The Emotional Cost of Humanity

Abstract

Although mind perception is a basic part of social interaction, people often dehumanize others by denying them mental states. Many theories suggest that dehumanization happens in order to facilitate aggression or account for past immorality. We suggest a novel motivation for dehumanization: to avoid affective costs. We show that dehumanization of stigmatized targets (e.g., drug addicts) relative to nonstigmatized targets is strongest for those who are motivated to avoid emotional exhaustion. In Experiment 1, participants anticipated more exhaustion from helping, and attributed less mind to, a stigmatized target and anticipated exhaustion partially mediated the influence of stigma on mind attribution. Experiment 2 manipulated anticipated exhaustion prior to an empathy plea and revealed that the influence of stigma on mind attribution was only present when people anticipated high levels of emotional exhaustion.

Keywords

dehumanization mind perception stigma compassion empathy

When we interact with other people, we typically take the intentional stance (Dennett, 1987): We assume that others have minds, which means that they have intentions, plans, and goals (Epley & Waytz, 2010; Harris & Fiske, 2009) as well as experiences of pleasure, pain, and emotions (Gray, Gray, & Wegner, 2007). Yet we often engage in dehumanization: the denial of mental states to other human beings (Fiske, 2013; Harris & Fiske, 2006, 2011; Haslam, 2006; Haslam & Loughnan, 2014; Leyens et al., 2001). Some of the worst atrocities in human society—from individual aggression and violence (Baron-Cohen, 2011) to wide-scale prejudice and genocide (Allport, 1954; Kelman, 1973)—involve blatant acts of dehumanization. Although such egregious dehumanization is relatively rare, more subtle forms of dehumanization are more widespread. Although less extreme, these everyday biases in social perception predict whether we assign others moral rights (Bastian, Laham, Wilson, Haslam, & Koval, 2011; Cikara, Farnsworth, Harris, & Fiske, 2010) and help them in times of need (Cuddy, Rock, & Norton, 2007).

People are especially likely to dehumanize others who are perceived as low on both warmth and competence—that is, “extreme out-groups” such as drug addicts (Fiske, 2013). These stigmatized targets elicit disgust and little compassion (Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002). In general, people do not spontaneously attribute mental states to stigmatized out-groups as measured by the use of mental state verbs (Harris & Fiske, 2011). Studies also find reduced activation of social cognition brain networks when viewing such targets, consistent with the idea that people are engaging in less mentalizing for these groups (Harris & Fiske, 2006).

According to traditional accounts of dehumanization, people dehumanize others when they want to engage in immoral behavior (Bandura, 1990). Compassion for others’ suffering typically inhibits immoral behavior (Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, & Pastorelli, 1996). People can regulate compassion by denying victims the mental states that would elicit compassion, such as intelligent thought and the ability to experience pain. Historically, acts of genocide, torture, and violence often involve dehumanizing judgments and expressions, such as overt comparisons between victims and disgusting animals (Bandura, 1990). Similarly, people implicitly associate Black people with apes, and this dehumanizing association predicts greater tolerance of harm against Black individuals and even death sentences handed down by the legal system to Black defendants (Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, & Jackson, 2008). In addition to facilitating aggression, dehumanization often helps people cope with past wrongdoing: When people are told that their in-group is responsible for past atrocities against an out-group, they infrahumanize out-group victims (Castano & Giner-Sorolla, 2006), which predicts reduced compassion (Čehajić, Brown, & González, 2009).

These accounts agree that dehumanization involves the downregulation of compassion and that helping others is threatening because it conflicts with other goals (such as the goal to harm others). As put by Bandura (2002, p. 108–109),

The joys and suffering of those with whom one identifies are more vicariously arousing then are those of strangers or of individuals who have been divested of human qualities. It is, therefore, difficult to mistreat humanized persons without suffering personal distress.

In the current research, we present a new type of dehumanization that has a distinct motivational underpinning: Even without intending to harm others, people may defensively dehumanize stigmatized targets to avoid becoming emotionally exhausted and overwhelmed by the act of helping these individuals.

