campaign. Accusing all Republicans of being racist bigots is similar, and is taken as badly by the right as the left takes Trump's attacks, as is evidenced by this blog by a Ben Armstrong, a conservative newscaster from Wisconsin. [11] The contempt with which law enforcement officers and departments are now widely viewed after the George Floyd killing (assuming all police are racists, for example) along with widespread calls that they be "defunded" (and all officers presumably fired) is coming precariously close to dehumanization as well.

As Maiese argued in the original article, such dehumanization can lead to violence. Both Theodoridis and Martherus (in the Washington Post study) and Ben Armstrong's blog [11] point to the shooting at the Republican Congressional baseball team:

...when James Hodgkinson opened fire on congressional Republicans while they practiced for the Congressional Baseball Game for Charity, injuring four people before Capitol Police shot and killed him. Hodgkinson had previously posted a series of quotes critical of President Trump along with the caption, "Trump is a selfish inhuman with delusions of grandeur."[10]

Theodoridis and Martherus go on to explain that dehumanization can also justify illegal behavior to try to keep the "evil animals" out of power:

Even vile conspiracy theories - say, the idea Democrats are trafficking in children inside Comet Ping-Pong pizza - may be easier to believe when attached to individuals we think lack some measure of humanity. If we are willing to describe the other side with dehumanizing metaphors, we may be inclined to accept otherwise unacceptable measures to keep them from gaining political power.[10]

I'm sure I need not explain that such behavior has only gotten worse over time, and is likely to ramp up even further as the U.S. Presidential election in November 2020 draws near. Indeed, shortly after the Minneapolis police killed George Floyd and violent protests broke out, Trump Tweeted "When the looting starts, the shooting starts," and "The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat." [12]

Where do we go from here?

Research on dehumanization makes it very clear, as the original article points out, that such speech increases the likelihood that the conflict will spin out of control and escalate into of violence by weakening the taboos that protect us all from hate crimes and crimes against humanity. Once people begin thinking of their opponents as sub-human, it is much easier to start treating them in ways they would never treat a fellow human, paving the way for mass atrocities. It's hard to think that something like that could happen in the United States. But the seeds are being planted, and the shoots of deep hatred are starting to show. This is likely a major reason why the killing of George Floyd (and associated acts of police brutality) have sparked such outrage. It revealed that police officers, who are responsible for protecting us from hate crimes, are in fact, guilty of those crimes. It is imperative, NOW, that we strongly disavow dehumanizing speech and actions--coming from all sides (not just "the other" side) and work to mend relationships between our increasingly adversarial groups.

-- Heidi Burgess, June, 2020.

September 2020 addition: A reader responded to this essay, noting, correctly, that dehumanization has a long history in America--it is not new. Slavery was the epitome of dehumanization, as was the killing and forced displacement of Native Americans. The fact that we are still deeply conflicted about racial issues shows how deep the wounds of dehumanization are...and how hard they are to repair.
Back to Essay Top
[1] Susan Opotow, "Aggression and Violence," in The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice, eds. M. Deutsch and P.T. Coleman. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000), 417.

[2] Susan Opotow, "Drawing the Line: Social Categorization, Moral Exclusion, and the Scope of Justice." In Cooperation, Conflict, and Justice: Essays Inspired by the Work of Morton Deutsch, eds. B.B. Bunker and J.Z. Rubin. (New York: Sage Publications, 1995), 347.

[3] Morton Deutsch, "Justice and Conflict," in The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice, eds. M. Deutsch and P.T. Coleman. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000), 51.

[4] Janice Gross Stein, "Image, Identity and Conflict Resolution," in Managing Global Chaos: Sources of and Responses to International Conflict, eds. Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela R. Aall. (Herndon, VA: USIP Press, 1996), 94.

[5] Jeffrey Z. Rubin and Dean G. Pruitt. Social Conflict: Escalation, Stalemate, and Settlement, 2 nd Edition. (New York: McGraw Hill College Division, 1994), 99.

