https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/ ... -explained
The dark psychology of dehumanization, explained
As anti-Muslim rhetoric increases under Trump, more Americans are seeing Muslims as less than human.
In Kteily’s studies, participants — typically groups of mostly white Americans — are shown this (scientifically inaccurate) image of a human ancestor slowly learning how to stand on two legs and become fully human. And then they are told to rate members of different groups — such as Muslims, Americans, and Swedes — on how evolved they are on a scale of 0 to 100.
And that conclusion is opening a Pandora’s box of revelations about the new wave of intolerance toward Muslims and immigrants in America under President Donald Trump — and what it could bring about.
Dehumanization is a mental loophole that lets us harm other people
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With the “Ascent of Man” tool, Kteily and collaborators Emile Bruneau, Adam Waytz, and Sarah Cotterill found that on average, Americans rate other Americans as being highly evolved, with an average score in the 90s. But disturbingly, many also rated Muslims, Mexican immigrants, and Arabs as less evolved.
“We typically see scores that average 75, 76,” for Muslims, Kteily says. “Which I think is a lot on a scale that’s so extreme.” And about a quarter of study participants will rate Muslims on a score of 60 or below.
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People who dehumanize are more likely to blame Muslims as a whole for the actions of a few perpetrators. They are more likely to support policies restricting the immigration of Arabs to the United States. People who dehumanize low-status or marginalized groups score higher on a measure called “social dominance orientation,” meaning that they favor inequality among groups in society, with some groups dominating others.
It goes on: People who dehumanize are more likely to agree with statements such as, “Muslims are a potential cancer to this country,” and, “The attacks on San Bernardino prove it: Muslims are a threat to people from this country.”
And , in a study, blatant dehumanization of Muslims and Mexican immigrants was strongly correlated with Trump support — even when compared with support for other Republican candidates. The data is “consistent with the idea that support for some of the Republican candidates (and Trump in particular) comes not despite their dehumanizing rhetoric but in part because of it,” Kteily and Bruneau conclude in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
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Dehumanizing rhetoric against Muslims is becoming more acceptable in the Trump era
As Vox’s Zack Beauchamp has written, Trump’s top adviser, Steve Bannon, is a devotee of a right-wing worldview known as “counter-jihad.” Counter-jihadists, Beauchamp explains, “argue that a correct reading of Islamic scripture shows that violence is intrinsic to Islam — that the religious doctrine itself, properly understood, commands Muslims to kill subjugate unbelievers.”
Counter-jihad lumps all 1.3 billion Muslims together into one malicious group of people less capable of compassion and cooperation. And it suggests that Muslims are unable to separate themselves from their group as individual thinkers.
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“I’m hearing dehumanizing language that I’ve never heard before,” says Mogahed, who has conducted polling on the intersection of Islam and society for most of her career. And it was especially acute during the presidential election. Ben Carson compared Muslims to dogs. Trump told an apocryphal story of soldiers killing terrorists with bullets dipped in pig’s blood (as if Muslims were creatures that needed to be killed by supernatural means). Donald Trump Jr., compared of Syrian refugees to a bowl of Skittles.