Reasserting Humanity after Group-Based Dehumanization

Research on group dehumanization has focused largely on the perpetrators of dehumanization or its negative emotional and cognitive effects on targets. We theorized that people would also reassert their humanness in response to dehumanizing portrayals of their group. Experiment 1 showed that Black participants responded to even an implied dehumanizing representation of their racial group by emphasizing the extent to which they feel more complex, uniquely human emotions versus more basic, less uniquely human emotions. Experiment 2 showed that Black, but not White, individuals responded to group-based dehumanization by creating more complex self-portrayals. Taken together, these studies begin to illustrate the agency that targets of group-based dehumanization have in responding to dehumanizing threats and how they can use this agency to reassert their humanness.