[6] Ibid., 103.

[7] Ibid., 100.

[8] Ibid., 104.

[9] Opotow, "Drawing the Line," 349.

[10] Alexander Theodoridis and James Martherus. "Trump is not the only one who calls opponents 'animals.' Democrats and Republicans do it to each other." The Washington Post. May 21, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/05/21/trump-isnt-the-only-one-who-calls-opponents-animals-democrats-and-republicans-do-it-to-each-other/. Accessed June 29, 2020.

[11] Ben Armstrong. "The Dehumanization of Republicans." Ben Armstrong's Blog. https://wsau.com/blogs/ben-armstrong-blog/20344/the-dehumanization-of-republicans/. Accessed June 29, 2020.

[12] Aaron Blake. "'The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.' 'When the looting starts, the shooting starts.' Twice in 25 hours, Trump tweets conspicuous allusions to violence.". The Washington Post. May 29, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/28/trump-retweets-video-saying-only-good-democrat-is-dead-democrat/ Accessed June 29, 2020.

Use the following to cite this article:
Maiese, Michelle. "Dehumanization." Beyond Intractability. Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Information Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Posted: July 2003 < https://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/dehumanization>.

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An essay describing the psychology and dangers of dehumanization, which is now widely afflicting the U.S as well as other places.

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- This is a news article by Stanford University that goes into a study done on how the dehumanization of African Americans is linked to their discrimination.
- In the article, it is mentioned that violence against the African American criminal suspects is because of the inability to see them as human. This dehumanizes them and would have these suspects be shown no mercy.

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February 7, 2008

Crude historical depictions of African Americans as ape-like may have disappeared from mainstream U.S. culture, but research presented in a new paper by psychologists at Stanford, Pennsylvania State University and the University of California-Berkeley reveals that many Americans subconsciously associate blacks with apes.

In addition, the findings show that society is more likely to condone violence against black criminal suspects as a result of its broader inability to accept African Americans as fully human, according to the researchers.

Co-author Jennifer Eberhardt, a Stanford associate professor of psychology who is black, said she was shocked by the results, particularly since they involved subjects born after Jim Crow and the civil rights movement. "This was actually some of the most depressing work I have done," she said. "This shook me up. You have suspicions when you do the work—intuitions—you have a hunch. But it was hard to prepare for how strong [the black-ape association] was—how we were able to pick it up every time."

The paper, "Not Yet Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization and Contemporary Consequences," is the result of a series of six previously unpublished studies conducted by Eberhardt, Pennsylvania State University psychologist Phillip Atiba Goff (the lead author and a former student of Eberhardt's) and Matthew C. Jackson and Melissa J. Williams, graduate students at Penn State and Berkeley, respectively. The paper is scheduled to appear Feb. 7 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, which is published by the American Psychological Association.

The research took place over six years at Stanford and Penn State under Eberhardt's supervision. It involved mostly white male undergraduates. In a series of studies that subliminally flashed black or white male faces on a screen for a fraction of a second to "prime" the students, researchers found subjects could identify blurry ape drawings much faster after they were primed with black faces than with white faces. The researchers consistently discovered a black-ape association even if the young adults said they knew nothing about its historical connotations. The connection was made only with African American faces; the paper's third study failed to find an ape association with other non-white groups, such as Asians. Despite such race-specific findings, the researchers stressed that dehumanization and animal imagery have been used for centuries to justify violence against many oppressed groups.

"Despite widespread opposition to racism, bias remains with us," Eberhardt said. "African Americans are still dehumanized; we're still associated with apes in this country. That association can lead people to endorse the beating of black suspects by police officers, and I think it has lots of other consequences that we have yet to uncover."
Historical background
Scientific racism in the United States was graphically promoted in a mid-19th-century book by Josiah C. Nott and George Robins Gliddon titled Types of Mankind, which used misleading illustrations to suggest that "Negroes" ranked between "Greeks" and chimpanzees. "When we have a history like that in this country, I don't know how much of that goes away completely, especially to the extent that we are still dealing with severe racial inequality, which fuels and maintains those associations in ways that people are unaware," Eberhardt said.