Motivated Empathy

Empathy and compassion are powerful motivators of prosocial behavior (Batson, 2011; Decety, 2011; Eisenberg, 2000). Yet these affective states only have prosocial consequences once they are activated, and people are quite adept at regulating their emotions strategically to meet a variety of motivations and needs (Gross, 1998; Koole, 2009; Tamir, 2009). If people are motivated to avoid compassion, they may preempt compassion from emerging in the first place (Dovidio, Piliavin, Gaertner, Schroeder, & Clark, 1991; Hodges & Biswas-Diener, 2007; Zaki, 2014). For instance, when people expect helping to require a large (vs. small) commitment of time, they avoid situations that will elicit high levels of compassion (Shaw, Batson, & Todd, 1994). Similarly, when people expect helping to require a large financial investment—as in large-scale crises such as natural disasters and genocides—they downregulate compassion to avoid this cost (Cameron & Payne, 2011).

In addition to material costs, compassion can have emotional costs. A central component of workplace burnout and compassion fatigue is emotional exhaustion, a felt depletion of emotional energy and resources (Figley, 1995; Maslach, 1982). Exhaustion concerns have been discussed in medical contexts, where doctors and nurses must cope with intense suffering on a routine basis (Gleichgerrcht & Decety, 2012; Haque & Waytz, 2012). This chronic exposure carries an emotional cost: Nurses who humanize their patients report higher levels of emotional exhaustion (Vaes & Muratore, 2013), and among doctors, there is a positive association between emotional exhaustion and personal distress (Gleichgerrcht & Decety, 2013, 2014). Medical professionals develop emotion regulation strategies to cope with these affective costs. When viewing images of suffering, physicians (vs. nonphysicians) exhibit less activation of a network of brain regions previously associated with experiencing empathy for pain (Cheng et al., 2007). Similarly, physicians (vs. nonphysicians) do not differentiate painful and nonpainful stimulation of others at early processing stages (∼300 ms), suggesting spontaneous, proactive downregulation of empathy for pain (Decety, Yang, & Cheng, 2010).

Although dehumanization of stigmatized out-groups has been well documented in social psychology (for review, see Harris & Fiske, 2009), anticipated exhaustion has not been examined as a motivational process underpinning this effect. We posit that stigmatized targets elicit especially high levels of anticipated exhaustion because of the conflicting goals they activate during empathic situations—that is, the need to balance compassion against concerns about physical risk, contamination, and inefficacy of helping—leading perceivers to engage in defensive dehumanization. Emotional costs have been discussed as a motivation for empathy avoidance (Zaki, 2014), and correlational work suggests that anticipating affective rewards from helping is associated with empathic engagement (Davis et al., 1999). This prior work supports the inference that anticipating affective costs of helping may cause dehumanization. Dehumanization should occur as strategic, proactive coping in response to the severe exhaustion threat posed by stigmatized targets (Aspinwall & Taylor, 1997; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).

Overview of Experiments

The current experiments test whether anticipated exhaustion motivates dehumanization. In each experiment, we presented participants with one of two fictional characters in a vignette. In these vignettes, one of the characters was stigmatized (i.e., a drug addict), whereas the other character was not stigmatized (i.e., an uncontrollably ill person). To examine motivational underpinnings of dehumanization, we measured and manipulated anticipated exhaustion. If people anticipate more exhaustion from helping a stigmatized target, then this emotional cost could motivate defensive dehumanization. In Experiment 1, we tested whether stigma causes dehumanization and whether this effect is mediated by increased anticipated exhaustion. In Experiment 2, we used a moderation of process design to examine whether a manipulation of anticipated exhaustion moderates the effect of stigma on dehumanization.

Experiment 1: Measured Anticipated Exhaustion

In Experiment 1, we examined whether participants would anticipate greater exhaustion from helping a stigmatized target and whether this would account for increased dehumanization. In a pilot experiment on Amazon.com Mechanical Turk (MTurk), participants were asked to imagine helping a person who was homeless for either a stigmatizing reason (drug addiction) or a nonstigmatizing reason (uncontrollable illness) and anticipate how exhausting it would be to help this person. Participants anticipated more exhaustion from helping the addict (M = 4.01, standard deviation [SD] = 0.89) than the ill person (M = 3.69, SD = 0.83), F(1, 172) = 6.13, p = .014, 95% confidence interval (CI) = [0.07, 0.58], η_p ² = .03, d = .37, suggesting that emotional costs may be present to motivate dehumanization.

Method

Participants

We recruited 173 participants (85 female, 88 male, M _age = 37.00 years, SD _age = 13.92 years) for US$0.50 on MTurk. Participants were randomly assigned to a 2 (stigma: high, low) × 2(suffering intensity: high, low) between-subjects design. Power analysis using G*Power 3.1 revealed that to find a comparable stigma effect to the pilot study (d = .37) with 80% power and a one-tailed probability of .05, the required sample size is n = 184.

