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🍁 Dehumanizing The Enemy: Justifying Cruelty
✍🏻 Elliot Aronson et al:
A sad, though universal, phenomenon is that all cultures are inclined to dehumanize their enemies by calling them cruel names and regarding them as “vermin,” “animals,” “brutes,” and other nonhuman creatures. During World War II, Americans referred to the German people as “krauts” and portrayed them as brutes; they called the Japanese people “Japs” and portrayed them as sneaky and diabolical; during the Vietnam War, American soldiers referred to the Vietnamese as “gooks”; after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began, some Americans began referring to the enemy as “ragheads” because of the turbans or other headdresses that many Arabs and Muslims wear. The use of such language is a way of reducing dissonance: “I am a good person, but we are fighting and killing these other people; therefore, they must deserve whatever they get, because they aren’t fully human like us.” (Aronson et al, 2021: 182)
📚 Aronson, Elliot & Wilson, Timothy D. & Sommers, Samuel R. (2021). Social psychology. 10th Global edition. UK: Pearson Education.
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