Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2010, Vol. 98, No. 5, 750–760
© 2010 American Psychological Association 0022-3514/10/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0017658
“We are people”: In-group humanization as an existential defense
Jeroen Vaes University of Padova
Nathan A. Heflick Universtiy of South Florida
Jamie L. Goldenberg University of South Florida
Abstract
Prior research has shown the importance of humanness in shaping one’s social identity, but no research has examined why this is the case. The present article reveals that humanizing the in-group serves a terror management function. In three studies, Italian (Studies 1 and 2) and American (Study 3) participants humanized their own group more when their mortality was salient. In Study 3, humanizing the in-group also functioned to reduce the accessibility of death thoughts. Together these studies provide clear support for terror management theory as an explanatory framework for in-group humanization.
Keywords: In-group humanization, mortality salience, self-esteem, death thought accessibility
“We are people”: In-group humanization as an existential defense Biologically speaking, humans are bipedal primates from the family of the Hominidae, or “great apes.” Despite this objective truth, humans go to great lengths to accentuate the characteristics that distinguish themselves from other animals. For example, people imbue activities such as eating, drinking, and sex with uniquely human qualities, transforming them into dining, wine tasting, and the plots of Harlequin romance novels; and they are exceedingly discreet concerning the other (unmentionable) behaviors in which humans and animals necessarily engage.
In addition, people tend to define their own cultural group as epitomizing what it means to be uniquely human. An abundance of research has documented people’s tendency to reserve uniquely human characteristics to describe their own group more than other groups, a phenomenon called the infrahumanization effect (see Leyens, Demoulin, Vaes, Gaunt, & Paladino, 2007 for a review). This is evident, also, in the names that people designate for their own groups (Mullen, Calogero, & Leader, 2007); for instance, the Caribs describe where they come from by stating “We alone are people” (Sumner, 1906, p.14). In a more contemporary illustration, during the apartheid regime in South-Africa, newspapers reported that ‘one person and four natives were injured;’ the white journalists and editors did not seem to realize that such statements articulated nothing less than the belief that only their in-group member was fully human (Tutu, 2000).
A significant body of research derived from terror management theory (TMT: Greenberg, Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997) points to the psychological threat
associated with the awareness of mortality as a motivating factor in people’s efforts to humanize their selves (Goldenberg, 2005). However, researchers have yet to address whether these same existential motives play a role in the humanization of the
in-group. Despite this logical connection, to date research on infrahumanization and TMT has yet to be integrated. Three experiments reported here provide the first tests of whether people humanize their cultural group more in response to mortality awareness and whether humanizing one’s group functions to attenuate the accessibility of death-related thoughts.
Terror Management Theory
TMT is based on the work of the anthropologist Ernest Becker (1973), who argued that the combination of an animal-instinct to survive and humans' awareness of the inevitability of death gives rise to an existential terror. Becker (1973) argued that individual members of the human species would be paralyzed with fear unless they developed some means of managing this problem. Building upon this idea, Greenberg, Solomon and Pyszczynski (1997; see also Solomon, Greenberg, &
Pyszczynski, 2004) proposed and experimentally tested the notion that the immersion in a cultural worldview, or shared ideas about what is of value, and the belief that one is living up to this worldview (self-esteem), serve an anxiety-buffering function from death awareness. Thus, humans buffer the potential terror of death by immersing themselves in systems of cultural meaning and value that endure beyond death.
Recently, Goldenberg, Pyszczynski, Greenberg and Solomon (2000; Goldenberg, 2005) extended the TMT framework to explain the oft noted
ambivalence that characterizes people’s reactions to the more physical, animalistic aspects of their existence. For although humans’ belief that an abstract symbolic identity elevates them above the natural, physical world, they also have a physical body that binds them to it, and to the inevitably of death. Goldenberg et al. (2000) suggested that in order to minimize this existential threat, people not only deny their
similarity to animals, but they engage in strategies that allow them to emphasize the uniquely human aspects of the self.
Goldenberg et al. (2001) provided direct support for this proposition by examining people’s reactions to an essay emphasizing human uniqueness compared to one focusing on the similarities between humans and animals in the context of
rendering mortality salient. Within the mortality salience condition, but not the control condition, the essay emphasizing human uniqueness from animals was
preferred to the essay emphasizing similarities. Moreover, although mortality salience did not significantly influence people’s preference for the essay depicting human-animal similarity, it did increase how much people reported liking the essay that highlighted human uniqueness.
In extending these insights to one of the physical activities in which humans and animals necessarily (and often quite enthusiastically) engage, Goldenberg and her colleagues examined the relationship between mortality concerns and the physical aspects of sex (Goldenberg, Pyszczynski, McCoy, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1999; Goldenberg, Cox, Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 2002). In one series of experiments (Goldenberg et al., 2002), when participants were primed with the essay (from Goldenberg et al., 2001) that described the similarity between humans and animals, mortality salience decreased the appeal of the physical, but not romantic (and hence uniquely human), aspects of sex. Reading the essay emphasizing human
uniqueness, in contrast, decreased, and even showed a trend toward reversing, this tendency. Additional research has also demonstrated that thinking about love, prior to the physical aspects of sex, reduces its threat (Goldenberg et al., 1999). Thus, these studies reveal that, not only do concerns about human creatureliness underlie threats associated with human’s physical nature (in this case, sex), but also that symbolic and
cultural values function to diffuse the threat, by infusing such activities with uniquely human attributes.
