Reducing Explicit Blatant Dehumanization by Correcting Exaggerated Meta-Perceptions

Abstract

If explicitly, blatantly dehumanizing a group of people—overtly characterizing them as less than human—facilitates harming them, then reversing this process is paramount. Addressing dehumanization among American political partisans appears especially crucial, given that it has been linked to their anti-democratic hostility. Perhaps because of its overt nature, partisans recognize—and greatly exaggerate—the extent to which out-partisans explicitly, blatantly dehumanize them. Past research has found that when people perceive they are dehumanized by an outgroup (i.e., meta-dehumanization), they respond with reciprocal dehumanization. Therefore, we reasoned that partisans’ dehumanization could be reduced by correcting their exaggerated meta-dehumanization. Indeed, across three preregistered studies ( N = 4,154), an intervention correcting American partisans’ exaggerated meta-dehumanization reduced their own dehumanization of out-partisans. This decreased dehumanization persisted at a 1-week follow-up and predicted downstream reductions in partisans’ anti-democratic hostility, suggesting that correcting exaggerated meta-dehumanization can durably mitigate the dark specter of dehumanization.

Megastudy testing 25 treatments to reduce anti-democratic attitudes and partisan animosity

“…However, providing corrective information about policy positions (Correcting Policy Misperceptions Chatbot), or about levels of acceptance of suffering for electoral advantages (Correcting Opportunism Misperceptions), or about levels of opposition to inparty initiatives among outpartisans (Correcting Oppositional Misperceptions), did not reduce support for undemocratic practices or partisan violence. These findings extend prior research on inaccurate outparty stereotypes (32)(33)(34)28), showing that the effects of misperception corrections vary depending on the type of misperceptions they correct. More generally, these findings suggest that while some strategies are promising approaches, the specific way they are implemented matters as well.…”

“…Landau, Landau, Germany 32 : Behavioral Science for Policy Lab, Princeton University, Princeton, USA 33 : Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA 34 : Department of Psychology, University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, USA 35 : Center for International Development, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA 36 : CommonAlly, Santa Monica, USA 37 : Department of Communication, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA…”

Religion or Race? Using Intersectionality to Examine the Role of Muslim Identity and Evaluations on Belonging in the United States

“…Due to several studies demonstrating that online survey panels tend to replicate that of more expensive data collection firms (e.g., Berinsky et al, 2012; Coppock, 2019) and increasing use of the Bovitz, Inc Forthright panel (e.g., Druckman et al, 2022; Landry et al, 2023; Lee et al, 2022), we are reasonably confident in the reliability of this panel for research.…”

Intergroup Psychological Interventions: The Motivational Challenge

“…Along the same lines, consider recent research demonstrating that correcting overly negative misperceptions about outgroup members can reduce hostility (Halperin et al, 2011;Landry et al, 2022;Lees & Cikara, 2020;Mernyk et al, 2022;Voelkel et al, Working paper). This work pays participants to read, listen, or watch information that contradicts fundamental beliefs they have about the outgroup, which they may otherwise ignore out of naïve realism (Pronin et al, 2002) or avoid in service of epistemic security (Bar-Tal & Halperin, 2011;Kunda, 1990).…”