Dehumanization without antipathy: Subtle and blatant measures reveal a shared regulatory function.

= 5,253) assessing four common operationalizations-blatant dehumanization, animalization, mechanization, and mind denial-support the construct's distinctiveness and its coherence. Contagion cues reliably elicited dehumanization, and this effect was not moderated by relational closeness: Perceived disease risk increased dehumanization equally for friends and family. Findings also support the construct's coherence: All four measures responded similarly to disease threat. Multilevel models treating the measure as a random effect revealed substantial shared variance across operationalizations. Together, these findings support the distinctiveness and coherence of psychological conceptions of dehumanization as a flexible regulatory mechanism. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).