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Interest in the joint and socially shared nature of individuals' perceptions and representations has soared in experimental social psychology (e.g.; Hardin & Higgins, 1996) and other related fields, such as memory (Gabbert, Memon, & Allan, In recent years, research concerning various forms of dehumanization (e.g., infra-humanization, mechanistic dehumanization, moral exclusion) has flourished. Publications, presentations and posters at the Würzburg EAESP general meeting, several symposia at SESP annual meeting, at SPSP General Conference and Pre-conference, and a soon-to appear special issue of Social Cognition are all events that witness the centrality of this topic in social psychology research.
The process of dehumanization, and its links to intergroup violence, has attracted the interest of psychologists and social scientists in general for decades. However, with few exceptions, its discussion has mostly been theoretical or characterized by the consideration of limited and anecdotal empirical evidence. On the contrary, the new interest innovates by a more systematic effort to test experimentally the hypotheses deriving from various theoretical models and to develop measures of dehumanization. Its detection mobilizes techniques as diverse as content analyses, questionnaires, implicit measures, or neuro-imaging. In other words, research on dehumanization is now akin to, although it greatly expands upon, traditional research in stereotyping, prejudice, and intergroup bias.
Dehumanization is a complex process. It takes different forms in strong, protracted conflicts than in milder ones. 2003; Hirst & Manier, 2002), cognition (Barsalou, 2003; Smith & Semin, 2004), psycholinguistics (Pickering & Garrod, 2004), communication (Higgins & Semin, 2001), and social neuroscience (e.g., Gallese, Keysers, & Rizzolatti, 2003).