Although such grotesque characterizations of African Americans have largely disappeared from mainstream U.S. society, Eberhardt noted that science education could be partly responsible for reinforcing the view that blacks are less evolved than whites. An iconic 1970 illustration, "March of Progress," published in the Time-Life book Early Man, depicts evolution beginning with a chimpanzee and ending with a white man. "It's a legacy of our past that the endpoint of evolution is a white man," Eberhardt said. "I don't think it's intentional, but when people learn about human evolution, they walk away with a notion that people of African descent are closer to apes than people of European descent. When people think of a civilized person, a white man comes to mind."
Consequences of socially endorsed violence
In the paper's fifth study, the researchers subliminally primed 115 white male undergraduates with words associated with either apes (such as "monkey," "chimp," "gorilla") or big cats (such as "lion," "tiger," "panther"). The latter was used as a control because both images are associated with violence and Africa, Eberhardt said. The subjects then watched a two-minute video clip, similar to the television program COPS, depicting several police officers violently beating a man of undetermined race. A mugshot of either a white or a black man was shown at the beginning of the clip to indicate who was being beaten, with a description conveying that, although described by his family as "a loving husband and father," the suspect had a serious criminal record and may have been high on drugs at the time of his arrest.

The students were then asked to rate how justified the beating was. Participants who believed the suspect was white were no more likely to condone the beating when they were primed with either ape or big cat words, Eberhardt said. But those who thought the suspect was black were more likely to justify the beating if they had been primed with ape words than with big cat words. "Taken together, this suggests that implicit knowledge of a Black-ape association led to marked differences in participants' judgments of Black criminal suspects," the researchers write.

According to the paper's authors, this link has devastating consequences for African Americans because it "alters visual perception and attention, and it increases endorsement of violence against black suspects." For example, the paper's sixth study showed that in hundreds of news stories from 1979 to 1999 in the Philadelphia Inquirer, African Americans convicted of capital crimes were about four times more likely than whites convicted of capital crimes to be described with ape-relevant language, such as "barbaric," "beast," "brute," "savage" and "wild." "Those who are implicitly portrayed as more ape-like in these articles are more likely to be executed by the state than those who are not," the researchers write.
The way forward
Despite the paper's findings, Eberhardt said she is optimistic about the future. "This work isn't arguing that there hasn't been any progress made or that we are living in the same society that existed in the 19th century," she said. "We have made a lot of progress on race issues, but we should recognize that racial bias isn't dead. We still need to be aware of that and aware of all the different ways [racism] can affect us, despite our intentions and motivations to be egalitarian. We still have work to do."

For Eberhardt, two stories of race exist in America. "One is about the disappearance of bias—that it's no longer with us," she said. "But the other is about the transformation of bias. It's not the egregious bias anymore, but it's modern bias, subtle bias." With both of these stories, she said, there is an understanding that society has moved beyond the historic battles centered around race. "We want to argue, with this work, that there is one old race battle that we're still fighting," she said. "That is the battle for blacks to be recognized as fully human."

This research was supported by a Stanford University Dean's Award to Jennifer Eberhardt.

Editor Note:

Images can be downloaded at http://newsphotos.stanford.edu/Eberhardt.

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Discrimination against blacks linked to dehumanization, study finds

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February 7, 2008 Crude historical depictions of African Americans as ape-like may have disappeared from mainstream U.S. culture, but research presented in a new paper by psychologists at Stanford, Pennsylvania State University and the University of California-Berkeley reveals that many Americans subconsciously associate blacks with apes.

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- This particular website is all about social behavior. How viewing people as “less than human” can lead to immoral acts.
- I believe it links to our theme because if you treat someone like they are a rabid animal long enough, they may just eventually become that way.