More recent research has supported the generalizability of these assumptions to other activities that humans share with animals. For example, mortality reminders cause people to distance themselves from a woman described as breast feeding, but not when she is described as engaging in the uniquely human bottle-feeding
alternative (Cox, Goldenberg, Arndt, & Pyszczynski, 2007). People also respond negatively to depictions of pregnant women when human-animal similarity, but not human uniqueness, is primed (Goldenberg, Cox, Arndt, & Goplen, 2007). In addition, people have also been found to inhibit certain types of uncivilized bodily movements (i.e., pelvic thrusts) when mortality awareness is activated (Goldenberg, Heflick & Cooper, 2008) and they avoid physical experiences, even those that are pleasurable (i.e., a foot massage, Goldenberg et al., 2006) or important for health (i.e., breast exams, Goldenberg, Arndt, Hart, & Routledge, 2008).
These studies illustrate the importance of humanizing the self as a means to manage mortality concerns. But what about one’s cultural group? Given the vital importance of the cultural worldview for terror management, it seems likely that humanizing the cultural groups of which one is a member would also function to provide protection from existential concerns associated with the awareness of mortality.
Terror Management and the Cultural Group
From the perspective of TMT, the cultural group with which one identifies plays a critical role in the management of existential concerns. Because cultural worldviews differ, they are subjective and somewhat fragile social constructions. That is why, as Berger and Luckman (1966) argued, people need to maintain faith that their
cultural worldview is objectively correct and valid – or they risk losing their
protection against the threat of death. One consequence of this need, as these authors noted, is that such seemingly subjective values, such as not eating with one’s elbows on the table or saving sex for marriage, develop the same objective truth (for people with these values) as a math problem. The group is essential to the development and maintenance of these objective realities, because these realities hinge on social consensus. Without group members who adopt our beliefs and maintain them then, our ability to use these beliefs as a defense against death would fail miserably.
Supporting the role of consensual validation in the management of mortality concerns, research shows that mortality salience increases perceptions of social consensus for one’s views (Pyszczynski et al., 1996) and increases adherence to social norms (Galliot et al., 2008).
A related idea, which also supports the critical function of the cultural group in the management of mortality concerns, was articulated by Castano and colleagues (e.g., Castano, Yzerbyt & Paladino, 2004; Castano, Yzerbyt, Paladino, & Sacchi, 2002), who, in merging TMT with Social Identity Theory (see Castano & Dechesne, 2005, for a review), suggest that because one’s social identity is a more symbolic, and less finite, way to represent the self than one’s personal identity, the in-group, and the identity one attaches to it, acts as a buffer from mortality concerns in its own right. In support of this, Castano et al. (2002, see also, Castano, 2004) demonstrated that priming mortality salience not only increased the degree that (Italian) individuals identify with their culture but also the perception of it (Italy) as more entitative – the perception that the group is a real entity (cf. Campbell, 1958).
Both, the consensual validation perspective and the view espoused by Castano and colleagues (2004) converge to highlight the critical function of the in-group for
terror management. And both perspectives, when considered in light of the research showing that mortality concerns influence one’s motivations to deny indicators of one’s own creatureliness (e.g., Goldenberg et al., 1999), suggest that attributions of humanness to one’s cultural group are likely to function as a defense against existential concerns rooted in death.
Infrahumanization
That humanness is important in shaping one’s social identity has been
depicted extensively by the recent work on the infrahumanization effect (Leyens and colleagues, 2000, 2003, 2007). Researchers studying this effect demonstrate that people reserve uniquely human characteristics to describe their own group more than the out-group. Infrahumanization research has typically operationalized humanness as the characteristics that distinguish human beings from other animals (Leyens et al., 2007). Recently, Haslam and colleagues (e.g., Haslam, Bain, Douge, Lee, & Bastian, 2005) broadened the definition of humanness to include an alternative dimension consisting of essential or core elements of human nature. These characteristics include emotions and desires that do not necessarily differentiate humans from animals. Given the focus on the animal – human distinction in both TMT and infrahumanzation theory, in the current set of studies humanness is operationalized in terms of human uniqueness.
The uniquely human attributes that infrahumanization researchers have focused on primarily are complex, secondary emotions (Demoulin et al., 2004); they are consistently attributed less to out-groups as compared to the in-group (Cortes et al., 2005; Leyens et al., 2001, Paladino et al., 2004). Moreover, this bias has been documented for both positive and negative secondary emotions, and appears for both
liked and disliked out-groups (Cortes et al., 2005), showing that these attributions of humanness are independent from a more general evaluative bias.
Recently, several studies have extended the infrahumanization effect beyond the attribution of secondary emotions, by focusing on uniquely human characteristics in general. Paladino and Vaes (2009; see also Viki et al., 2006), for example, showed that any characteristic that is said to describe the in-group is perceived as more uniquely human relative to when the same characteristics are attributed to the out-group. Again, this bias has shown to be independent of valence judgments.
