Humanness and Dehumanization
Humanness and Dehumanization

Author: Paul G. Bain

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2013-10-30

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 113627510X

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What does it mean to be human? Why do people dehumanize others (and sometimes themselves)? These questions have only recently begun to be investigated in earnest within psychology. This volume presents the latest thinking about these and related questions from research leaders in the field of humanness and dehumanization in social psychology and related disciplines. Contributions provide new insights into the history of dehumanization, its different types, and new theories are proposed for when and why dehumanization occurs. While people’s views about what humanness is, and who has it, have long been known as important in understanding ethnic conflict, contributors demonstrate its relevance in other domains, including medical practice, policing, gender relations, and our relationship with the natural environment. Cultural differences and similarities in beliefs about humanness are explored, along with strategies to overcome dehumanization. In highlighting emerging ideas and theoretical perspectives, describing current theoretical issues and controversies and ways to resolve them, and in extending research to new areas, this volume will influence research on humanness and dehumanization for many years.

Objectification and (De)Humanization
Objectification and (De)Humanization

Author: Sarah J. Gervais

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-05-24

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 1461469597

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​​People often see nonhuman agents as human-like. Through the processes of anthropomorphism and humanization, people attribute human characteristics, including personalities, free will, and agency to pets, cars, gods, nature, and the like. Similarly, there are some people who often see human agents as less than human, or more object-like. In this manner, objectification describes the treatment of a human being as a thing, disregarding the person's personality and/or sentience. For example, women, medical patients, racial minorities, and people with disabilities, are often seen as animal-like or less than human through dehumanization and objectification. These two opposing forces may be a considered a continuum with anthropomorphism and humanization on one end and dehumanization and objectification on the other end. Although researchers have identified some of the antecedents and consequences of these processes, a systematic investigation of the motivations that underlie this continuum is lacking. Considerations of this continuum may have considerable implications for such areas as everyday human functioning, interactions with people, animals, and objects, violence, discrimination, relationship development, mental health, or psychopathology. The edited volume will integrate multiple theoretical and empirical approaches on this issue.​

The Social Psychology of Morality
The Social Psychology of Morality

Author: Mario Mikulincer

Publisher: Amer Psychological Assn

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 9781433810114

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Humans are universally concerned with good and evil, although one person's "evil" can be another person's "good." How do individuals arrive at decisions about what is right and what is wrong? And how are these decisions influenced by psychological, social, and cultural forces? Such questions form the foundation of the field of moral psychology. In trying to understand moral behavior, researchers historically adopted a cognitive-rationalistic approach that emphasized reasoning and reflection. However, a new generation of investigators has become intrigued by the role of emotional, unconscious, and intra- and interpersonal processes. Their explorations are presented in this third addition to the Herzliya Series on Personality and Social Psychology. The contributors to this volume begin by presenting basic issues and controversies in the study of morality; subsequent chapters explore the psychological processes involved, such as the cognitive mechanisms and motives underlying immoral behavior and moral hypocrisy. Later chapters discuss personality, developmental, and clinical aspects of morality as well as societal aspects of good and evil, including the implications of moral thinking for large-scale violence and genocide. The wide-ranging findings and discussions presented in this volume make this work a provocative and engaging resource for social psychologists and other scholars concerned with moral judgments and both moral and immoral behavior.

Making Monsters
Making Monsters

Author: David Livingstone Smith

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2021-10-12

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0674545567

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A leading scholar explores what it means to dehumanize othersÑand how and why we do it. ÒI wouldnÕt have accepted that they were human beings. You would see an infant whoÕs just learning to smile, and it smiles at you, but you still kill it.Ó So a Hutu man explained to an incredulous researcher, when asked to recall how he felt slaughtering Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. Such statements are shocking, yet we recognize them; we hear their echoes in accounts of genocides, massacres, and pogroms throughout history. How do some people come to believe that their enemies are monsters, and therefore easy to kill? In Making Monsters David Livingstone Smith offers a poignant meditation on the philosophical and psychological roots of dehumanization. Drawing on harrowing accounts of lynchings, Smith establishes what dehumanization is and what it isnÕt. When we dehumanize our enemy, we hold two incongruous beliefs at the same time: we believe our enemy is at once subhuman and fully human. To call someone a monster, then, is not merely a resort to metaphorÑdehumanization really does happen in our minds. Turning to an abundance of historical examples, Smith explores the relationship between dehumanization and racism, the psychology of hierarchy, what it means to regard others as human beings, and why dehumanizing others transforms them into something so terrifying that they must be destroyed. Meticulous but highly readable, Making Monsters suggests that the process of dehumanization is deeply seated in our psychology. It is precisely because we are all human that we are vulnerable to the manipulations of those trading in the politics of demonization and violence.

Less Than Human
Less Than Human

Author: David Livingstone Smith

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2011-03-01

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 1429968567

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Winner of the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Nonfiction A revelatory look at why we dehumanize each other, with stunning examples from world history as well as today's headlines "Brute." "Cockroach." "Lice." "Vermin." "Dog." "Beast." These and other monikers are constantly in use to refer to other humans—for political, religious, ethnic, or sexist reasons. Human beings have a tendency to regard members of their own kind as less than human. This tendency has made atrocities like the Holocaust, the genocide in Rwanda, and the slave trade possible, and yet we still find it in phenomena such as xenophobia, homophobia, military propaganda, and racism. Less Than Human draws on a rich mix of history, psychology, biology, anthropology and philosophy to document the pervasiveness of dehumanization, describe its forms, and explain why we so often resort to it. David Livingstone Smith posits that this behavior is rooted in human nature, but gives us hope in also stating that biological traits are malleable, showing us that change is possible. Less Than Human is a chilling indictment of our nature, and is as timely as it is relevant.

