Likening someone from outside one's inner circle to an animal is rarely positive or flattering but rather derogatory, demeaning, and delegitimizing (e.g., people as pigs). People are motivated to view other animals, and especially those considered food animals, as relatively mindless, and they underestimate animals’ capacity to think and feel in a way that are inaccurate. Perceiving animals as such helps to preserve the belief in moral superiority of humans over other animals, yet it is also precisely this anthropocentric view of human-animal relations that seems to underpin the animalistic dehumanization of out-group members.
GORDON HODSON: In contemporary industrialized societies, where we routinely breed, confine, ignore, or exploit animals for our own purposes, likening someone from outside one’s inner circle to an animal is rarely positive or flattering but rather derogatory, demeaning, and delegitimizing (e.g., people as pigs, vermin, snakes). Indeed, the intention of such a comparison is for the allegedly negative value and lower status of the animal to transfer to the animalized human. Thus, we look down on animals to justify our mistreatment, disregard, and often exploitation of them much in the same manner as we look down on lower status human groups. It should be apparent to researchers and theorists, therefore, that how we think about animalized others is systematically linked to how we think about and treat animals. But a keen reader could be forgiven for not gleaning this point from the main corpus of the dehumanization literature.
Part of the problem… is that the process of dehumanization, as captured in the social psychological literature, is often decontextualized from other psychological processes and from the wider social-cultural context… For example, Leader Maynard and Luft… who question the ecological validity of contemporary dehumanization research. Their example concerns how the Nazis under Hitler endorsed a form of biological hierarchy of species (with Jews at the bottom and likened to vermin) that stood in contrast to, and was opposed by, the Soviets under Stalin. Although the Soviets also fostered the animalistic dehumanization of their opponents,… focusing more on disgust and contempt for outgroup targets without evoking racial dominance as the underpinning framework….
Without consideration of bigger-picture ideologies and worldviews, therefore, it is difficult to understand and appreciate the nature of dehumanization as a process to delegitimize others. We share their call to consider the ecological context of dehumanization, using the context of human-animal relations to illustrate what can be gained by broadening the ecological lens to consider higher-level, contextual factors and shared or common processes…
It would be fair to say that, in the majority of this research, the methodological emphasis focuses on humanness and the ways that people mentally shift outgroups away from humanness (or ingroups toward heightened humanness). Animals are often conceptually part of theoretical positions, but the move away from humanity is taken to tacitly reflect movement toward animals in many approaches, with key operationalization often reflecting how human a target is considered to be. Animals often feel an afterthought relative to stripping humanness. Perhaps not surprisingly, therefore, major reviews largely focus on dehumanization interventions drawn from the prejudice literature and focus on human outgroups, including intergroup contact, recategorization of outgroups into common ingroups, and the multiple categorization of people’s various human groupings…
Based on this literature, therefore, one might wonder where is the animal in (animalistic) dehumanization? Even when animals are deemed theoretically important they are often excluded during the measurement (and hence analysis) process, instead putting a focus on humans and humanity… Indeed, dehumanization broadly defined is likely well captured by the “less human” operationalization. But is our understanding of animalistic dehumanization hampered by focusing on the human aspect and not integrating the animal part?
A case can be made that the field would benefit from paying more attention to animals, especially to human-animal relations – – how we think about them, how we devalue them, how we dementalize them, and how we treat them. If animalizing a person or outgroup member strips them of their freedoms, rights, and unleashes prejudice and discrimination toward that person, the field should pivot to consider how we perceive and treat animals.
Only recently have social psychologists started to systematically investigate patterns of human behaviour towards and thinking about other animals, documenting the widespread biases and discrimination against other beings based on species membership. Akin to how attribute-based dehumanization strips human outgroup members from their mental capacities and traits, people are motivated to view other animals, and especially those considered food animals, as relatively mindless, and they underestimate animals’ capacity to think and feel in a way that are inaccurate. Perceiving animals as such helps to preserve the belief in moral superiority of humans over other animals, yet it is also precisely this anthropocentric view of human-animal relations that seems to underpin the animalistic dehumanization of outgroup members…
There are clear gains for the dehumanization field if it more fully embraces human-animal relations. For instance, animal advocates and courts have long grappled with the notion of personhood, what it means, and whether it can apply to animals. Discussions about whether chimps, dolphins, or even rivers deserve personhood status press us to confront what “being a person” means, and the implications of having (or being denied) person status. Such discussions are currently germane to the abortion issue in the U.S.
The boundaries of human and person are ultimately fluid, as evidenced by the process of dehumanization itself, ultimately being a social construct like race. One of the key reasons we are so careful and specific about attributing or assigning human(like) status is that humans are valued, if not overvalued, in the hierarchy of being. If non-humans also gain personhood status then humans’ rights would not necessarily supersede those of other beings or entities, and this poses a threat to many people.
The parallel with animalistic dehumanization is clear; we limit humanness to control status, privilege, and protection. Interestingly, many countries grant personhood status to corporate organizations, despite them not being actual entities, while denying personhood to actual sentient beings. The more we engage with our interactions with the animal and natural world, the better we understand what being human means and what we think it means. To be clear, we do not think that the goal should be to eliminate the distinction between humans and other animals to reduce human-human prejudices, in part given the psychological challenge such an endeavour would represent.
Rather we take inspiration from the recategorization approach to intergroup relations, where categorization markers are not eliminated but shifted to become more inclusive and thus curtailing strong biases associated with rigid ingroup outgroup distinctions. Indeed, researchers are making important forays into studying identification with animals, which includes solidarity with animals, human-animal similarity, and animal pride. SOURCE…
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