Although the infrahumanization effect is typically defined as the relative difference between attributions of humanness to the in-group as compared with the level of humanness that is attributed to the out-group, recently some researchers have begun to tease apart increases in the humanization of the in-group from
dehumanization of the out-group (e.g., Demoulin et al., 2005; Vaes & Paladino, in press; Viki & Calitri, 2008). Vaes and Paladino (in press) measured both in-group and out-group humanization in different inter-group contexts that varied along the main dimensions of the Stereotype Content Model (SCM, Fiske, Cuddy, Glick & Xu, 2002). Comparing nine different intergroup situations, Vaes and Paladino (in press) showed that variations in warmth and competence only affected perceptions of the out-group. Specifically, the high competence – low warmth out-groups were seen as most human, while the low competence – low warmth out-groups tended to be viewed in the least human terms. The in-group, in contrast, was seen as human invariably, regardless of the way it was defined in terms of warmth or competence. These findings suggest that in-group humanization is driven by different processes than the denial of humanity to an out-group.
Much of the research examining the two processes separately has focused on the out-group because the aim is often to predict or change derogatory behaviors targeting out-group members (e.g., Cuddy, Rock, & Norton, 2007; Tam et al., 2007; Zebel et al., 2008). In this vein, conditional factors that have shown to exacerbate the infrahumanization effect have focused on motivated attributions concerning the out-group. Castano and Giner-Sorolla (2006; see also Cortes et al. 2005; Gaunt, Leyens, & Sindic, 2004 for a similar focus), for example, showed that victims of past
wrongdoings were seen as less human when in-group members were explicitly reminded that their group had been responsible for these atrocities. In this way, denying humanity to others serves to morally disengage from self-sanctions by justifying the harm one’s group has caused to another (cf. Bandura, 1990).
Thus, while researchers have begun to uncover the motivational impetus for denying humanness to the out-group, there has yet to be any empirical efforts to document a causal motivation in the humanization of the in-group. In the present set of studies, we propose TMT as a basis for in-group humanization. Given people’s documented need to emphasize their uniquely human aspects in response to mortality salience (Goldenberg, 2005) and the importance of group identification in tackling mortality concerns (Castano et al., 2004), endowing one’s in-group with full humanness becomes a likely terror management strategy. We expect that mortality concerns will influence only the attribution of humanness to the in-group. As long as the out-group is neither perceived as a problem nor as a direct menace, people are expected to be especially concerned with their own group, and the humanization of it.
Overview of the studies
To test these ideas, three studies were conducted in which the attribution of uniquely human traits to one’s own and another cultural group was measured in an
experimental condition that made mortality salient in contrast to a control condition in which participants were prompted to think about non-death related events. In each study, the central hypothesis that priming death increases the need to humanize one’s in-group was tested. Humanness was measured adopting a paradigm that was recently developed by Vaes and Paladino (in press). This approach has the advantage of capturing both the variance in attributing humanness to traits that are perceived as typical of group members and also attributing typicality to traits that are perceived as uniquely human. While the latter strategy was mostly adopted in research on
infrahumanization that measured the attribution of secondary emotions (e.g. Leyens et al., 2001), the former process through which people attribute more humanness to traits that are known to be typical in describing the in-group was recently documented by Paladino and Vaes (2009).
The first two studies examined the hypothesis in the context of comparative evaluations between in- and out-groups. Only in-group humanization was predicted as a function of mortality salience. Testing this in-group specific hypothesis in a
comparative context provides a stringent test of the hypothesis that in-group
humanization and out-group dehumanization are driven by different processes. Still, such a dual-motive explanation necessitates that the in-group humanization effect as a function of mortality salience also occurs independent of inter-group comparisons. Therefore, in Study 3 the comparative context was dropped. In addition, the last study directly tested the assumption that humanizing the in-group functions to attenuate the accessibility of death-related cognitions. Both Italian and American cultures, with three different out-groups, were utilized in this research so as to examine the generalizablity of these ideas.
Study 1
Study 1 tested the hypothesis in an Italian – Japanese inter-group context. Humanness was measured by combining typicality and humanity judgments on a set of traits controlling for their valence. Humanity indices were calculated for both the Italian in-group and the Japanese out-group and their strength was compared between the mortality salience and control conditions. We hypothesize that the in-group will be perceived as having more uniquely human characteristics when death thoughts are activated. We did not expect mortality salience to influence the attribution of
uniquely human traits to the out-group.
Method
Participants
Ninety-seven undergraduates (65 females and 32 males) at a large Italian University participated voluntarily. One participant was not Italian and two did not complete the questionnaire and were therefore discarded from the analysis.
Procedure and Materials
Questionnaires were identical except for the mortality salience manipulation and the order in which the in-group and the out-group were judged, which were crossed between groups. The materials were presented in the following order.
Mortality salience (MS). As in previous TMT studies (e.g., Greenberg et al.,
1992) participants in the mortality salience condition were presented with two open-ended questions. Specifically, the death questions were: “Please briefly describe the emotions that the thought of your own death arouses in you” and to jot down “What you think happens to you as you physically die and once you are physically dead?” Participants in the control condition were presented with a non-death related aversive
topic: to briefly describe the emotions that having to talk in front of a big audience and facing a major school/work failure elicits in them.
Delay. The manipulation was followed by the Positive and Negative Affect
Scale (PANAS, Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988; see Terracciano, McCrae, & Costa, 2003 for the Italian version), a 20-item mood measure. This delay was included to allow time for thoughts of death to fade from consciousness because previous
research has established that this is when defenses against mortality salience are most readily activated (e.g., Greenberg et al., 1994). In addition, although past research consistently demonstrates that mortality salience effects are not attributable to mood (e.g., Greenberg et al., 1994), including the PANAS allowed for assessment of this possibility1.
