Dehumanization often means failing to consider another person’s mind, not just denying their humanness.

The brain’s default mode is social, with the brain mentalizing during periods of rest.

Norms, hierarchies, and institutions create environments where dehumanization becomes easier.

Stories and parasocial contact through media can humanize people we may never meet in person.

When we think of dehumanization, we tend to picture the extremes: wartime propaganda, slurs, and the comparing of people to vermin. But contemporary psychology suggests something subtler and far more common. Dehumanization can be the everyday failure to imagine what another person is thinking or feeling, rooted in the same shortcuts that help us navigate a complex world (Haslam, 2006). Once a person has been reduced to a single label, the rest of who they are can disappear from view.

This way of characterizing dehumanization carries practical weight. If dehumanization is partly a cognitive lapse, rather than just an act of malice, then humanization is something we can practice and design environments to encourage.

Three Insights From Psychology

1. Labels Can Short-Circuit the Social Brain

Functional neuroimaging shows that when people view photographs of non-stigmatized social groups, the medial prefrontal cortex (a hub for thinking about others’ minds) reliably activates. But when participants viewed photographs of individuals from highly stigmatized groups, that activation was reduced, and regions associated with disgust were engaged instead (Harris & Fiske, 2006). In other words, a category label can blunt the brain process that ordinarily registers another person as a fellow human with thoughts, feelings, and a perspective. Reducing someone to a label like “criminal” or “addict” can make them, neurologically........

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