Publications by authors named "Florence E Enock"

Previous work has reported that the extent to which participants dehumanized criminals by denying them uniquely human character traits such as refinement, rationality and morality predicted the severity of the punishment endorsed for them. We revisit this influential finding across six highly powered and pre-registered studies. First, we conceptually replicate the effect reported in previous work, demonstrating that our method is sensitive to detecting relationships between trait-based dehumanization and punishment should they occur.

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  • Some people use animal-like insults in propaganda to make certain groups seem scary or disgusting.
  • In studies, it was found that when people read these insults, they were more likely to agree with harming the targeted group.
  • However, reading these insults didn’t change how people saw the target group’s human qualities, but it did make them seem less likable.
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  • The text talks about a theory that says we don't help people from different groups because we think they lack human emotions.
  • The researchers did four studies to see if this theory was true and found it wasn't really accurate.
  • Instead, they discovered that if we see someone in a positive light, we're more likely to help them, and if we think negatively of them, we're less likely to help, no matter how "human" their emotions are.
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  • Psychological models help understand how different groups treat each other, but only if they explain social biases correctly.
  • The common belief that people see members of other groups as less human is called infrahumanization theory, but this study challenges that idea.
  • The researchers found that people don't really deny human emotions to others; instead, they think of them as having fewer good feelings and more bad ones, showing that this theory might not be the best way to understand how groups view each other.
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  • - The dual model suggests that people may dehumanize outgroup members by perceiving them as having fewer desirable human traits than ingroup members.
  • - Previous research focused on socially desirable traits, leaving a gap in understanding the role of undesirable traits in this process.
  • - The study finds that participants attribute desirable traits to ingroup members and undesirable traits to outgroup members across various contexts (political opponents, immigrants, criminals), challenging the effectiveness of using specific traits to explain intergroup bias.
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Cognitive biases shape our perception of the world and our interactions with other people. Information related to the self and our social ingroups is prioritised for cognitive processing and can therefore form some of these key biases. However, ingroup biases may be elicited not only for established social groups, but also for minimal groups assigned by novel or random social categorisation.

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