Of Filthy Pigs and Subhuman Mongrels: Dehumanization, Disgust, and Intergroup Prejudice

Representing others as less-than-human can have profound consequences, delegitimizing the target and removing them from protections otherwise afforded to “people.” This review explores recent de- velopments in research on both outgroup dehumanization and the emotion of (intergroup) disgust, fac- tors increasingly receiving attention for their importance in explaining intergroup relations. We specifi- cally explore topics such as the human-animal divide (i.e., the sense that humans are different from and superior to non-human animals) and intergroup disgust sensitivity (i.e., revulsion reactions toward out- groups, particularly those foreign in nature). We conclude that: a) human outgroup prejudices (e.g., ra- cism) find their origins, in part, in human-animal relations; b) our expressed revulsion toward other groups plays a meaningful role in explaining bias, beyond ideology and related emotions (e.g., inter- group anxiety); c) the field needs to integrate dehumanization and disgust into existing theories of in- tergroup prejudice to better understand the ways we psychologically distance ourselves from outgroups.