Dehumanization

Abstract

Dehumanization is a form of social behavior: the perception or treatment of a person or group as lacking the qualities that define full humanity. This article treats it as a problem in social cognition—which human qualities get withheld, from whom, how subtly, and with what consequences. It develops the main threads: the dual model, distinguishing animalistic dehumanization (denying uniquely human refinement) from mechanistic (denying emotional human nature); infrahumanization, the selective denial of uniquely human emotions to out-groups; the mind-perception account, on which dehumanization withholds agency or experience; the neuroscience of extreme out-groups that fail to engage ordinary social cognition; blatant dehumanization, measured by the overt “Ascent of Man,” and its real-world consequences; and moral disengagement, by which dehumanizing a target licenses harm against it. A worked example and three interactive demonstrations make each manipulable.

Keywords: dehumanization, social behavior, infrahumanization, mind perception, dual model

Few judgments are as consequential as the implicit decision that another person is not quite, or not fully, human. It has preceded the gravest atrocities, but it is not confined to them: subtler forms operate in ordinary intergroup life, in medicine, in the workplace, and in the way distant strangers are imagined. The scientific question is what exactly is being withheld when one person dehumanizes another—which human qualities, along which dimensions—and how that withholding shapes emotion, moral concern, and action.

What cognitive and social science contributes is a move from treating dehumanization as a single rhetorical act to mapping it as a structured perception with measurable dimensions. The same machinery that lets people read minds, attribute emotions, and sort the social world into groups can be run in reverse, granting a target less mind, fewer uniquely human feelings, or a lower place on an imagined scale of humanity. The sections below take these in turn—the dual model, infrahumanization, mind perception and its neural signature, blatant dehumanization and its consequences, and moral disengagement—after first placing dehumanization within the broader category of social behavior under which it is classified.

What Dehumanization Is

Dehumanization, in the sense the behavioural sciences study it, is the perception or treatment of a person or group as lacking in the qualities that define full human beings. Two features fix the concept. The first is that it is fundamentally relational and perceptual: dehumanization is something one party does in how it construes or treats another, not a property the target possesses, so the same person can be fully humanized by one perceiver and dehumanized by another. The second is that it is graded and multiform: it ranges from the overt denial of humanity that accompanies atrocity to subtle, everyday withholdings of uniquely human attributes, and—as the dual model makes central—it can proceed along more than one dimension, likening a target to animals in one case and to objects or automata in another.

Because dehumanization is defined by what is withheld rather than by a single behavior, the field's central task has been to specify the dimensions of humanness along which it operates and to build measures for each. Some are implicit, inferred from the emotions or traits people attribute without being asked directly; others are blatant, elicited by asking people outright how evolved or human a group is (Haslam, 2006; Kteily et al., 2015). The sections below follow that structure: first the two senses of humanness at the core of the dual model, then the selective denial of human emotions, then dehumanization as a withholding of mind and its neural signature, then its blatant form and consequences, and finally the moral disengagement it licenses.

In the Medical Subject Headings vocabulary, Dehumanization (D032981) is a descriptor defined as the process by which a person or group comes to be regarded or treated as lacking in human qualities, filed under Social Behavior (D012919). The placement is apt: dehumanization is social through and through, constituted by how one party regards or treats another. The remainder of this article takes its mechanisms and measures in turn, connecting each to the social cognition it requires.

Types of Dehumanization

In the Medical Subject Headings vocabulary, Dehumanization (D032981) is filed as a narrower descriptor of social behavior (D012919), and MeSH records one narrower descriptor beneath it. MeSH is an indexing classification built for retrieving the biomedical literature, not a theory of how dehumanization is organised; its hierarchy reflects historical indexing practice rather than the psychological distinctions the experimental literature draws—above all the dual model's split between animalistic and mechanistic dehumanization—and the two ways of carving the domain are orthogonal and should not be conflated.

This descriptor does not yet have its own article on this site, so the term is listed here but not linked. Its placement under Dehumanization encodes a substantive point: treating people, their body parts, or their labour as fungible goods with a price is a recognised route to regarding them as less than fully human, overlapping with the mechanistic, object-like pole of the dual model developed below. The psychological taxonomy and the MeSH tree answer different questions—one asks how dehumanized perception is structured, the other how the literature is indexed—so a reader should treat this table as a cross-reference, not as the field's own account of the kinds of dehumanization.

