Recent research on dehumanization

• Recent research has added to the range of factors contributing to dehumanizing perceptions of others.
• There has been an increased attention to ‘mechanistic’ dehumanization, where people are likened to inanimate objects.
• Innovations include studies of dehumanization among children and of blatant forms of dehumanization.

Dehumanization has been a lively focus of social psychology research for the past decade and a half, and novel theoretical and empirical contributions have appeared at a rapid rate. The present review updates earlier overviews by calling attention to key developments over the past two years. The review indicates that researchers have broken new ground in recognizing the range of targets of dehumanization, the diversity of factors that contribute to it, the effects that it accounts for, and the implications and consequences that it has for intergroup relations. Theorists have also enhanced our understanding of how dehumanization phenomena can be conceptualized, assessed, and evaluated. These advances highlight the central but previously unacknowledged role that denials of humanness play in intergroup phenomena.