Materials and Procedures

Stigma manipulation

After giving consent, participants read one of four vignettes. To manipulate stigma, the vignette described a homeless person as a drug addict (stigmatized) or as having an uncontrollable illness (nonstigmatized), suffering at either low or high intensity. The vignettes were adapted from past work on empathy avoidance (Shaw et al., 1994):

This study is a pilot test of a new program being considered by the local university radio station. The new idea will involve airing appeals for volunteers for Friends-In-Need, a university organization pairing student helpers one-on-one with homeless people. We would like you to listen to the appeal of a local homeless man for a ‘Friend-In-Need’, then complete a reaction questionnaire.

All participants then saw an image of an adult Black male with the following vignette:

Harold Mitchell is 56 years old and has been in town for four months. He became homeless three years ago after losing his job due to drug addiction [uncontrollable illness]. His age and health problems have kept him from securing employment since then. He suffers from intense [mild] level of physical and emotional pain on a daily basis. He has no immediate family to assist him. What he needs is help in everyday type activities as well as some support in getting ‘back on his feet.’ Later in the experiment, we are going to show you a video of Harold’s appeal for help. Based on an earlier pilot study, many participants suggest that the video you are about to see is emotionally intense and distressing.

Anticipated exhaustion

Participants were then asked “How emotionally exhausting and draining do you think it would be to help Harold?” (from 1 = not at all emotionally exhausting to 5 = very emotionally exhausting). Participants were also asked “To what extent is Harold suffering?” (from 1 = not at all to 5 = very much) and “How much compassion do you think you will feel for Harold?” (from 1 = none to 5 = very much).

Writing task

To engage participants with the fictional character, participants were then instructed to briefly describe a day in Harold Mitchell’s life in an open-ended response.

Mind Scale

Participants completed the Mind Scale (Gray et al., 2007). Participants were told:

Now, we would like your impressions of Harold Mitchell. You will be asked to rate whether Harold possesses a variety of traits, by comparison to the average person. Please give us your immediate impression and be as honest as possible.

While viewing Harold’s picture, participants judged the degree to which Harold possessed each mental state (from 1 = not at all to 5 = very much). Items for the agency subscale were self-control, morality, emotion recognition, memory, planning, communication, and thought. Items for the experience subscale were hunger, fear, pain, pleasure, rage, desire, personality, consciousness, pride, embarrassment, and joy. Items were presented in random order. Intermixed with these items was a single exploratory item, “mind,” that will not be discussed further.

Trait empathy

Participants completed the Empathic Concern and Personal Distress Scales of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1983). Although the Empathic Concern Scale measures the tendency to experience compassion (e.g., “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me”), the Personal Distress Scale measures the tendency to experience distress (e.g., “In emergency situations, I feel apprehensive and ill at ease”).

Exploratory measures

Participants reported how much they were feeling each of the following emotions (from 1 = not at all to 5 = very much): compassion, sympathy, warmth, anger, disgust, and fear. They responded to a donation prompt “How much money (in an exact U.S. dollar amount) would you be willing to contribute to help Harold Mitchell?” Participants completed the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (Gratz & Roemer, 2004) and Fear of Compassion Scale (Gilbert, McEwan, Matos, & Rivis, 2011) and reported gender, age, race/ethnicity, political orientation, and socioeconomic status using the Macarthur ladder (Adler & Ostrom, 1999).

Results and Discussion

Anticipated Exhaustion

First, we examined whether stigma and suffering intensity influenced anticipated exhaustion. Replicating the pilot study, participants anticipated more exhaustion helping the addict (M = 3.79, SD = 1.07) than the ill person (M = 3.09, SD = 1.20), F(1, 169) = 16.32, p < .001, 95% CI = [0.35, 1.05], η_p ² = .09, d = .61. Suffering intensity did not influence anticipated exhaustion, F(1, 169) = .39, p = .532, 95% CI = [−0.24, 0.45], η_p ² = .00, and there was not a Stigma × Suffering interaction, F(1, 169) = .02, p = .889, η_p ² = .00. Figure 1 depicts anticipated exhaustion by stigma and suffering conditions.

Figure 1.

Anticipated exhaustion by stigma and suffering intensity conditions, Experiment 1. Error bars represent 1 standard error of the mean.