Perspectives on Dehumanization

The science of dehumanization is organised less by one grand theory than by a set of perspectives, each tied to a distinct question. The first asks which human qualities are withheld and answers with the dual model's two senses of humanness. A second asks how dehumanization hides in ordinary emotion attribution and answers with infrahumanization. A third asks what, cognitively, is being denied and answers with mind perception—an account the brain's response to extreme out-groups makes vivid. A fourth asks how overt dehumanization can be, and what it predicts, and answers with blatant measures and their consequences. A fifth asks how dehumanization enables harm and answers with moral disengagement. These perspectives are complementary rather than rival: a single out-group may be infrahumanized in subtle emotion attributions, placed lower on an explicit scale of humanity, and—once so regarded—excluded from the moral protections that would otherwise restrain cruelty. Table 1 summarises them, and the sections that follow develop each in turn.

Table 1

Perspectives on Dehumanization

The dual model: two ways of being less than human

The organising insight of the modern field is that dehumanization is not one thing but two. In an integrative review that gave the area its current shape, Nick Haslam argued that people conceive of humanness in two distinct ways, and that each can be denied independently (Haslam, 2006). The first sense is human uniqueness: the traits that separate people from animals—refinement, civility, moral sensibility, rationality, and maturity. Deny these and the target is rendered animalistic, seen as coarse, amoral, unintelligent, and driven by appetite. The second sense is human nature: the traits at the core of what it is to be a person—emotional responsiveness, warmth, vitality, agency, and depth. Deny these and the target is rendered mechanistic, seen as cold, rigid, inert, and interchangeable, like an automaton or object.

The two forms are orthogonal, not two ends of one scale, and they come with different contents, different eliciting conditions, and different likely contexts—animalistic dehumanization with contempt and disgust toward ethnic or other groups, mechanistic dehumanization with the detachment of medicine, bureaucracy, and technology (Haslam & Loughnan, 2014). Crucially, dehumanization on this account is not reserved for atrocity. Brock Bastian and Haslam showed that being on the receiving end of everyday slights—being ignored, treated as a means, or denied individuality—produces a felt sense of being dehumanized, with cognitive and emotional costs, establishing that subtle dehumanization is an ordinary feature of social life (Bastian & Haslam, 2011). Demo 1 lets the reader withhold each sense of humanness in turn and see which form of dehumanization results.

Infrahumanization: the emotions reserved for us

Before the dual model was formalised, Jacques-Philippe Leyens and colleagues had identified a subtler phenomenon that needs no overt denial of humanity at all. Their work drew a line between primary emotions—those humans share with animals, such as fear, pleasure, and anger—and secondary emotions, the uniquely human sentiments such as remorse, nostalgia, hope, and admiration. People, they found, readily attribute both kinds of emotion to their in-group but reserve the secondary, uniquely human emotions for it, granting out-groups the animal emotions while withholding the human ones (Leyens et al., 2000). They named this infrahumanization: not the belief that an out-group is subhuman, but the quiet tendency to see it as possessing less of the human essence, carried entirely by which emotions one is willing to ascribe.

Infrahumanization is important precisely because it is ordinary and implicit. It appears between groups with no history of conflict, requires no animus, and operates below the threshold of overt prejudice, which makes it a baseline tendency of intergroup perception rather than a mark of extremism (Haslam & Loughnan, 2014). It also has consequences for behavior that track the emotions withheld: denying an out-group uniquely human emotions is associated with less empathy for its suffering and a weaker impulse to help. The lesson that carries into the rest of the field is that dehumanization can be measured without ever asking whether a group is human—the answer is already encoded in the emotions people are prepared to grant it.

Mind perception and the brain's response to extreme out-groups

A complementary account locates dehumanization in the machinery of mind perception. Surveying how people attribute mental life, Heather Gray, Kurt Gray, and Daniel Wegner found that perceived mind is organised along two dimensions: agency—the capacity for planning, self-control, and thought—and experience—the capacity for feeling, such as hunger, fear, pain, and pleasure (Gray, Gray & Wegner, 2007). Dehumanization, in this frame, is the withholding of one or both dimensions: to deny a target experience is to treat it as an unfeeling instrument, the mechanistic pole; to deny it agency is to treat it as a creature of appetite without higher control, the animalistic pole. The two dimensions of mind map naturally onto the two senses of humanness, giving the dual model a cognitive substrate. Demo 2 lets the reader set a target's agency and experience and locate it in the resulting mind-perception space.