Group ratings. In a pretest, 10 undergraduate students generated traits that
could belong to any of 4 categories: typical Italian traits, atypical Italian traits, typical Japanese traits or atypical Japanese traits. All the generated traits were listed and presented to a second group of pretest participants (N = 63) that were asked to rate the extent to which each trait was typical in describing Italians and Japanese on separate rating scales. Based on their ratings a total of 30 traits were selected: 10 stereotypical Italian traits (e.g. artistic, friendly), 10 stereotypical Japanese traits (e.g. efficient, tenacious), 5 stereotypical Italian traits (e.g. cold, exotic) and 5 counter-stereotypical Japanese traits (e.g. lazy, uneducated). Consistent with the methodology used by Vaes and Paladino (in press), these 30 traits were listed in a single random order and judged on the extent to which they were typical in describing the Italians and typical in describing the Japanese. The order of these judgments was
counterbalanced so that half of participants first judged the in-group while the other half was presented with the out-group first. On a subsequent page, participants were
asked to judge the human uniqueness of the traits on a scale ranging from 1 (this trait
has a clear animal heritage) to 7 (this is a uniquely human trait). Prior research (Vaes
& Paladino, in press) established that the order in which the typicality and the humanity ratings are made does not influence with the amount of humanness that is attributed to the in-group or the out-group. Following these measures, participants were also asked to rate the desirability of each trait (1 = not at all desirable; 7 =
extremely desirable).
On the final page participants were asked to report their age, gender and native language. At the end of the questionnaire participants were thanked and fully
debriefed.
Results
Infrahumanization
To measure the attribution of humanness to the in-group, within-participant correlations were calculated between in-group typicality and humanity ratings. Valence was controlled for by partialling it out of these correlations; and further, in order to normalize distributions, these correlations were transformed to Fisher Zs (see Michela, 1990). For ease of interpretation, mean Fisher Z values were transformed back and reported as correlation coefficients. In-group humanness was then analyzed with a 2 (MS: death vs. control) X 2 (Order: in-group ratings first vs. out-group ratings first) mixed-model ANOVA. This analysis resulted in the expected main effect of MS, F (1, 90) = 4.67, p = .03, p2 = .05. When mortality was made salient,
participants perceived the in-group as more human (M = .25) than in the control condition (M = .16). In addition, a significant Order main effect emerged, F (1, 90) = 26.39, p < .001, p2 = .23, showing that the in-group was seen as more human when
the out-group was judged first (M = .32) compared to when the in-group was judged first (M = .08).
Calculating a similar index for the attributions of humanness to the out-group and looking at the moderation of MS and Order, revealed no significant effects (all Fs < 1).
We conducted an additional paired sample t-test directly comparing the attribution of humanness to the in-group and the out-group. This analysis revealed that participants judged the in-group (M = .20) as more human than the out-group (M = -.11), t(92) = 7.33, p < .001, p2= .37 replicating the infrahumanization effect. Valence
In addition to the correlations between typicality and humanity ratings, we also calculated within-participant correlations between typicality and valence ratings in order to look at participants’ evaluation of the groups. Now, humanity judgments were partialled out of these correlations2. Apart from a significant Order effect for the in-group valence ratings, F (1, 90) = 6.75, p = .01, p2 = .07, showing that the in-group
was seen more positively when out-group judgments were made first (M = .30) compared to the reverse order (M = .14), no other effects emerged. Again, as with humanity ratings, in-group judgments were accentuated when the out-group was judged first, and comparisons were likely.
Directly comparing the in-group with the out-group in terms of valence an additional paired-sample t-test was conducted. Curiously, participants actually judged the traits viewed as typical of Japanese (M = .30) more positively than the traits associated with the Italian in-group (M = .22), t(92) = 1.98, p = .05, p2 = .04.
The present study tested the hypothesis that mortality salience increases people’s need to humanize their in-group. When asked to judge the Italian in-group and a Japanese out-group, participants first reminded of death responded by
attributing more humanness to the traits deemed typical of the in-group. Ratings of the Japanese out-group were not affected by the MS manipulation. Thus, the results of Study 1 confirmed our hypothesis that humanizing the in-group can serve as a defense against the activation of death thoughts.
Critically, these effects were found to be independent of valence. Moreover, these findings occurred in the context of an out-group that was clearly liked. Indeed, ratings of valence depicted even more positive views of the Japanese out-group than the Italian in-group. The divergent findings between perceptions of humanness and positivity highlight the importance of humanness independent of the more traditional way assessing attitudes between groups. The order effect that emerged, although not hypothesized, is consistent with previous findings indicating that comparisons to particular out-groups can affect perceptions of the in-group (Kervyn, Yzerbyt,
Demoulin, & Judd, 2008), and that in general, rating another group prior to one’s own should create a more comparative context in which to evaluate one’s own group.
These findings were also consistent with previous infrahumanization research: overall the Italian participants tended to humanize the in-group more than the out-group. It is important to note that participants’ valence judgments were not moderated by the mortality salience manipulation. Given that we find similar results in all studies, we will elaborate on the discrepancy between our and previous findings of in-group favoritism and out-in-group derogation as a function of mortality salience
(Castano et al, 2002; Harmon-Jones, Greenberg, Solomon, & Simon, 1996) in the General Discussion.
