A Process Account of Dehumanization: Extending the Framework with a Developmental Research Agenda

In the last 25 years, research on dehumanization—the tendency to perceive others as less than fully human—has spiked and evolved in many ways. In the current review, we will provide an overview of the various methodological and conceptual trends in this research area and introduce a new way of conceptualizing dehumanizing perceptions. Focusing on developments in neuroscience that have shown how human and object stimuli are typically processed in different ways using specific brain areas, dehumanization can be understood as the fading of this human–object divide. We will demonstrate what this process account of dehumanization implies for the understanding of the concept, how it can respond to some of the recent controversies and critiques, and how a research agenda integrating the study of developmental mechanisms can bolster our understanding of dehumanization processes.