How calling someone an animal encourages support for violence – 12/19/2023 – Science

An old English rhyme says that “sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can hurt too.”

They are present in the inflammatory rhetoric of both sides of the conflict in Israel and Gaza, as well as in the discourse of different confrontations around the world through insults that seek to portray entire groups of people as if they were somehow less human.

Those who follow the current conflict in Israel and Gaza will have heard both parties refer to each other as “animals” and “beasts” in various ways.

When this comes from political leaders and media commentators, it may initially seem like just a theatrical gesture.

However, a body of research suggests that we should all be extremely mindful of the words we use and hear.

“Hated, despised and distrusted groups are often described in dehumanizing ways, whether overtly through metaphors that equate them with animals, or more subtly through dehumanizing descriptions,” says Nick Haslam, professor of psychology at University of Melbourne, Australia.

“Surprisingly, there is little evidence that dehumanizing language causes violent behavior, but there is a lot of evidence that people who dehumanize others are more likely to treat them badly,” he highlights.

Results of an experiment

The use of animal adjectives, for example, has been shown to increase people’s willingness to support hostility, altering perceptions about social acceptance, according to research by psychologists Florence Enock, a principal research associate on the Alan Institute’s online security team. Turing, and Harriet Over, from the University of York, United Kingdom.

In one experiment, they created fictitious political groups and described them in different ways to study participants. Some descriptions included words like “snakes” or “cockroaches,” while others included negative descriptions of humans.

“Participants who rated parties described in animal terms said they were more undesirable and were more willing to harm these groups,” says Enock.

Research into dehumanization began after World War II, when psychologists attempted to examine how populations were driven to war and genocide. The memoirs written by chemist Primo Levi about his time in Auschwitz provide an example of this.

A recent analysis by Adrienne de Ruiter, assistant professor of philosophy and humanities at Utrecht University for Humanistic Studies in the Netherlands, found that the dehumanization to which Levi and others were subjected in Nazi concentration camps worked to dispossess them in the eyes of their guardians of any moral reason against cruel treatment.

Instead of being considered literally as animals or monsters, they were seen as unimportant human beings.

In simple terms

Psychologists use terms such as “otherization” and “outgroup/ingroup effect” to describe the phenomenon of using dehumanizing language.

In social psychology, outgroup homogeneity bias explores the idea that people are likely to view members of a group other than their own as being similar to one another.

In other words, they are considered equal, while we are seen as different individuals.

As an example of this effect, a 2013 study by psychologists at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom found that the more Christian participants associated dehumanizing words with Muslims, the more willing they were to support the torture of Muslim prisoners of war, as they reported. same.

Interestingly, when researchers informed Christian participants about Muslim culture with words that described unique human qualities, such as “passion” and “ambition,” they were less likely to use dehumanizing words to describe Muslims compared to those who received a text more neutral. Furthermore, they were less likely to support torture.

Therefore, the more you hear a group described in dehumanizing ways, the more likely you are to dehumanize them yourself.

This creates a vicious cycle. However, this may also depend somewhat on your personal context.

“People with a greater inclination toward social dominance or who view social hierarchy between groups as desirable tend to be more likely to dehumanize,” says Nour Kteily, co-director of the Center for Conflict Resolution Research at Illinois Northwestern University. in the United States.

Degree of dehumanization

In the context of violence, groups that often feel dehumanized tend to do the same, says Kteily.

“We’re starting to realize that we often assume or have perceptions about how dehumanized we are.”

He refers to a study in which he asked participants to rate someone on a scale of 0 to 100, in terms of how evolved they believed that person to be, in the context of a famous image representing “the evolution of man.”

It turned out that Democrats and Republicans thought their opponents would rate them 60 points below being considered fully human, when in reality they rated them 20-30 points below being fully human.

They had correctly identified that they were being dehumanized, but they significantly overestimated the degree to which they were being dehumanized.

However, Florence Enock discovered the importance of going beyond simply using dehumanizing language to cause harm.

When analyzing anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda, the researcher discovered that highly offensive humanizing terms were used up to three times more often than dehumanizing terms.

“When we consider this, perhaps it is not just the dehumanizing comparison that leads to mass violence, but the idea that they are bad people and morally deserving of the harm inflicted on them,” he notes.

Enock highlights that there are many examples where we harm humans and care for animals. She explains that being human or being an animal essentially does not determine whether you are protected or harmed.

“There’s really no evidence to suggest that humans have natural care and empathy for each other,” he says.

“Indeed, people are hurt when the perpetrators are fully aware of their humanity,” he adds.

Discrimination

This may seem like a contradiction, but there is something more subtle at play.

Adrienne de Ruiter’s analysis of Primo Levi’s memoirs showed how a group of people can be dehumanized and humanized at the same time.

“Academics have pointed out that it is often said that mass atrocities, such as massacres and genocides, can only occur after the victims have been previously dehumanized,” he says.

“However, a more careful examination of how the alleged perpetrators of dehumanization objectively treat their victims reveals that they do not always appear to regard the latter as entirely less than human.”

For her, dehumanization must be understood as something much broader than simply naming someone as an animal or objectifying them.

Philosophically, this is a more pervasive blindness to the fact that someone can be a human being with subjective experiences. It goes far beyond language; it is “a fundamental error of moral recognition.”

Florence Enock agrees. In her study, in which she used fictional political groups, she also asked participants to evaluate them based on a series of traits.

Those who described a group with animal adjectives tended to perceive that group as having fewer positive traits rather than less humanity. His humanity has not changed at all; what changed was his social acceptance and his moral character.

Violent rhetoric

Emma Briant, associate professor of news and political communication at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, identified this in the language used in the current violence in Israel and Gaza.

“I believe that an important feature that combines with this — in the rhetoric that allows Hamas and Israel to dehumanize and kill civilians — is the claims that civilians are not really civilians,” he says.

“Both have made this allegation. Hamas has made this on Al Jazeera (Arabic broadcaster), asserting that the settlers in the occupied territories are not really civilians. Israel has repeatedly associated the Palestinian people with Hamas. Fundamental values ​​precede the rhetoric of dehumanization, of so that we are already predisposed to an ideology of exclusion and distrust.”

Studying the effect of dehumanizing language has an impact on everyone. Virtually every aspect of identity that can be considered part of a specific group of people seems vulnerable to this.

This happens with immigration: One study found that comparisons of immigrants to pests or diseases led to more negative attitudes toward immigration.

A later study in the United States in 2023, through a survey, found that those who had racial prejudices against Latinos could be encouraged to support for-profit immigration detention centers if dehumanizing language was used.

It is also observed in gender issues. Studies have revealed that focusing on women’s sexual characteristics or functions dehumanizes them in an animalistic way, and comparing women to animal predators can make someone more likely to agree with hostile sexist attitudes than if they are described through animalistic “prey” metaphors.

Change the pattern

But there may also be ways to prevent people from dehumanizing each other. Experts believe it is possible.

Promoting positive contact experiences between different groups of people is one solution. Another is through humanizing narratives.

“Are there similar amounts of human interest stories on both sides?” Kteily asks.

“We know that humanization is associated with empathy. When we hear about tragedies, it is associated with feeling more empathy. When you talk about deaths or murders as statistics, it is much less likely to promote empathy.”

Kteily adds that when it comes to putting an end to a specific conflict, it has been interesting to hear stories of people refusing to allow their own suffering and anguish to be used to fuel further violence.

“There are people whose own family members were taken hostage and who don’t want to recreate the same suffering on the other side,” he says.

“Expressing concern for everyone’s humanity, even when they have suffered immensely, is seeing others as human beings”, he concludes.