Learning one’s group harmed another group increases dehumanization of the victims

Evidence

In line with the hypothesis that out-groups are infrahumanized, in the low-impact condition, the attribution to the Aborigines of the capability to experience a specific emotion was lower for uniquely human emotions than for emotions shared with animals. But this tendency was magnified in the high-impact condition. In other words, compared to participants in the low-impact condition, those participants who learned that the British colonizers decimated the Aborigines were more inclined to see them as not quite human (Castano & Giner-Sorolla, 2006, Study 2). Two studies yielded further evidence in support of our hypothesis. One study was a conceptual replication, in which white Americans learned about the effects of the arrival of the white man in North America on the Native American population.* In this case, we observed an enhanced infra-humanization of Native Americans among those participants who had been confronted with a narrative that stressed the quasi-extermination of the Native Americans by the white newcomers (Castano & Giner-Sorolla, 2006, Study 3). Another study tested this hypothesis in the context of an alleged science fiction movie, in which the in-group was humans and the out-group aliens. In this case too, in-group responsibility for the death of a large number of aliens (as manipulated, or as subjectively perceived by the participants) led to greater infra-humanization of the aliens (Castano & Giner-Sorolla, 2006, Study 1). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2108

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• QUESTION: This is powerfully counterintuitive: acknowledging responsibility should reduce hostility, yet here acknowledging harm increases dehumanization. Worth exploring the defensive-psychology mechanism more deeply.
• XREF: Connects to moral disengagement and in-group/out-group dynamics, and relates to the psychological mechanisms behind genocidal histories and historical-atrocity narratives.
• CANDY: A striking, quotable finding: confronting the group’s past atrocities makes people see victims as less human — great conversation piece.

Related

• Acknowledging in-group responsibility for past atrocities increases infrahumanization of the victim group (similarity 0.92)
• Learning of one’s ingroup’s historical harm triggers outgroup dehumanization responses (similarity 0.87)
• Glorifying one’s own group drives dehumanization of victims and lowered justice demands. (similarity 0.79)
• In-group perpetrated misdeeds ironically heighten victim dehumanization (similarity 0.78)