Next, we examined whether the effect of stigma on anticipated exhaustion would be stronger for participants high in trait compassion: Those who are more prone to compassion should be more at risk for and attuned to affective costs of helping. For all measures, we excluded statistical outliers (greater than 2.5 SD from the mean). For this analysis, we excluded two participants who did not complete the IRI and five participants with Empathic Concern scores more than 2.5 SDs below the mean. The stigma and suffering manipulations did not influence Empathic Concern (ps > .34) or Personal Distress (ps > .10), allowing them to be used as moderators. Empathic Concern (α = .91) moderated the influence of stigma on anticipated exhaustion, F(1, 159) = 9.43, p = .003, η_p ² = .06, but Personal Distress (α = .87) did not, F(1, 159) = .72, p = .397, η_p ² = .01. Participants low (−1 SD) in Empathic Concern did not anticipate different levels of exhaustion for the addict (M = 3.50, SE = .17) and ill person (M = 3.36, SE = .18), F(1, 159) = .28, p = .597, 95% CI = [−0.36, 0.62], η_p ² = .00. Participants high (+1 SD) in Empathic Concern anticipated higher exhaustion for the addict (M = 4.08, SE = .19) than the ill person (M = 2.87, SE = .17), F(1, 159) = 23.62, p < .001, 95% CI = [0.72, 1.71], η_p ² = .13. Thus, participants higher in trait compassion—who are more at risk for affective costs of helping—anticipated more exhaustion from helping a stigmatized target.

Finally, we examined perceived suffering and anticipated compassion. We excluded data for three participants with suffering ratings more than 2.5 SDs below the mean. Participants perceived marginally less suffering for the addict (M = 4.31, SD = 0.66) than the ill person (M = 4.48, SD = 0.67), F(1, 166) = 2.82, p = .095, 95% CI = [−0.37, 0.03], η_p ² = .02, and marginally less suffering for low suffering (M = 4.30, SD = .64) than high-suffering targets (M = 4.48, SD = 0.68), F(1, 166) = 2.78, p = .097, 95% CI = [−0.37, 0.03], η_p ² = .02, and there was not a Stigma × Suffering interaction, F(1, 166) = .65, p = .421, η_p ² = .00. We excluded data for eight participants with anticipated compassion more than 2.5 SDs below the mean. Participants anticipated less compassion for the addict (M = 3.81, SD = 0.90) than the ill person (M = 4.36, SD = 0.79), F(1, 161) = 16.85, p < .001, 95% CI = [0.28, 0.80], η_p ² = .10, possibly reflecting anticipatory emotion regulation toward the stigmatized target, and there was not a suffering main effect or Stigma × Suffering interaction (ps > .390).¹

Mind Attribution

We excluded data for three participants with overall mind scale scores (collapsed across agency and experience) more than 2.5 SDs below the mean.² The agency (α = .86) and experience (α = .87) scales correlated positively, r(170) = .84, p < .001. Anticipated exhaustion predicted reduced agency attribution, r(170) = −.21, p = .006, but only marginally reduced experience attribution, r(170) = −.13, p = .092. We conducted a mixed-model analysis of variance (ANOVA) with stigma and suffering as between-subjects factors and mind dimension (agency and experience) as a within-subjects factor. There was a Stigma × Mind Dimension interaction, F(1, 166) = 11.07, p = .001, η_p ² = .06, with all other interactions nonsignificant (ps > .340). Figure 2 depicts agency and experience attributions by stigma and suffering conditions. Participants attributed less agency to the addict (M = 3.84, SD = 0.67) than the ill person (M = 4.34, SD = 0.65), F(1, 166) = 23.49, p < .001, 95% CI = [0.29, 0.70], η_p ² = .12, d = .75, with no other significant effects (ps > .570). Participants attributed less experience to the addict (M = 4.10, SD = 0.66) than the ill person (M = 4.41, SD = 0.59), F(1, 166) = 9.68, p = .002, 95% CI = [0.11, 0.49], η_p ² = .06, d = .48, with no other significant effects (ps > .240). Thus, stigma but not suffering intensity caused decreased mind attribution, particularly for attributions for agency. Although suffering intensity did not influence mind attribution in the present experiment, more notable variability in suffering in immersive contexts (e.g., health care settings) might produce changes independent of stigmatized target status.

Figure 2.

Agency and experience attributions by stigma and suffering intensity conditions, Experiment 1. Error bars represent 1 standard error of the mean.

