COGNITIVE, EMOTIONAL, AND MOTIVATIONAL CONSEQUENCES OF DEHUMANIZATION

In the current experiments, we examined the cognitive, emotional, and motivational consequences of being mechanistically (Study 1) and animalistically (Study 2) dehumanized, and explored the moderating role of selfesteem in these effects. In Study 1, receiving dehumanization evaluations in the mechanistic form produced cognitive deconstruction and feelings of sadness above and beyond negative evaluations. In Study 2, when receiving dehumanization evaluations in the animalistic form (vs. being evaluated negatively), participants reported higher levels of emotions related to sadness and shame. The effect of self-esteem was inconsistent across the two studies. It moderated the effects of mechanistic dehumanization on sadness and aggressive tendency, in that higher self-esteem individuals experienced more sadness and reported higher levels of aggressive tendency after being dehumanized than those lower in self-esteem. However, it mitigated the effects of animalistic dehumanization on cognitive deconstruction. Implications of these results are discussed.