That the withholding of mind is more than a figure of speech is shown by its neural signature. Lasana Harris and Susan Fiske had people view images of members of social groups while scanning their brains, and found that the most extreme out-groups—those rated, in the Stereotype Content Model, as both low in warmth and low in competence, such as homeless people and drug addicts—failed to engage the medial prefrontal cortex that ordinarily activates when one person considers another's mind (Harris & Fiske, 2006). Instead these targets elicited the response associated with disgust. The brain, in other words, can register certain people less as persons with minds than as objects of revulsion. A further twist is that dehumanization is not only something done to the despised: Adam Waytz and Nicholas Epley found that feeling socially connected can itself reduce the attribution of mind to distant others, so that the very warmth of close relationships can leave outsiders seeming more mindless (Waytz & Epley, 2012).

Blatant dehumanization and its consequences

Much of the modern literature studies dehumanization indirectly, through attributed traits and emotions, on the assumption that people will rarely admit to seeing others as less than human. Nour Kteily and colleagues challenged that assumption by measuring dehumanization blatantly—showing participants the familiar “Ascent of Man” diagram, from a stooped ape to an upright human, and asking them to rate on a 0–100 slider how evolved various groups are. People were strikingly willing to place out-groups measurably below their own group, and these overt ratings behaved as a distinct, reliable measure rather than an artefact (Kteily et al., 2015). Blatant dehumanization predicted hostility—support for aggressive counterterrorism, for harsh immigration measures, and for retribution—and did so over and above standard prejudice and subtle dehumanization, capturing variance those measures missed. Demo 3 lets the reader set the Ascent ratings of an in-group and an out-group and read off the blatant-dehumanization gap and its modeled association with support for hostile action.

The consequences extend into the dynamics of conflict. Kteily and Emile Bruneau found that members of groups who feel dehumanized by another group reciprocate—dehumanizing in return and supporting aggressive and defiant responses—so that blatant dehumanization sets up a self-reinforcing cycle of mutual contempt and hostility between communities (Kteily & Bruneau, 2017). The target of blatant dehumanization is a measurable tool for prediction: Daniel Markowitz and Paul Slovic presented participants with vignettes about immigrants and found that dehumanizing attitudes predicted punitive responses, and that certain framings made dehumanized judgments and the harsh treatment they justify more likely (Markowitz & Slovic, 2020). Across these studies, the overt measure earns its place: people are more willing to deny others' humanity than a focus on implicit bias alone would suggest, and that willingness forecasts how they want those others treated.

Moral disengagement: dehumanization as a lever for harm

Why does it matter so much whether a target is seen as fully human? The connecting mechanism is moral. Albert Bandura's account of moral disengagement describes the psychological manoeuvres by which people commit harmful acts without the self-censure that ordinarily restrains them, and dehumanization is among the most powerful of them (Bandura, 1999). Moral standards operate within a perceived community of beings owed consideration; stripping a target of human qualities removes it from that community, so that treatment which would be unthinkable toward a person becomes permissible toward a thing or a beast. Dehumanization thus functions as a license: it does not merely express contempt but disables the inhibitions that would otherwise block cruelty.

This places dehumanization at the hinge between perception and action. The dual model, infrahumanization, and mind perception describe how humanness is withheld; moral disengagement describes what that withholding unlocks. It also explains why dehumanization recurs at the edge of violence—in propaganda that likens a people to vermin or disease, in the euphemisms of bureaucratic killing, in the detachment that lets ordinary people participate in atrocity. Each is a route by which the moral weight of a human target is lifted, and once it is lifted, harm follows more easily. The constructive corollary, taken up in the Discussion, is that rehumanization—restoring the withheld qualities—is a corresponding lever for reducing hostility.

Worked Example

The mechanisms become concrete in three small exercises, each matching one of the demonstrations. The indices below are illustrative—they capture the qualitative shape of published findings rather than reproducing any single reported statistic.

The dual model (two independent deficits). Score how fully a target is granted each sense of humanness on a 0–10 scale: Human Uniqueness (refinement, moral sensibility, rationality, maturity) and Human Nature (emotional warmth, vitality, agency, depth). Take an in-group granted both fully: uniqueness 9, nature 9. A target seen as animalistic is granted uniqueness 3 but nature 8; relative to the in-group that is a uniqueness deficit of 9 − 3 = 6 but a nature deficit of only 9 − 8 = 1. A target seen as mechanistic is granted uniqueness 8 but nature 3; now the uniqueness deficit is 9 − 8 = 1 while the nature deficit is 9 − 3 = 6—the mirror image. The two profiles share no deficit in common, which is the dual model's point: dehumanization runs along two orthogonal axes, and knowing a target is dehumanized says nothing, by itself, about which kind. Demo 1 lets the reader set both scores and read off the form that results.

