Reducing Explicit Blatant Dehumanization by Correcting Exaggerated Meta-Perceptions

If blatantly dehumanizing a group of people—overtly characterizing them as less than human— undermines the moral restraints against harming them, then reversing this process is paramount. Addressing the troublingly pervasive dehumanization among American political partisans appears especially crucial, given that it has been linked to anti-democratic hostility. Perhaps because of its overt nature, partisans recognize—and even exaggerate—the extent to which out-partisans blatantly dehumanize them. Past research shows the perception of being dehumanized by an outgroup (i.e., meta-dehumanization) leads people to respond with reciprocal dehumanization. Therefore, we reasoned that partisans’ dehumanization could be reduced by correcting their exaggerated meta-dehumanization. Indeed, across 3 preregistered studies (N = 4,154), an intervention correcting American partisans’ exaggerated meta-dehumanization reduced their own dehumanization of out-partisans. Importantly, this decreased dehumanization persisted at a 1-week follow-up and predicted downstream reductions in partisans’ anti-democratic hostility, suggesting that correcting exaggerated meta-dehumanization can durably mitigate the dark specter of dehumanization.