The Effects of Dehumanization on Human Traits

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Torture, degradation and humiliation seem to involve the supposition that you're dealing with people. Sometimes when you view somebody as morally wrong, a morally bad individual, you in fact, you exaggerate their human traits. So if you're if you're hurting him as instrumental, you'll tend to dehumanize him because he doesn't matter. He's not much of a person anyway. If you want to get somebody to hurt somebody else in response to something that that person did, if you focus on their moral traits, you'll do better. This has political resonance. Think think how you would act if you want people to lash out an immigrants or just treat them as as dispensable

Within every person’s mind there is on ongoing battle between reason and emotion. It’s not always a battle, of course; very often the two can work together. But at other times, our emotions push us toward actions that our reason would counsel against. Paul Bloom is a well-known psychologist and author who wrote the provocatively-titled book Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, and is currently writing a book about the nature of cruelty. While I sympathize with parts of his anti-empathy stance, I try to stick up for the importance of empathy in the right circumstances. We have a great discussion about the relationship between reason and emotion. Support Mindscape on Patreon or Paypal. Paul Bloom received his Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from MIT. He is currently the Ragen Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Yale University. His research ranges over a variety of topics in moral psychology and childhood development. He is the author of several books and the recipient of numerous prizes, including the $1 million Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize in 2017. Web site Yale web page Wikipedia page TED talk on The Origins of Pleasure Amazon page Publications Online courses at Coursera Twitter See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.