Mind perception (ranking by withheld mind). Represent perceived mind as agency and experience, each scored 0–10, and sum them for a 0–20 index of attributed mind. A fully humanized person scores agency 8, experience 8, for a total of 16. Mechanistic dehumanization strips experience—agency 8, experience 2, total 10; animalistic dehumanization strips agency—agency 2, experience 8, total 10. The extreme out-groups in the neuroimaging work, low on both, score agency 2, experience 2, total 4. The index orders them 16 > 10 > 4, and the gap between a single-dimension denial (10) and a double denial (4) marks the distance between ordinary dehumanization and the “lowest of the low.” Demo 2 lets the reader move both dimensions and watch the attributed-mind total change.

Blatant dehumanization (the Ascent gap). On the 0–100 Ascent of Man slider, suppose people rate their own group at 90. They rate a first out-group at 85 and a second at 60. The blatant-dehumanization score is the gap from the in-group: 90 − 85 = 5 for the first, 90 − 60 = 30 for the second. If support for a hostile policy rises illustratively by 0.4 scale points for every 10 points of gap, the first out-group draws (5 ÷ 10) × 0.4 = 0.2 extra points of support and the second (30 ÷ 10) × 0.4 = 1.2—six times as much. The point is not the particular slope but that an overt, one-number measure tracks how people want an out-group treated. Demo 3 lets the reader set both ratings and the slope and read off the predicted hostility.

Discussion

Read across its perspectives, the science of dehumanization describes a structured perception rather than a single slur. Humanness is granted along more than one dimension—uniquely human refinement and core human nature (Haslam, 2006)—and either can be withheld, producing animalistic or mechanistic dehumanization with distinct contents and contexts (Haslam & Loughnan, 2014). The withholding can be as subtle as which emotions one is willing to attribute (Leyens et al., 2000) or as cognitively basic as how much mind one grants (Gray, Gray & Wegner, 2007), and in its extreme form it leaves a trace in the brain's failure to engage ordinary social cognition (Harris & Fiske, 2006). It can also be measured head-on, and when it is, people prove more willing to deny others' humanity than an exclusive focus on implicit bias would predict—a willingness that forecasts hostility and aggressive policy (Kteily et al., 2015).

The constructive implications follow from taking those mechanisms seriously. Because dehumanization operates by withholding specific qualities, it is in principle reversible by restoring them: interventions that re-individuate a target, elicit its uniquely human emotions, or raise its place on an imagined scale of humanity are candidate routes to rehumanization. Because blatant dehumanization is reciprocal, breaking the cycle of mutual contempt is itself a target for intervention (Kteily & Bruneau, 2017). And because dehumanization's gravest function is to license harm by disabling moral restraint (Bandura, 1999), the stakes of these measures are not academic: the same perception that a worked example renders as a gap on a slider is, scaled up and acted on, a precondition of cruelty. The honest summary is that dehumanization is now well mapped as a perception and increasingly well measured, while the engineering of durable rehumanization remains the harder, less settled task.

Current Directions

The most active front is the study of blatant dehumanization as a measurable, consequential variable in real intergroup conflict. Building on the Ascent of Man measure, recent work traces how overt dehumanization predicts support for hostile policy, how it is reciprocated between communities to sustain cycles of conflict, and how it might be reduced (Kteily & Bruneau, 2017). A second front applies these tools to specific policy domains, immigration above all, asking which framings and demographic factors make dehumanizing judgments—and the punitive treatment they justify—more likely, and treating dehumanization as a lever that communication can pull in either direction (Markowitz & Slovic, 2020). A third, more conceptual front presses on the construct itself: whether “dehumanization” names one phenomenon or several, how its blatant and subtle forms relate, and how it is best distinguished from ordinary dislike—questions a stock-taking review framed as the field's open agenda (Haslam & Stratemeyer, 2016). The common thread is a move from cataloguing the forms of dehumanization to predicting and changing it where it does its real-world damage.

Common Misconceptions

Dehumanization means seeing others as animals.

That is only one of its forms. The dual model distinguishes animalistic dehumanization, which denies uniquely human refinement, from mechanistic dehumanization, which denies core human nature and likens the target to a cold object or automaton. The two are independent, with different contents and contexts (Haslam, 2006; Haslam & Loughnan, 2014).

Dehumanization happens only in genocide and atrocity.