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Association for Psychological Science - APS

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Until recently, most research on dehumanization has focused on how viewing individuals and groups of people as "less than human" can lead to immoral acts. Research in Psychological Science, however, suggests that we can also dehumanize ourselves, setting into motion a cyclical process through which performing antisocial behavior causes us to view ourselves as less human, leading in turn to further antisocial action.

"Absolving ourselves of the ability to have intentions, to make plans, to enact self-control, could affect the responsibility that we feel like we have over our immoral behavior toward others," said researcher Kyle Dobson, a doctoral student at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

There are two kinds of dehumanization, Dobson noted. Animalistic dehumanization entails viewing ourselves or others as being incapable of higher-level processes like self-control, while mechanistic dehumanization is closer to how we think about robots and other things that don't have emotions.

Dobson, in collaboration with psychology professors Maryam Kouchaki and Adam Waytz (Northwestern University), investigated the relationship between self-dehumanization and immoral behavior through a series of eight studies.

In the first study, 156 participants wrote about a time they did something ethical, unethical, or, in the control condition, about how they spend their evenings. Participants then answered a set of 10 questions about how intentional they perceived their own actions to be and how capable they perceived themselves to be with regard to experiencing emotion. Those who described a time when they did something unethical self-reported lower "human capabilities" than did those in the ethical or neutral conditions.

In a pair of follow-up studies, 441 participants showed a similar pattern of responses, both when the action was limited to lying (versus telling the truth) and when they simply read a first-person story about cheating (versus not cheating) during an exam.

Additionally, when 153 participants read a story about cheating, not cheating, or simply failing an exam, the researchers found that those in the negative experience group perceived themselves as being just as human after failing a hypothetical exam as those in the ethical behavior group. This suggests that the increase in self-dehumanization found in earlier studies was a reaction to unethical behavior, rather than a more general emotional response to a bad experience.

After establishing that unethical behavior can increase self-dehumanization, the researchers then carried out a second set of studies designed to test whether self-dehumanization may also lead to unethical behavior. Across all three studies, participants completed the writing assignment described above before deliberating over a moral choice. Those in the self-dehumanization condition were found both to cheat more when asked to self-report the results of a coin flip in exchange for cash, and to assign partners to the more difficult of two available tasks.

Finally, the researchers tested their full model of self-dehumanization on a sample of 429 students. Participants first predicted a series of seemingly random coin flips. Unbeknownst to them, the results in the neutral condition were rigged so that the participants' predictions always matched the coin flips. In the possibility-of-cheating condition, however, the results were rigged to always be inconsistent with the coin flips, followed by an erroneous message announcing that they had guessed correctly.

Participants in the cheating condition then had a choice: they could either click a box on the screen to report the "technical issue," or they could collect their ill-begotten $2 reward for an accurate prediction. Of the 293 participants in this condition, 134 chose to take the money.

After reporting their levels of self-dehumanization and completing a filler task, participants then completed an anagram test in which those in the possibility-of-cheating condition had another chance to misreport their results. As the researchers suspected, people who chose to take money they did not deserve in the first task reported higher self-dehumanization, and were more likely to cheat in the final task as well.

While effects varied in strength, a consistent pattern emerged across all eight of the studies, the authors wrote.

"Our research both elucidates a consequence of unethical behavior-self-dehumanization-and demonstrates that this self-dehumanization can facilitate future unethical behavior," they wrote.

Their findings also stand in contrast to past research suggesting that self-dehumanization resulting from socially ostracizing others may be predictive of compensatory moral behavior. One explanation for this difference, the authors offered, is that while succumbing to the temptation to lie or cheat for money represents a self-regulation failure in the moral domain, there may be no comparable temptation to ostracize others.
Reference
Kouchaki, M., Dobson, K. S., Waytz, A., & Kteily, N. S. (2018). The Link Between Self-Dehumanization and Immoral Behavior. Psychological Science, 29(8), 1234-1246. doi:10.1177/0956797618760784

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How Self-Dehumanization Spirals Into Unethical Behavior

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Until recently, most research on dehumanization has focused on how viewing individuals and groups of people as "less than human" can lead to immoral acts. Research in Psychological Science , however, suggests that we can also dehumanize ourselves, setting into motion a cyclical process through which performing antisocial behavior causes us to view ourselves as less human, leading in turn to further antisocial action.

