In accordance with something I've held a strong opinion on for years, researchers at Duke University and Princeton University examined, and hold evidence of, the brain's tendency to dehumanize with the proper stimuli, possibly forestalling the social connection needed to humanize a subject. This dehumanization could lead to such heinous acts of brutality as filicide, murder and genocide. While we ostracize the actors in these horror stories, the brain can hold accountability for such thoughts and behaviors in its very essential wiring by not allowing the person to feel empathy, pity and admiration. Humans that do the unspeakable can simply have malfunctioning wires, so to speak. I don't like to throw my opinion around lavishly on the internet but since this is my blog I must say I abhor our society's vilification of who are really simply humans with malfunctioning brains.
The researchers developed a working model for dehumanizing tendencies. They supported the claim that when a person is perceived as disgusting or less than favorable, our brains may not fire up the areas that allow us to see them as thinking,feeling creatures, thus resulting in classifying them as subhuman. Researchers performed a basic procedure of showing the test subjects images of varying types of people. Some of the images intended to arouse disgust were of drug addicts and homeless people. When shown these images, the test subjects' brain's failed to activate the areas that could allow a social connection and an imagined understanding of the person's experience. Dehumanizing tends to be the result of which.
The researchers relate this lack of perceived humanness as a lack of ability to see oneself in the subjects shoes and to connect with them on a social level. Susan Fiske of Princeton states,
"We need to think about other people's experience, It's what makes them fully human to us." It is clear here that, in general, the human brain holds the potential to dehumanize a subject, which can make sense of extreme violence. With this we come a little closer to understanding the minds of killers and tyrants.
The study, "Dehumanized Perception: A Psychological Means to Facilitate Atrocities, Torture, and Genocide?", is doing what I feel is a very important venture, that of trying to better understand those that do the most harm.
Researchers:
Lasana Harris-Duke University-(919) 684-1645 or lth4@duke.edu;
Susan Fiske-Princeton University-(609) 258 0655 or sfiske@princeton.edu.
For a copy of this study contact Steve Hartsoe of Duke University at steve.hartsoe@duke.edu
Hartsoe, Steve. “A Brain's Failure to Appreciate Others May Permit Human Atrocities.” Duke Today. December 14, 2011. http://today.duke.edu/2011/12/dehumanize.
The article appeared in the Journal of Psychology, vol. 219, no. 3. pp 175-181
DOI 10.1027/2151-2604/a000065.