Study 2
In Study 2 we tested whether these effects could be replicated in another inter-group situation. This time, in contrast to the Japanese, a lower status out-inter-group was selected. The Slavic people incorporate a large and heterogeneous group of
nationalities that range from the Balkans and Eastern Europe deep into Russia. This more abstract group label was deliberately chosen in order to decrease the possibility that the group would be perceived as worldview threatening.
The study also included an assessment of self-esteem to examine whether humanization of one’s in-group in response to mortality salience is greater among people who lack other self-protective resources. Previous research has shown that individuals low in self-esteem show increased anxiety and cling more to their
worldview in order to manage death concerns (Harmon-Jones et al., 1997; Greenberg et al., 1992). Thus, to the extent that in-group humanization protects people from death awareness, we reasoned that individuals with low self-esteem should show an especially robust in-group humanization effect in response to MS.
Method
Participants
Sixty undergraduates (28 men and 32 females) at a large Italian University volunteered to participate in the present experiment.
Procedure and Materials
Participants were presented with a questionnaire containing all the materials and the experimental manipulations.
Self-esteem. The first scale consisted of a 16-item trait self-esteem scale in
which participants were asked to indicate the extent to which each item applied to them on a scale ranging from 1 (completely not) to 5 (totally). The scale was adapted
from Heatherton and Polivy (1991), but excluded instructions that orient people to answer how they feel at the moment. The items used (e.g., “I feel confident about my abilities,” and “I am worried about what other people think of me [reverse scored]”) formed a reliable scale (α = .77).
MS. On the following page half of participants were presented with the same
mortality salience induction as in Study 1 except that participants in the control condition were asked to report their feelings in response to their favorite TV show. Once again, the PANAS was used to create a delay between the mortality salience manipulation and the humanness ratings.
Group ratings. The group ratings were gathered using a similar method as in
Study 1. Again, a small group of pretest participants generated traits that were explicitly asked to be stereotypical or counter-stereotypical of Italians and Slavs. Traits that were named as both stereotypical and as counter-stereotypical of the same group were eliminated. Apart from these traits, all of the 129 others were included in the questionnaire to avoid any selection bias. Having to judge such a large number of traits also diminished the possibility that participants were mindful of their typicality and humanness ratings. As in Study 1, all traits were judged on four scales: in-group typicality, out-group typicality, humanness and valence. As in Study 1, half of the subjects judged the in-group first, while the other half judged the out-group first. The humanity and valence judgments followed, in that order.
At the end of the study, they were thanked for their participation and fully debriefed.
Results
As in Study 1, partial within-participant correlations were calculated between in-group typicality and humanity ratings controlling for their valence, and then were transformed to Fisher Zs for analysis (and back to correlation coefficients for
reporting). These humanity indices for the in-group were analyzed in an ANOVA 2 (MS: death vs. control) X 2 (Order: in-group ratings first vs. out-group ratings first). As expected, a significant MS main effect emerged, F (1, 56) = 4.07, p = .05, p2 = .
07. Replicating the results of Study 1, participants humanized their in-group more when mortality was made salient (M = .15) compared to the control condition (M = . 09). No other effects emerged from this analysis.
In contrast, and in line with expectations, no effects reached conventional levels of significance when a similar analysis was performed on the out-group humanity correlations. Still, a marginally significant interaction between Order and MS emerged, F (1, 55) = 3.40, p = .07, p2 = .06. Even though none of the pairwise
comparisons was significant, this interaction showed a cross-over effect. Specifically, the out-group tended to be judged less human in the MS (M = -.14) compared to the control condition (M = -.10) when the in-group had been judged first. The reverse happened when the out-group was the first target to be judged (M = -. 10 vs. M = -.15 for the MS and control condition, respectively).
As in Study 1, an additional paired sample t-test directly comparing in-group and out-group judgments revealed a basic infrahumanization bias showing that overall the in-group (M = .12) was judged as more human than the out-group (M = -.12), t(59) = 12.72, p < .001, p2 = .74.
Valence
For judgments of valence, in contrast to Study 1, the in-group (M = .38) was judged more positively than the out-group (M = -.18), t(59) = 10.04, p < .001, p2 = .
64. As in Study 1, the valence judgments were not influenced by MS. However, we did find an unanticipated interaction between MS and Order on the in-group valence correlation, F (1, 56) = 4.24, p = .04, p2 = .07. Specifically, in the MS condition, the
group was judged more positively when the out-group was judged before the in-group (M = .44) compared to the reverse order (M = .27), t(29) = 2.76, p = .01, p2 = .
21.
Self-esteem
In order to examine the hypothesis that individuals with low self-esteem would show a robust in-group humanization effect in response to MS, we regressed the humanity–in-group typicality correlation on the dummy coded MS condition variable, the standardized aggregated self-esteem index and their interaction term. As expected, the interaction term was a significant predictor, = -.37, SE = .03, p = .03. In line with our predictions, while self-esteem did not affect the degree that
participants humanized the in-group when thoughts of death were not salient, = .20,
SE = .02, p > .29, in the MS condition there was a significant effect of self-esteem,
= -.36, SE = .02, p = .05, such that lower levels predicted increased humanization (see Figure 1). No significant effects appeared performing the same analysis on the out-group humanization index.