The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization
The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization

Author: Maria Kronfeldner

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-02-24

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 0429960980

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A striking feature of atrocities, as seen in genocides, civil wars, or violence against certain racial and ethnic groups, is the attempt to dehumanize — to deny and strip human beings of their humanity. Yet the very nature of dehumanization remains relatively poorly understood. The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization is the first comprehensive and multidisciplinary reference source on the subject and an outstanding survey of the key concepts, issues, and debates within dehumanization studies. Organized into four parts, the Handbook covers the following topics: The history of dehumanization from Greek Antiquity to the 20th century, contextualizing the oscillating boundaries, dimensions, and hierarchies of humanity in the history of the ‘West’; How dehumanization is contemporarily studied with respect to special contexts: as part of social psychology, as part of legal studies or literary studies, and how it connects to the idea of human rights, disability and eugenics, the question of animals, and the issue of moral standing; How to tackle its complex facets, with respect to the perpetrator’s and the target’s perspective, metadehumanization and selfdehumanization, rehumanization, social death, status and interdependence, as well as the fear we show toward robots that become too human for us; Conceptual and epistemological questions on how to distinguish different forms of dehumanization and neighboring phenomena, on why dehumanization appears so paradoxical, and on its connection to hatred, essentialism, and perception. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy, history, psychology, and anthropology, this Handbook will also be of interest to those in related disciplines, such as politics, international relations, criminology, legal studies, literary studies, gender studies, disability studies, or race and ethnic studies, as well as readers from social work, political activism, and public policy.

So Human an Animal
So Human an Animal

Author:

Publisher: Transaction Publishers

Published:

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9781412834186

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Is the human species becoming dehumanized by the condition of his environment? So Human an Animal is an attempt to address this broad concern, and explain why so little is being done to address this issue. The book sounds both an urgent warning, and offers important policy insights into how this trend toward dehumanization can be halted and finally reversed.

The Psychology of Good and Evil
The Psychology of Good and Evil

Author: Ervin Staub

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2003-07-21

Total Pages: 104

ISBN-13: 9780521528801

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This book gathers the knowledge gained in a lifelong study of the roots of goodness and evil. Since the late 1960s, Ervin Staub has studied the causes of helpful, caring, generous, and altruistic behavior. He has also studied bullying and victimization in schools as well as youth violence and its prevention. He spent years studying the origins of genocide and mass killing and has examined the Holocaust, the genocide of the Armenians, the autogenocide in Cambodia, the disappearances in Argentina, the genocide in Rwanda. He has applied his work in many real world settings and has consulted parents, teachers, police officers, and political leaders. Since September 11th, he has appeared frequently in the media explaining the causes and prevention of terrorism. Professor Staub's work is collected together for the first time in The Psychology of Good and Evil.

Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization
Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization

Author: Paulus Kaufmann

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2010-10-07

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9048196612

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Degradation, dehumanization, instrumentalization, humiliation, and nonrecognition – these concepts point to ways in which we understand human beings to be violated in their dignity. Violations of human dignity are brought about by concrete practices and conditions; some commonly acknowledged, such as torture and rape, and others more contested, such as poverty and exclusion. This volume collates reflections on such concepts and a range of practices, deepening our understanding of human dignity and its violation, bringing to the surface interrelationships and commonalities, and pointing to the values that are thereby shown to be in danger. In presenting a streamlined discussion from a negative perspective, complemented by conclusions for a positive account of human dignity, the book is at once a contribution to the body of literature on what dignity is and how it should be protected as well as constituting an alternative, fresh and focused perspective relevant to this significant recurring debate. As the concept of human dignity itself crosses disciplinary boundaries, this is mirrored in the unique range of perspectives brought by the book’s European and American contributors – in philosophy and ethics, law, human rights, literature, cultural studies and interdisciplinary research. This volume will be of interest to social and moral philosophers, legal and human rights theorists, practitioners and students.

The Good in Nature and Humanity
The Good in Nature and Humanity

Author: Stephen R. Kellert

Publisher: Island Press

Published: 2013-04-10

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1610910761

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Scientists, theologians, and the spiritually inclined, as well as all those concerned with humanity's increasingly widespread environmental impact, are beginning to recognize that our ongoing abuse of the earth diminishes our moral as well as our material condition. Many people are coming to believe that strengthening the bonds among spirituality, science, and the natural world offers an important key to addressing the pervasive environmental problems we face. The Good in Nature and Humanity brings together 20 leading thinkers and writers -- including Ursula Goodenough, Lynn Margulis, Dorion Sagan, Carl Safina, David Petersen, Wendell Berry, Terry Tempest Williams, and Barry Lopez -- to examine the divide between faith and reason, and to seek a means for developing an environmental ethic that will help us confront two of our most imperiling crises: global environmental destruction and an impoverished spirituality. The book explores the ways in which science, spirit, and religion can guide the experience and understanding of our ongoing relationship with the natural world and examines how the integration of science and spirituality can equip us to make wiser choices in using and managing the natural environment. The book also provides compelling stories that offer a narrative understanding of the relations among science, spirit, and nature. Grounded in the premise that neither science nor religion can by itself resolve the prevailing malaise of environmental and moral decline, contributors seek viable approaches to averting environmental catastrophe and, more positively, to achieving a more harmonious relationship with the natural world. By bridging the gap between the rational and the religious through the concern of each for understanding the human relation to creation, The Good in Nature and Humanity offers an important means for pursuing the quest for a more secure and meaningful world.