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The failure to recognize other people as fellow human beings is considered to be a fundamental enabler of violence across cultures and throughout history ( 1– 4). Known as dehumanization, this process is thought to have allowed colonists to exterminate indigenous peoples as if they were insects and whites to own blacks as if they were property ( 5– 7). The dehumanization hypothesis developed amid theories arguing that violence is motivated primarily by instrumental gain or impulsive reactions, and that a greater appreciation of our shared humanity would lead to more peaceful relations ( 8– 10). Although these theories differ in focus, collectively they assume that violence is restrained in part by a sense of moral obligation and sympathy toward fellow human beings, whom we feel are entitled to rights and protections that prohibit violence against them. In this framework, dehumanization causes perpetrators to perceive victims as nonhuman and, therefore, not entitled to moral obligation or sympathy, thus enabling perpetrators to act out their violent impulses free of inhibition and without remorse ( 11– 15). MAKE VISUALS GREAT AGAIN 2.65 UNINSTALL FREE

The basic premise on which the dehumanization hypothesis depends-that violence is restrained by moral inhibitions against harming fellow human beings-is in flux. Recent ethnographic and historical analyses, and classical works on the evolution of cooperation and the sociology of crime, indicate that descriptively, many perpetrators feel their violence is righteous and that their victims deserve what is coming to them.