Discussion
Replicating results of Study 1, the data supported the hypothesis that priming mortality salience increases the degree to which participants humanized the in-group, but does not affect humanization of the out-group. These findings occurred in the context of evaluating a different out-group than in Study 1. In addition, by including a measure of self-esteem, this study enabled us to examine whether the self-protective mechanism of self-esteem, which has previously been found to moderate vulnerability
to TMT defenses (e.g., Harmon-Jones et al., 1997), also moderates the in-group humanization response. Supporting this, when mortality concerns were activated, people lower in self-esteem humanized the in-group more, whereas this same relationship was not observed in the absence of mortality salience. This finding provides additional validation for the hypothesis that the humanization response represents a defense consistent with terror management theory.
In addition, the moderation of in-group humanization as a function of self-esteem (and MS) also sheds light on the understanding of self-self-esteem more generally. Greenberg (2008) recently proposed that “a basic prerequisite for self-esteem is the belief that we humans are more than just animals (p. 51).” The finding that high self-esteem protected people from a defensive need to bolster the perceptions of
humanness for their group suggests that individuals high in self-esteem may already be secure in such perception. While researchers have often defined self-esteem on a positive-negative dimension, the current result broadens this perspective and confirms the TMT analysis of self-esteem.
As in Study 1 and confirming the infrahumanization bias, overall, the in-group was judged as more human than the out-group. Unlike Study 1, participants judged the Slavic out-group more negatively than the in-group. Although once again MS did not influence positivity ratings, it did interact with order, such that in the MS
condition the in-group was judged more positively when they were evaluated
subsequent to the out-group. As such, the contrast effect that was observed in Study 1 only appeared in the MS condition in Study 23.
Study 3
In Study 3, the hypothesis that humanization of the in-group functions to provide protection from existential concerns was directly examined by measuring the
accessibility of death-related thoughts subsequent to presenting participants with an opportunity to humanize their in-group or not. In this study, participants were asked to judge either an in-group (Americans) or an out-group (British) and were given the opportunity to humanize them, subsequent to a mortality reminder. We expect that, as in Studies 1 and 2, mortality salience will increase participants’ humanization of their in-group. Moreover, we expect that the accessibility of death related thoughts should reflect the degree that people humanized their in-group.
Method
Participants
Participants were 96 undergraduates (15 males and 78 females, 3 did not report gender) at a university in the United States.
Procedure and Materials
The participants were given identical packets with the exception of the
mortality salience prime and the group (in-group: Americans, out-group: British) they rated. These two variables were crossed among all participants, resulting in four conditions, and materials were completed in the following order:
MS. In contrast to Studies 1 and 2, the MS manipulation consisted of 15
true-false questions about death (e.g., Greenberg, et al., 1995). Sample items include: “I am very much afraid to die” and "The thought of death seldom enters my mind.” The control condition was comprised of comparable items about experiencing severe pain. The PANAS was inserted immediately afterwards as a delay.
Group ratings. As in Studies 1 and 2, American undergraduates (N = 66),
different from the participants in this study, self-generated four sets of traits: typical American, typical British, atypical American, and atypical British. From this list, forty-five traits (12 = stereotypical American traits, e.g., patriotic, greedy, 11 =
stereotypical British traits, e.g., courteous, proper, 11 = counter-stereotypical
American traits e.g., articulate, modest, and 11 = counter-stereotypical British traits, e.g., sloppy, irrational) remained after removing synonymous and very infrequently listed words. These traits comprised the measure in the current study. In contrast to the previous studies, participants indicated the extent to which the traits were typical of American or British people, rather than both, and then, as in the prior studies, perceptions of humanness and desirability were reported.
Death thought accessibility. Research indicates that, when thoughts about
mortality are explicitly primed, death-related cognitions begin to increase in
accessibility after a short delay (e.g., Arndt et al., 1997) unless participants engage in a defense that ameliorates the threat (e.g., self-affirmation, Schmeichel & Martens, 2005). In this study, death-related cognitions were examined with the word fragment task used in past research (e.g., Arndt et al., 1997). Within this list of 16 word
fragments, five can be completed with either a death-related or non-death-related word (e.g., C O F F _ _, as coffin or coffee). More responses completed with death-related words indicate more accessible cognitions about death.
In the end and further probing for participants’ awareness of the true purpose of the study, an open-ended question was posed. None of the participants reported to be knowledgeable about the fact that the study was measuring associations between humanness and particular groups.
Results
Infrahumanization
First, we conducted a 2 (MS: death vs. control) X 2 (Group: Americans vs. British) between-subjects ANOVA to test if American participants rated fellow Americans in more human terms when death was salient. As in Studies 1 and 2, the
humanness dependent variable was calculated using within-participant Fisher-Z correlations between the typicality of each trait and the humanness of each trait while controlling for the valence. Again, mean correlation coefficients are reported. Results revealed a main effect for Group, F (1, 92) = 4.60, p = .03, p2 = .05, such that
participants rated the typical traits of British people as more human (M = .13) than traits for the average American (M = .04). There was no main effect for MS (p = .6). As predicted, there was also a significant interaction between MS and Group, F (1, 92) = 4.85, p =.02, p2 = .05. Pairwise comparisons revealed that participants rated
traits typical of Americans as more human under MS, F (1, 92) = 3.9, p = .05, p2 = .
08. (Ms: death =.10, control .00), whereas there was no significant effect of MS on ratings for the humanness of British people, F (1, 92) = 1.6, p = .22, p2 = .03. (Ms:
death =.09, control =.16). Together, these results support the hypotheses that
reminders of mortality engender group members to rate their own group, but not other groups, as more human.