Its extreme forms do, but subtle dehumanization is an ordinary feature of social life. People infrahumanize out-groups they bear no animus toward, and everyday slights produce a felt sense of being dehumanized with real cognitive and emotional costs (Leyens et al., 2000; Bastian & Haslam, 2011).

Dehumanization is just a strong form of prejudice.

It is distinct. Blatant dehumanization, measured overtly, predicts hostility and support for aggressive policy over and above standard prejudice, capturing variance those measures miss (Kteily et al., 2015).

People would never admit to seeing others as less than human.

Many will, when asked directly. On the Ascent of Man measure people readily place out-groups below their own group on an explicit scale of how “evolved” they are, and these overt ratings are reliable predictors of behavior (Kteily et al., 2015).

Glossary

Agency (mind perception).

One of the two dimensions of perceived mind: the capacity for planning, self-control, intention, and thought. Denying a target agency is a route to animalistic dehumanization.

Animalistic dehumanization.

Denying a target the uniquely human traits—refinement, moral sensibility, rationality, maturity—so that it is seen as coarse, amoral, and driven by appetite, like an animal.

Ascent of Man measure.

A blatant dehumanization scale in which respondents rate how “evolved” different groups are on a 0–100 slider depicting the progression from ape to upright human.

Blatant dehumanization.

Overt, explicitly measured denial of a group's full humanity, which predicts hostility and aggressive policy over and above subtle dehumanization and standard prejudice.

Dehumanization.

The perception or treatment of a person or group as lacking the qualities that define full human beings; in MeSH, a form of social behavior.

Experience (mind perception).

One of the two dimensions of perceived mind: the capacity for sensation and feeling, such as hunger, fear, pain, and pleasure. Denying experience is a route to mechanistic dehumanization.

Human nature.

In the dual model, the sense of humanness consisting of traits central to being a person—emotional responsiveness, warmth, vitality, agency, depth—whose denial produces mechanistic dehumanization.

Human uniqueness.

In the dual model, the sense of humanness consisting of traits that separate people from animals—refinement, civility, moral sensibility, rationality, maturity—whose denial produces animalistic dehumanization.

Infrahumanization.

The tendency to grant out-groups the primary emotions humans share with animals while reserving the secondary, uniquely human emotions for the in-group; a subtle, often implicit form of dehumanization.

Mechanistic dehumanization.

Denying a target the traits of human nature—warmth, emotionality, vitality—so that it is seen as cold, rigid, inert, and interchangeable, like an object or automaton.

Mind perception.

The attribution of mental life to others, organised along two dimensions—agency and experience. Dehumanization can be described as the withholding of one or both.

Moral disengagement.

The psychological manoeuvres, dehumanization among them, by which people commit harmful acts without the self-censure that normally restrains them, by placing the target outside the scope of moral concern.

Primary emotions.

Emotions humans share with other animals, such as fear, pleasure, and anger. In infrahumanization these are granted to out-groups and in-groups alike.

Secondary emotions.

Uniquely human sentiments, such as remorse, nostalgia, hope, and admiration. In infrahumanization these are reserved for the in-group and withheld from out-groups.

Stereotype Content Model.

A framework classifying group stereotypes along warmth and competence; groups rated low on both can elicit disgust and the neural signature of extreme dehumanization.

Key Researchers

Emile Bruneau

(1972–2020; University of Pennsylvania). Social neuroscientist whose research on blatant dehumanization, intergroup empathy, and the reciprocal dynamics of conflict linked the measurement of dehumanization to the real-world conditions of hostility and peacebuilding. Google Scholar · Lab page

Susan T. Fiske

(Princeton University). Social psychologist whose Stereotype Content Model and neuroimaging work with Lasana Harris showed that groups rated low on warmth and competence can fail to engage the brain's ordinary social cognition. ORCID · Wikipedia

Lasana T. Harris

(University College London). Social neuroscientist whose neuroimaging demonstration that extreme out-groups fail to engage the medial prefrontal cortex provided direct evidence that dehumanized perception has a neural signature. ORCID · Faculty page

Nick Haslam

(University of Melbourne). Social psychologist whose integrative review and dual model—distinguishing animalistic from mechanistic dehumanization—organised the modern field and established that subtle, everyday dehumanization is widespread. Google Scholar · Faculty page

Nour Kteily

(Northwestern University). Social psychologist whose “Ascent of Man” measure of blatant dehumanization showed that people will overtly deny out-groups' humanity, and that doing so predicts hostility and reciprocal conflict. ORCID · Google Scholar · Faculty page

