Shedding Psychological Light on the Racial Disparities in School Disciplinary Measures: The Role of Dehumanization as a Potential Mechanism

Schools should be safe and supportive spaces for all students, yet Black students tend to face biased treatment in the education system, which often results in harsh disciplinary measures. This research examined the role of animalistic dehumanization (i.e., perceiving others as animal- like and uncultured and denying uniquely human characteristics), in predicting choice of harsher disciplinary measures for Black students as opposed to White students. It was hypothesized that individuals who dehumanize Black students to a greater degree would be more likely to believe that Black students need to be disciplined through harsher measures. Both Study 1 (in which dehumanization was assessed) and Study 2 (in which dehumanization was experimentally manipulated) failed to provide evidence supporting the role of dehumanization in differential choices of school disciplinary measures for Black vs. White students. However, both studies provided evidence suggesting that dehumanization of, and negative attitudes toward, Black Americans are still prevalent and related in American society, and that animal learning perceptions and paradigms influence participant perceptions of threat from students and disciplinary decisions. These findings indicate a need for continued investigation of racial stereotypes about students when assessing racial disparities in school discipline.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/gradposters/1062/thumbnail.jp

The Significance of Dehumanization: Nazi Ideology and its Psychological Consequences

Several authors have recently questioned whether dehumanization is a psychological prerequisite of mass violence. This paper argues that the significance of dehumanization in the context of National Socialism can be understood only if its ideological dimension is taken into account. The author concentrates on Alfred Rosenberg’s racist doctrine and shows that Nazi ideology can be read as a political anthropology that grounds both the belief in the German privilege and the dehumanization of the Jews. This anthropological framework combines biological, cultural and metaphysical aspects. Therefore, it cannot be reduced to biologism. This new reading of Nazi ideology supports three general conclusions: First, the author reveals a complex strategy of dehumanization which is not considered in the current psychological debate. Second, the analysis of the ideological mechanism suggests a model of dehumanization that is more plausible than other psychological models. Third, the author provides evidence that this kind of dehumanization had psychological consequences and hence was an important feature of Nazi reality

How Palestinian students invoke the category ‘human’ to challenge negative treatment and media representations

Dehumanization of opponents in conflict has been shown to be a common and damaging feature in the media. What is not understood is how this dehumanization is challenged which is the novel contribution that this research will make. Drawing on focus groups (four focus groups each with four-six participants) conducted in the West Bank in 2015 that discussed media coverage of international conflict, this article demonstrates the ways in which young Palestinian participants attempt to rehumanize themselves in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Discursive analysis demonstrates how this was achieved in a number of ways: categorizing Palestinians as ‘human being’; by directly and explicitly challenging the suggestion that Palestinians are less than human; by drawing the enemy into the category ‘human’; and by embodying the ‘human’. These findings, the first to address the talk of young Palestinians about the reporting of violent conflicts around the world, demonstrate the importance of categorization and how, in this case, the specifics of the use of the (human) category work to rehumanize Palestinians in the face of (claims of) dehumanization

Dehumanization, Disability, and Eugenics

This paper explores the relationship between eugenics, disability, and dehumanization, with a focus on forms of eugenics beyond Nazi eugenics

The politics of human nature

Human nature is a concept that transgresses the boundary between science and society and between fact and value. It is as much a political concept as it is a scientific one. This chapter will cover the politics of human nature by using evidence from history, anthropology and social psychology. The aim is to show that an important political function of the vernacular concept of human nature is social demarcation (inclusion/exclusion): it is involved in regulating who is ‘us’ and who is ‘them.’ It is a folk concept that is used for dehumanization, for denying (a) membership in humankind or (b) full humanness to certain people in order to include or exclude them from various forms of politically relevant aspects of human life, such as rights, power, etc

Dehumanization: its Operations and its Origins

Gail Murrow and Richard Murrow offer a novel account of dehumanization, by synthesizing data which suggest that where subject S has a dehumanized view of group G, S‘s neural mechanisms of empathy show a dampened response to the suffering of members of G, and S‘s judgments about the humanity of members of G are largely non-conscious. Here I examine Murrow and Murrow‘s suggestions about how identity-based hate speech bears responsibility for dehumanization in the first place. I identify a distinction between (i) accounts of the nature of the harm effected by identity prejudice, and (ii) accounts of how hate speech contributes to the harms of identity prejudice. I then explain why Murrow and Murrow‘s proposal is more aptly construed as an account of type (i), and explain why accounts of this type, even if they‘re plausible and evidentially well-supported, have limited implications in relation to justifications for anti-hate speech law

A Needs-Based Partial Theory of Human Injustice: Oppression, Dehumanization, Exploitation, and Systematic Inequality in Opportunities to Address Human Needs

The article presents an original needs-based partial theory of human injustice and shows its relationship to existing theories of human need and human liberation. The theory is based on an original typology of three social structural sources of human injustice, a partial theorization of the mechanisms of human injustice, and a needs-based theorization of the nature of human injustice, as experienced by individuals. The article makes a sociological contribution to normative social theory by clarifying the relationship of human injustice to human needs, human rights, and human liberation. The theory contends that human injustice is produced when oppression, mechanistic dehumanization, and exploitation create systematic inequality in opportunities to address human needs, leading to wrongful need deprivation and the resulting serious harm. In one longer sentence, this needs-based partial theory of the sources, mechanisms, and nature of human injustice contends that three distinct social systemic sources—oppression, mechanistic dehumanization, and exploitation—produce unique and/or overlapping social mechanisms, which create systematic inequality in opportunities to address universal human needs in culturally specific ways, thus producing the nature of the human injustice theorized here: wrongfully unmet needs and serious harm

The moment of microaggression: The experience of acts of oppression, dehumanization and exploitation

After a brief introduction and review of recent literature on microaggressions, a theoretical typology of three sources of social injustice (oppression, dehumanization, and exploitation) contributes to the theorization of the sources of microaggressions. A selected compendium of words and affective phrases generated in classroom exercises illustrates the nature of the experience of the moment of microaggression. Future research on microaggressions as well as evaluation of practice should examine the experience of microaggression, including being subjected to microaggression, initiating such acts, and observing such acts

Discursive and Processual Socialization of the Mass into Acts of Violence: the Case of Rwandan Genocide

This article analyses discursive and processual socialization of the masses into acts of violence during the Rwandan genocide of 1 994. The discursive aspects of the socialization include discourses of dehumanization, ethnic extremism and the dynamics of public socialization into violence and other acts of savagery. The processual dimension of the socialization refers to the violentization process. The article tries to show that the discursive and the processual aspects of socialization reinforced each other. It analyses the ideological and linguistic mechanisms mobilized in Rwanda to foment hatred and whip the masses into atrocities. The article, in addition, tries to explain the genocide through diverse social psychological theories and illustrate the interaction between the leaders\u27 political agitation of the masses towards extermination and the perpetrators\u27 action on the ground. The article argues that no single theory can fully explain the incomprehensible genocide since it was the result of a complex intermarriage between social, ideological and moral forces. It also examines the role of cultural and linguistic resources in the violentization process. On the basis of the analysis, the article recommends what should be done to prevent similar atrocities in Africa