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- This is the case with Trina Garnett. She was introduced in Stevenson’s book Just Mercy: A Story of Redemption. Her case wasn’t handled properly by her attorney.
- This is connected to our theme because she was arrested at age 14 and sentenced to an adult prison. She was sexually assaulted by an adult prison guard and got pregnant from that. It seems that in the 40+ years in prison Trina was constantly dehumanized in the way she was treated by the prison. She never got proper care from the prison at all for her emotional and mental health. The only mercy she ever got was when she was about 57 and she was released from prison in 2019, after over 40 years.

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Background

In 1977, Trina Garnett, a 14-year-old mentally disabled girl, was charged with second-degree murder after setting a fire that tragically killed two people in Chester, Pennsylvania. She was tried in adult court and sentenced to die in prison.

Trina was a homeless 14-year-old who had suffered severe abuse, trauma, and mental illness. As a young child she was disfigured and scarred after being severely burned. She had a low IQ, suffered from speech impediments and other learning disabilities, and lived a life marred by chaos, extreme abuse, and poverty.

Her mother died when Trina was just nine years old. She was left living on the streets, where she had to forage for food in garbage cans, was victimized by older teens and adults, and was denied medical attention for emotional and mental health problems in the period prior to her arrest.

Reviewing courts found Trina's mental impairments meant she was incapable of forming an intent to kill. Despite these findings, she was tried in adult court and convicted of second-degree murder during the course of an arson and burglary.

Her trial judge had no choice but to impose a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without parole, although he remarked "[i]t is a deplorable situation that the state does not provide facilities where young people such as Ms. Garnett can receive help while learning in a secure environment."

Trina was sent to an adult prison at age 15. Shortly after she arrived there, she was raped by a male prison guard and became pregnant. She gave birth to a son, who was immediately taken from her.

For more than 30 years, Trina has been denied treatment and care appropriate for someone with her disabilities because of her death-in-prison sentence. She is now physically disabled due to multiple sclerosis and uses a wheelchair.

EJI's Work

EJI took on Trina's case as part of its work challenging life-without-parole sentences imposed on young teens. EJI attorneys filed a post-conviction petition challenging Trina's sentence in 2008.

Ms. Garnett was resentenced in February 2018, after EJI won a landmark ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court in 2012 barring mandatory life-without-parole sentences for children. She was released in November 2019.

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In 1977, Trina Garnett, a 14-year-old mentally disabled girl, was charged with second-degree murder after setting a fire that tragically killed two people in Chester, Pennsylvania. She was tried in adult court and sentenced to die in prison. Trina was a homeless 14-year-old who had suffered severe abuse, trauma, and mental illness.

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- This website shows how modern media might affect our way of thinking towards certain people. The media often dehumanize certain aspects of human life, such as the criminal justice system.
- This shows the widespread descriptions of those impacted by the criminal justice system. With popular modern media dehumanizing some in the criminal justice system it goes to say that this would affect the public attitude towards those who have been incarcerated.

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Widespread pejorative labels and depictions of individuals impacted by the criminal justice system—in real-life and the media—dehumanize incarcerated populations. This dehumanization contributes...

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I thought that  Bryan Stevenson’s book Just Mercy: A Story of Redemption was a decent read. It was definitely different from other books I have read. My favorite part was when Walter McMillian was finally a free man.

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Though the book was a bit upsetting at times, it opened my eyes to how cruel and unfair the justice system can really be. My favorite part of Just Mercy was reading through all the various cases because you are able to see just how different everyone's struggles can be.

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My favorite part was when Walter's family was introduced because it showed how much they cared for him and how devastated they were without him.