Jacques-Philippe Leyens

(1942–2017; Université catholique de Louvain). Social psychologist who originated infrahumanization theory, showing that out-groups are granted the emotions humans share with animals while being denied the uniquely human ones. Wikidata

Steve Loughnan

(University of Edinburgh). Social psychologist whose work on dehumanization, infrahumanization, and objectification, often with Nick Haslam, helped consolidate the modern account and its measurement. ORCID · Google Scholar · Faculty page

Adam Waytz

(Northwestern University). Psychologist whose research on mind perception showed, among other findings, the paradox that social connection can reduce the attribution of mind to distant others, enabling their dehumanization. Google Scholar · Faculty page

Frequently Asked Questions

What is dehumanization?

Dehumanization is the perception or treatment of a person or group as lacking the qualities that define full human beings. It is relational and perceptual—something one party does in how it regards or treats another—and it ranges from the overt denial of humanity that accompanies atrocity to subtle, everyday withholdings of uniquely human attributes.

What are the two types of dehumanization?

The dual model distinguishes animalistic dehumanization, which denies a target the uniquely human traits of refinement, morality, and rationality so that it seems coarse and animal-like, from mechanistic dehumanization, which denies the traits of human nature—warmth, emotionality, vitality—so that it seems cold and object-like. The two are independent, with different contents and typical contexts.

What is infrahumanization?

Infrahumanization is a subtle form of dehumanization in which people grant out-groups the primary emotions humans share with animals—fear, pleasure, anger—while reserving the secondary, uniquely human emotions—remorse, nostalgia, hope—for their own group. It appears even between groups with no history of conflict and often operates below the threshold of overt prejudice.

What is blatant dehumanization and the Ascent of Man measure?

Blatant dehumanization is the overt, directly measured denial of a group's humanity. The Ascent of Man measure captures it by showing the familiar ape-to-human diagram and asking people to rate on a 0–100 slider how “evolved” various groups are. People readily place out-groups below their own group, and these ratings predict hostility and support for aggressive policy.

Is dehumanization the same as prejudice?

No. Although related, blatant dehumanization predicts hostility and support for aggressive policy over and above standard measures of prejudice, capturing variance those measures miss. Dehumanization concerns whether a target is granted full humanity, which is distinct from simply disliking it.

Does dehumanization happen in everyday life?

Yes. Beyond its extreme forms, subtle dehumanization is an ordinary feature of social life. People infrahumanize out-groups they bear no animus toward, and being on the receiving end of everyday slights—being ignored or treated as a means—produces a felt sense of being dehumanized with measurable cognitive and emotional costs.

How does the brain respond to dehumanized groups?

Neuroimaging has shown that the most extreme out-groups—those rated low on both warmth and competence, such as homeless people and drug addicts—can fail to engage the medial prefrontal cortex that ordinarily activates when one person considers another's mind, instead eliciting a response associated with disgust. Dehumanized perception thus has a measurable neural signature.

What is moral disengagement and how does it relate to dehumanization?

Moral disengagement describes the psychological manoeuvres by which people commit harmful acts without the self-censure that normally restrains them. Dehumanization is among the most powerful: stripping a target of human qualities removes it from the community of beings owed moral consideration, so that treatment unthinkable toward a person becomes permissible toward a thing or a beast.

References

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Haslam, N., & Loughnan, S. (2014). Dehumanization and infrahumanization. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 399–423. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115045

Haslam, N., & Stratemeyer, M. (2016). Recent research on dehumanization. Current Opinion in Psychology, 11, 25–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2016.03.009

Kteily, N., Bruneau, E., Waytz, A., & Cotterill, S. (2015). The ascent of man: Theoretical and empirical evidence for blatant dehumanization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109(5), 901–931. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000048

Kteily, N., & Bruneau, E. (2017). Backlash: The politics and real-world consequences of minority group dehumanization. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43(1), 87–104. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167216675334

Leyens, J.-P., Paladino, P. M., Rodriguez-Torres, R., Vaes, J., Demoulin, S., Rodriguez-Perez, A., & Gaunt, R. (2000). The emotional side of prejudice: The attribution of secondary emotions to ingroups and outgroups. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 4(2), 186–197. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327957PSPR0402_06

Markowitz, D. M., & Slovic, P. (2020). Social, psychological, and demographic characteristics of dehumanization toward immigrants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(17), 9260–9269. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1921790117

Waytz, A., & Epley, N. (2012). Social connection enables dehumanization. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(1), 70–76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2011.07.012