Valence
As with the ratings of the Japanese by the Italian participants in Study 1, the Americans rated typically British traits (M = .45) as more desirable than American traits, (M = .08), F (1, 86) = 39.9, p <.01, p2 = .29. There was no effect of MS (p = .3)
and no interaction effect (p = .6) on valence.
Death thought accessibility
In addition to replicating the effects of MS on humanization, Study 3 was designed to test the specific hypothesis that humanizing the in-group functions to buffer people from existential worries associated with death. Our hypothesis was specifically that humanization of the in-group, and not the out-group, would be
associated with less death thought accessibility when participants had been primed with mortality salience.
To examine this, we examined the correlations between humanization scores and death accessibility for each condition. Supporting our hypothesis, the results revealed a significant correlation only within the mortality salient and American rated condition, r = -.47, p = .03, such that the more participants humanized the in-group, the less accessible were thoughts of death. No other correlations approached
significance (ps > .24; death/British, r =.21; control/British, r = -.05; control/Americans, r = .08)4.
Discussion
In line with the former studies, Study 3 showed that reminders of mortality increased the humanness that was attributed to the in-group. In a non-comparative context, in which participants either judged the group or the out-group, the in-group was judged as more human when mortality was made salient compared to the control condition. As in the former studies, a similar effect when judging the out-group was not found. In addition, participants that humanized the in-out-group were found to have fewer death thoughts subsequent to a mortality reminder. When they
humanized the out-group under MS, death accessibility was not influenced. Together these results demonstrate the buffering function of humanizing the in-group in response to mortality reminders.
Unlike the former studies, Americans did not infrahumanize the out-group compared to the in-group. Different reasons could lie at the basis of this discrepancy. First of all, the present study introduced both groups separately and asked participants to judge either one or the other. In this way, the in-group and the out-group were not directly compared, diminishing the need to differentiate between them. Moreover, the
British are likely seen as a high status, competent out-group. Previous research has shown that these kinds of groups are humanized most compared to other out-groups and therefore, not always seen as less human than the in-group (see Vaes & Paladino, in press, for an example in an Italian context). Importantly, and in line with our hypothesis, however, the in-group was seen as significantly more human when mortality was made salient.
General Discussion
The present set of studies sought to answer the question: why is humanness so important in shaping one's social identity? Given the critical function of the group for terror management (Castano & Dechesne, 2005; Castano et al., 2004), and in light of research showing that mortality concerns increase people’s motivation to distance themselves from their animal nature (e.g., Goldenberg et al., 2001), the hypothesis that attributions of humanness to one’s cultural group functions as a defense against the mortality awareness was tested. Three studies, utilizing different inter-group situations in two countries found converging evidence for this hypothesis.
In all three studies, death reminders increased participants’ need to humanize the in-group, suggesting that humanizing the in-group protects people from death thoughts. In Study 2, results indicated that individuals low in self-esteem humanized the in-group significantly more than individuals with high self-esteem when mortality was salient. Given that previous research (Arndt & Greenberg, 1999; Greenberg et al., 1992; Harmon-Jones et al., 1997; Kashima, Halloran, Yuki, & Kashima, 2004) showed that high self-esteem provides protection from threats associated with death concerns, the result of Study 2 provide additional evidence that in-group
humanization functions as a terror management defense5 . Study 3 provided a final piece of the puzzle. Not only did individuals humanize the in-group more when death
was made salient, but the more they did this, the less thoughts about death remained activated. Similar effects were not found as a function of humanness ratings for the out-group confirming the idea that in-group and out-group humanization are driven by different processes. Together these results clearly demonstrate that mortality
awareness not only increases the need to humanize the in-group, but that those who engage in the process successfully manage the existential worries related to death reminders.
Kinds of groups
The present studies examined attributions of humanness to cultural groups, and more specifically, to people’s national identities. This focus, however, brings to light the question of whether humanizing any in-group would function to ameliorate existential threats. Although empirical research is needed to answer this question, a cursory look at the existent literature suggests that humanizing other groups may serve a terror management function as well. First of all, both TMT and
infrahumanization effects have been observed in a large variety of groups. Besides national groups, TMT research has shown mortality salience effects on common-bond groups (Yzerbyt, Castano, & Vermeulen, 1999, as cited in Castano & Dechesne, 2005), sports teams (Dechesne et al., 2000) and religious groups (Greenberg et al., 1990) to name but a few. In a similar vein, the infrahumanization effect has been observed for a large variety of groups ranging from conflicting regional groups (Leyens et al., 2001; Paladino et al., 2002), professional categories (Vaes et al., 2003), and football teams (Gaunt, Sindic, & Leyens, 2005). In both lines of research one variable seems to be fundamental: the perception of the group as a meaningful entity. Castano and colleagues (2002; Castano, 2004) showed the importance of belonging to a meaningful entity as a defense strategy against mortality concerns. Consistently,
Demoulin et al. (2009) found that augmenting the meaningfulness of the inter-group situation increases the infrahumanization bias. As such, for now, the tentative
argument is that humanizing any meaningful in-group has the potential to assist in the management of death concerns.
Valence Judgments
The positivity/negativity of the traits attributed to the in-group and the out-group was measured in all studies. In Studies 1 and 3, the out-out-group tended to be judged positively, more so than the in-group. Only in Study 2, when Italian participants rated Slavs, was there evidence that the out-group was rated more negatively. Despite these differences in attitudes toward the out-group, the in-group humanization effect emerged in each study. This suggests that the in-group
humanization effect is largely independent from prejudice.
