PSYC12H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Insular Cortex, Executive Functions, Social Cognition
Dehumanized Perception: A Psychological Means to Facilitate Atrocities, Torture, and Genocide?
Abstract/Introduction
- Dehumanized perception: failure to spontaneously consider the mind of another person;
might be facilitating inhumane acts like torture
- Social cognition – considering someone’s mind and recognizing them as a human being
- We activate a social-cognition neural network to pictures/thoughts of other people but
when we have dehumanized someone, the network is not activated
- Shocking because we think of animals’ minds yet fail to do so for dehumanized humans
- Those that are low in warmth and competence are the ones usually eliciting disgust
- Study 1 – people fail to think about contents of dehumanized targets’ minds when imagining
a day in their life and rate them differently on human-perception dimensions
- Study 2 – human-perception dimension ratings correlate with activation in brain regions
such as areas for disgust and cognitive control
- When they are told to infer the preference of these dehumanized targets, their social-
cognition network becomes activated so you need to manipulate their social goals
Study 1
- Different types of verbs and adjectives provide different levels of abstraction
o Adjectives are the most abstract – describe the person
o Mental-state verbs – describe actions in terms of target’s internal state so describes
their mind, e.g. quench
o Interpretative-action verbs – interpret the target’s action/behaviour, e.g. guzzle
o Descriptive-action verbs – describe action, e.g. drink
- IV – type of pictured social target, 2 pics for each quadrant of Stereotype Content Model
- Had to write description of the social target’s typical day and then rate them on various
dimensions, such as warmth, competence, intelligence, etc.
- Results
o Participants used fewer mental-state verbs to describe a day in the life of
dehumanized targets so they are not considering the minds of these targets
o Dehumanized targets were rated lower on competence, warmth, similarity,
familiarity, articulateness, intelligence, ease of mentalizing, and ease of inferring
dispositions; more ups and downs in their lives, viewed as less typically human
o Dehumanized targets are rated much lower on 10/14 dimensions that have been
recognized as dimensions of dehumanization
Study 2
- Neuroimaging study – what are the neural regions that correlate with the dimensions of
human perception that differentiate dehumanized targets?
- Laid in the fMRI scanner while pics of different people appeared on screen, had to look at
pics of the different social targets; after that, they looked at pics of the targets again and
rated them on warmth, competence, etc.
- Results
o Warmer you view a target, less activation in anterior insula (disgust function);
increased insula activation facilitates dehumanization and torture
o If you view target as typically human, less ACC activity, which is implicated in
cognitive control or conflict resolution; when you have ACC activity, your brain
realizes these people are human so you are having conflict resolution
Document Summary
Dehumanized perception: failure to spontaneously consider the mind of another person; might be facilitating inhumane acts like torture. Social cognition considering someone"s mind and recognizing them as a human being. We activate a social-cognition neural network to pictures/thoughts of other people but when we have dehumanized someone, the network is not activated. Shocking because we think of animals" minds yet fail to do so for dehumanized humans. Those that are low in warmth and competence are the ones usually eliciting disgust. Study 1 people fail to think about contents of dehumanized targets" minds when imagining a day in their life and rate them differently on human-perception dimensions. Study 2 human-perception dimension ratings correlate with activation in brain regions such as areas for disgust and cognitive control. When they are told to infer the preference of these dehumanized targets, their social- cognition network becomes activated so you need to manipulate their social goals.