Next, we examined whether anticipated exhaustion mediated the influence of stigma on mind attribution, using bootstrapping for testing direct and indirect effects (Preacher & Hayes, 2008) with a resampling size of 5,000 and 95% bias-corrected CIs. Because the stigma effect was stronger for agency than experience, we focused on agency attribution.³ We included anticipated exhaustion, anticipated compassion, and perceived suffering as mediators and suffering condition as a covariate. The effect of stigma on agency attribution (b = −.23, SE = .05, p < .001) was reduced but still significant with mediators (b = −.12, SE = .05, p = .021), with indirect effects for anticipated exhaustion (−.02, 95% CI = [−0.06, −0.00]) and anticipated compassion (−.08, 95% CI = [−0.15, −0.04]) but not perceived suffering (−.00, 95% CI = [−0.03, 0.00]). Anticipated exhaustion and compassion partially mediated the stigma effect on agency attribution.

Experiment 2: Manipulated Anticipated Exhaustion

Experiment 1 revealed that anticipated emotional exhaustion partially mediated the influence of stigma on agency attribution. In Experiment 2, we used a moderation of process design to experimentally test mediation (Spencer, Zanna, & Fong, 2005). This design compared the influence of stigma on agency attribution in a condition in which anticipated exhaustion was reduced, against a control condition in which anticipated exhaustion was at baseline. We hypothesized that the influence of stigma on agency attribution would be eliminated when the mediating process of anticipated exhaustion was constrained to be low.

Method

Participants

We recruited 405 participants (187 female, 218 male, M _age = 35.69 years, SD _age = 12.04 years) on MTurk for US$0.50 compensation. Participants were randomly assigned to a 2 (stigma: high, low) × 2 (anticipated exhaustion: high, low) between-subjects design. We aimed to recruit 100 participants per cell of the design.

Materials and Procedures

Stigma and anticipated exhaustion manipulations

Stigma was manipulated as in Experiment 1. The anticipated exhaustion manipulation occurred at the end of the vignette. Participants read, “Based on an earlier pilot study, many participants suggest that the video you are about to see is emotionally exhausting and tiring [inspiring and rewarding].” Vignette reading time was recorded.

Anticipated exhaustion manipulation check

Participants completed 3 anticipated exhaustion items (from 1 = none to 5 = very much): “How emotionally exhausting and tiring will it be to learn about Harold’s suffering?” “How emotionally exhausting and tiring will it be to feel compassion for Harold?” “How emotionally exhausting and tiring will it be to help Harold?”

Day in the life task

Participants completed the writing exercise as in Experiment 1.

Mind attribution

Participants completed the Mind Scale as in Experiment 1.

Exploratory measures

Participants reported each of the following emotions (from 1 = not at all to 5 = very much): compassion, sympathy, warmth, anger, disgust, and fear. They also completed the IRI and demographics as in Experiment 1.

Results and Discussion

Manipulation Check

We excluded 12 (3%) participants who spent less than 3 s reading the vignette. Participants anticipated more emotional exhaustion (α = .78) in the high-exhaustion condition (M = 3.30, SD = 0.96) than the low-exhaustion condition (M = 2.99, SD = 1.06), F(1, 389) = 9.05, p = .003, 95% CI = [0.11, 0.51], η_p ² = .02, d = .31. There was not a stigma main effect or Stigma × Exhaustion interaction (ps > .260).

Mind Attribution

We excluded data for eight participants with mind scale scores more than 2.5 SDs below the mean.⁴ The agency (α = .88) and experience (α = .88) scales correlated positively, r(385) = .81, p < .001. The anticipated exhaustion manipulation check correlated negatively with attributions of agency, r(385) = −.22, p < .001, and experience, r(385) = −.18, p < .001. We conducted a mixed-model ANOVA with stigma and anticipated exhaustion as between-subjects factors and mind dimension (agency and experience) as a within-subjects factor. As expected, there was a Stigma × Exhaustion × Mind Dimension interaction, F(1, 381) = 9.58, p = .002, η_p ² = .03. Figure 3 depicts agency and experience attributions by stigma and anticipated exhaustion. For experience, there were no main effects or interaction (ps > .230). For agency, there was a marginal stigma main effect, F(1, 381) = 3.20, p = .074, 95% CI = [−0.01, 0.29], η_p ² = .01, and a Stigma × Exhaustion interaction, F(1, 381) = 6.79, p = .010, η_p ² = .02. Participants in the high-exhaustion condition attributed less agency to the addict (M = 3.85, SD = 0.81) than the ill person (M = 4.18, SD = .70), F(1, 192) = 9.58, p = .002, 95% CI = [−0.55, −0.12], η_p ² = .05, d = .45. Participants in the low-exhaustion condition did not attribute agency differently to the addict (M = 4.12, SD = 0.74) and ill person (M = 4.05, SD = 0.75), F(1, 189) = .34, p = .563, 95% CI = [−0.28, −.15], η_p ² = .00, d = .08. In the high-stigma condition, anticipated exhaustion reduced agency attributions, F(1, 186) = 5.62, p = .019, 95% CI = [−0.50, −0.05], η_p ² = .03, d = .35. In the low-stigma condition, anticipated exhaustion did not influence agency attributions, F(1, 195) = 1.58, p = .211, 95% CI = [−0.33, 0.07], η_p ² = .01, d = .04. Supporting the motivated emotion regulation account, anticipated exhaustion caused dehumanization of stigmatized targets.

