Animals and androids: implicit associations between social categories and nonhumans

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Individuals frequently perceive others as possessing less humanness compared to themselves.
• Two distinct conceptualizations of humanness are identified: uniquely human attributes and essential human nature.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate implicit associations between social categories and the two senses of humanness.
• To explore how these associations relate to perceptions of non-human entities like animals and automata.
• To understand subtle mechanisms of dehumanization in social perception.

Main Methods:

• Utilized the go/no-go association task (GNAT) to measure implicit biases.
• Assessed associations among social categories (e.g., artists, businesspeople), human nature traits, uniquely human traits, animals, and automata.
• Collected explicit ratings to corroborate implicit findings.

Main Results:

• Demonstrated stronger implicit associations between artists, human-nature traits, and animals.
• Found stronger implicit associations between businesspeople, uniquely human traits, and automata.
• Explicit ratings confirmed these differential associations, supporting the two-sense model of humanness.

Conclusions:

• Social perception may involve distinct, implicit pathways for dehumanizing others.
• These pathways link social groups to non-human entities based on specific conceptualizations of humanness.
• Findings highlight subtle yet pervasive forms of dehumanization in everyday social cognition.