Previous research found an in-group positivity bias as a function of a mortality manipulation (Castano et al., 2002; Harmon-Jones et al., 1996). Specifically, people tend to judge their group more positively when confronted with mortality reminders. A similar finding was not observed in the present studies. Some procedural
differences should be noted that could lie at the basis of this discrepancy. In all of the current studies humanity judgments were made before the valence judgments,
meaning that participants specified the in-group in human terms before they made any valence judgments. In this way, their need to manage death thoughts may have already been resolved through the humanization of the in-group decreasing the need to favor the in-group on a pure valence dimension (see McGregor et al., 1998 for evidence that defending in one domain decreases the need to subsequently defend in another).
Reminders of mortality have also been found to increase violence towards worldview threatening others (McGregor et al., 1998) and support for war against these threats (Landau et al., 2004) even if it kills innocent civilians (Pyszczynski et al., 2006). Mortality awareness has even been shown to increase people’s support for, and willingness to become, a suicide bomber to defend one’s beliefs (Pyszczynski et al., 2006). In light of these findings, it is reasonable to ask why wasn’t the out-group dehumanized in any of the present studies and why didn’t de-humanizing the out-group reduce death-thought accessibility?
We believe the answer is likely a function of the out-groups used in this research. None of the out-groups in the current studies were likely to be worldview threatening for participants. A directly threatening other, however, could put out-group dehumanization in the forefront. A recent study by Hayes, Schimel and Williams (2008) showed that hearing about the annihilation of people who threaten one’s worldview decreases the need to defend that worldview. A sample of Christian participants who received information about the Muslimization of Nazareth responded with increased death-thought accessibility replicating the results of Schimel et al. (2007). Interestingly, this increase in death awareness disappeared when threatened participants additionally learned that a large number of Muslims died in a plane crash. If the death of worldview violators has a buffering effect, it is possible that other strategies that psychologically diminish the threatening other could have a similar function. Threats could motivate people to dehumanize those that are seen as responsible, decreasing death concerns that were caused by the worldview threat in the first place. Future research should further explore the role of out-group
dehumanization in buffering the psychological threat associated with the prospect of death.
Conclusions
Recently, a surge of interest in humanness as a dimension of social perception has marked different lines of research (e.g., Haslam, 2006; Leyens et al., 2007). This research, however, has offered little insight into the motivations that underlie the humanization of the in-group. TMT offers a theoretical framework to explain why humanness is so important in shaping social identity. In short, TMT posits that humans buffer the potential terror of death by immersing themselves in systems of meaning and value that endure beyond death. In so far as animals are devoid of these systems, people emphasize their human uniqueness as a means to distance themselves from death. It is in the merger between TMT and research on infrahumanization that insight can be derived into why people endow their own cultural group with uniquely human characteristics and view their own group, alone, as “the people.”
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Footnotes
1. In all studies we looked at this possibility. In the first two studies significant mood effects emerged as a consequence of the death manipulation (F (1, 92) = 15.97, p < .001, p2 = .15 and F (1, 56) = 4.57, p = .04, p2 = .08, for Studies 1
and 2, respectively). In both studies, participants reported decrements in positive mood in the MS condition. Including mood as a covariate, however, did not change the effect of mortality salience on the humanness that was attributed to the in-group. In Study 3, no mood effects were found.
2. Results were the same when humanity judgments were not partialled out.
3. It is possible that this effect is because the Italians perceive the Slavic out-group as lacking competence and warmth. Lacking both dimensions, it is conceivable that an inter-group comparison process through which the in-group is judged in light of the characteristics of the out-group becomes less urgent (Kervyn et al., 2008). Only then, when mortality is made salient, and individuals are especially motivated to cling to their own cultural group, are they inclined to anchor their judgments of the in-group contrasting them with those of the out-group.
4. Because negative attitudes toward the out-group can buffer death thoughts (e. g., Hayes, Schimel & Williams, 2008; and indeed in Study 3 there was a trend for Americans to attribute less humanness to the out-group when mortality was salient), we did not predict, and found no evidence of, an interaction between MS and group rated on death thought accessibility (interaction, p = .45). Consistent with the pattern of correlations, however, we did find a 3-way interaction between attributions of humanity, mortality salience and group rated, β = - .51, se = 2.1, p <.02.
5. It is important to acknowledge that in some studies MS effects were especially pronounced for high self-esteem participants (e.g., McGregor et al., 2007). However, most research including the current work, has shown that high self-esteem, whether trait or state, reduces the need to act defensively under MS (e.g., Arndt & Greenberg, 1999).
Acknowledgments
Jeroen Vaes, Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialization (DPSS), University of Padova, Italy; Nathan A. Heflick and Jamie L. Goldenberg, Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, USA.
The authors would like to thank Irene Gecchele, Eugene Reyes, Alessandra Bianca, Elena Sarto and Ryan Thurman, for their help with data collection. In addition, the first author is grateful to the members of the SPECOLA research group for their valuable comments on a previous draft of this article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jeroen Vaes, Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialization (DPSS), Via Venezia, 8, 35131 Padova, Italy
e-mail: jeroen.vaes@unipd.it
Figure Captions:
Figure 1: Attribution of humanness to the in-group as a function of mortality salience and level of self-esteem (Study 2).
