Susan Fiske — Varieties of Dehumanization

From UCLA: Situationist Contributor, Susan Fiske recently spoke at the UCLA Psychology Diversity Science Initiative Lecture Series.

Abstract: Americans are becoming ever more aware of our huge social-class divides, for example in income inequality. Even outside socio-economic status, other forms of status divide us (Fiske, 2011). Status-comparison compels people, even as it stresses, depresses, and divides us. Comparison is only natural, but the collateral damage reveals envy upward and scorn downward, which arguably poison people and their relationships. Based on one of the Stereotype Content Model’s two primary dimensions, status/competence, several experiments-using questionnaire, psychometric, response-time, electro-myographic, and neuroimaging data-illustrate the dynamics of envy up and scorn down. All is not lost, however, as other experiments show how to mitigate the effects of envy and scorn.

Initial studies suggest the importance of status, as people value other people by their apparent social status (Cikara, Farnsworth, Harris, & Fiske, 2010). Other data show how scorn down minimizes thought about another’s mind; contempt deactivates mentalizing processes (Harris & Fiske, 2006). Turning to envy up, other studies demonstrate that Schadenfreude (malicious joy) targets envied outgroups (Cikara & Fiske, in press-a). However, counter-stereotypic information, empathy, and outcome dependency can mitigate both scorn and envy (Ames & Fiske, under review; Cikara & Fiske, in press-b; Harris & Fiske, 2007).

Related Situationist posts:

• The Situation of Inequality
• Laura Kubzansky on Stress and Resilience
• Ichiro Kawachi on Income Inequality and Population Health
• Malcolm Gladwell on the Situation of Equality Discourse
• The Situation of Inequality
• The Situation of the Inequality Getting Inequalitier
• Susan Fiske’s New Book
• The Situational Effects of (In)Equality,
• The Situational Consequences of Poverty on Brains,
• Inequality and the Unequal Situation of Mental and Physical Health,
• The Interior Situation of Intergenerational Poverty,
• Rich Brains, Poor Brains?,
• Perceptions of Income Distribution and Preferences for Redistribution,
• Psychology of Inequality
• The Inherited Situation of Racial Inequality
• Even monkeys know when they’re being treated unfairly
• A Discussion about (In)Equality,
• The Interior Situational Reaction to Inequality,
• Tort Law’s Distributional Injustice
• Susan Fiske Discusses her Work on Different Types of Prejudices
• The Situation of Objectification
• Women’s Situational Bind
• You Shouldn’t Stereotype Stereotypes