In Kteily’s studies, participants — typically groups of mostly white Americans — are shown this (scientifically inaccurate)
image of a human ancestor slowly learning how to stand on two legs and
become fully human. And then they are told to rate members of different
groups — such as Muslims, Americans, and Swedes — on how evolved they
are on a scale of 0 to 100.
Many people in these studies give members of other groups
a perfect score, 100, fully human. But many others give others scores
putting them closer to animals.[...]
“Dehumanization doesn’t only occur in wartime,” says Nick Haslam, a
psychologist who is the world’s current leading expert on the topic.
“It’s happening right here, right now. And every day, good people who
don’t see themselves as being prejudiced bigots are nevertheless falling
prey to it.” [...]
From these experiments, and those that followed, it became clear that
“it’s extremely easy to turn down someone’s ability to see someone else
in their full humanity,” says Adam Waytz,
a psychologist at Northwestern University who studies how people think
about minds and collaborates with Kteily. Even children as young as 5
years old see the world in terms of us versus them.[...]
With the “Ascent of Man” tool, Kteily and collaborators Emile Bruneau,
Adam Waytz, and Sarah Cotterill found that on average, Americans rate
other Americans as being highly evolved, with an average score in the
90s. But disturbingly, many also rated Muslims, Mexican immigrants, and
Arabs as less evolved.
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