Priming effects of violence on infrahumanization

Two experiments examine whether exposure to generic violence can display infrahumanization towards out-groups. In Study 1, participants had to solve a lexical decision task after viewing animal or human violent scenes. In Study 2, participants were exposed to either human violent or human suffering pictures before doing a lexical decision task. In both studies, the infrahumanization bias appeared after viewing the human violent pictures but not in the other experimental conditions. These two experiments support the idea of contextual dependency of infrahumanization, and suggest that violence can prime an infrahuman perception of the out-group. Theoretical implications for infrahumanization and potential underlying mechanisms are discussed

When a robot’s group membership matters: Anthropomorphization of robots as a function of social categorization

Kuchenbrandt D, Eyssel FA, Bobinger S, Neufeld M. When a robot’s group membership matters: Anthropomorphization of robots as a function of social categorization. International Journal of Social Robotics. 2013;5(3):409-417

Immigrants and Refugees: From Social Disaffection to Perceived Threat

Immigrants and refugees are today represented as a threat by a significant number of Europeans and constitute a topic that divides Governments and is at the centre of the agenda of new European extreme right-wing. This chapter presents a new approach and innovative hypotheses about the factors underlying the representation of immigrants and refugees as a threat, and their role in legitimizing discrimination, social inequalities and the development of anti-immigrant and anti-refugee public policies. Our approach is based on the hypothesis that immigrants and refugees are perceived as a threat to individual and collective life projects, particularly by those experiencing a sense of social disaffection (i.e., a generalized feeling that conjointly expresses dissatisfaction with life, perception of lack of control over life and distrust of the social system’s nuclear institutions). Using new data from the European Social Survey, we propose an analytical model specifying the correlates of threat perceptions and the mediating role of threat on the relationship between social disaffection and opposition to immigration and refugees in Europe. Results have shown that the sense of threat is related to right-wing political positioning, exclusive national identity, anti-universalistic values and, more importantly, with the sense of social disaffection. Significantly, threat perceptions play a legitimating role in the relationship between social disaffection and opposition to immigration and to hosting refugees. We further discuss the theoretical and socio-political implications of our approach to the study of threat in the context of contemporary social dynamics.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Toward a unified theory of objectification and dehumanization

Objectification and dehumanization represent motivational conundrums because they are phenomena in which people are seen in ways that are fundamentally inaccurate; seeing people as objects, as animals, or not as people. The purpose of the 60th Nebraska Symposium on Motivation was to examine the motivational underpinnings of objectification and dehumanization of the self and others. To provide an overall context for this volume, we first provide classic conceptualizations of objectification and dehumanization and speculate about relations between the two. We then introduce a unified theory of objectification and dehumanization within the global versus local processing model (GLOMO) and provide initial supporting evidence. Finally, we introduce the chapters in this volume, which provide additional significant and novel motivational perspectives on objectification and dehumanization. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York.SCOPUS: cp.kinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedObjectifiation and Dehumanization / Gervais, Sarah - ISBN 978-1-4614-6959-