Figure 3.

Agency and experience attributions by stigma and anticipated exhaustion conditions, Experiment 2. Error bars represent 1 standard error of the mean.

General Discussion

Many theories suggest that dehumanization occurs in order to license aggression (Bandura, 1990) or alleviate guilt over past immorality (Castano & Giner-Sorolla, 2006). Yet dehumanization might not always be motivated to enable immoral behavior. In some cases, people might dehumanize others because they are concerned about being emotionally exhausted and overwhelmed by helping others. Ironically, the very help that stigmatized targets need from others might motivate people to engage in dehumanization.

Across two experiments, we find that anticipated emotional exhaustion motivates dehumanization. If people anticipate that helping a stigmatized target will be emotionally exhausting, they defensively dehumanize to avoid this cost. Participants anticipated that helping a stigmatized (vs. nonstigmatized) target would be more exhausting, and this partially accounted for decreased attribution of agency-related mental states (Experiment 1). When this expectation of high exhaustion was experimentally removed, the effect of stigma on agency attribution was eliminated (Experiment 2). These effects may be specific to agency because drug addiction is often characterized as compromising self-control: Helping a person who cannot help himself or herself may present an especially potent exhaustion threat.

These studies integrate past work on motivated empathy (Cameron & Payne, 2011) and dehumanization (Harris & Fiske, 2009). Dehumanization is a motivated phenomenon but need not be driven by aggression or immoral ends—even morally upstanding individuals might dehumanize others if they believe that helping others will be emotionally threatening. More generally, these findings suggest reframing the relationship between empathy and moral behavior. Given the links between compassion and humanization (Batson, 2011; Eisenberg, 2000), it might be assumed that those who dehumanize are callous. But if behaviors pursue emotional outcomes (Baumeister, Vohs, DeWall, & Zhang, 2007; Tamir, 2009), then people may regulate behavior in the present based upon what they expect to feel in the future.

We find that people expected helping a stigmatized target to be more emotionally exhausting than helping a nonstigmatized target. The negative moral status of stigmatized targets—which has been shown to reduce empathy for pain (Singer et al., 2006)—may have increased the perceived burden of helping. If helping stigmatized targets seems less efficacious (Cryder, Loewenstein, & Scheines, 2013; Grant & Sonnentag, 2010), this can also increase anticipated exhaustion. Participants may have anticipated the need to regulate stigma-related emotions (e.g., disgust) when helping such targets, which could have accounted for increased exhaustion for such targets (Pryor, Reeder, Yeadon, & Hesson-McInnis, 2004).

The current experiments find that motivation predicts emotion regulation outcomes but do not directly measure emotion regulation processes. Future studies should test whether anticipated exhaustion predicts spontaneous use of emotion regulation. For instance, people may be less likely to enter into compassion-inducing situations involving stigmatized targets, or if they do enter such situations, they may attend to irrelevant situational features that preempt compassion. Anticipated exhaustion should mediate the influence of stigma on emotion regulation processes, and emotion regulation processes should in turn mediate the relationship between anticipated exhaustion and mind attribution. Emotion regulation processes could also be manipulated directly by encouraging people to regulate or experience emotions in response to stigmatized targets. Dehumanization should emerge when people are directed to regulate emotions but not when emotion regulation has been inhibited.

Dehumanization, even in its subtler everyday forms, can have pernicious consequences for how we assign moral rights to others and engage in moral behavior. Yet the motivation behind dehumanization need not be antagonistic: Instead, people might dehumanize others to protect themselves against the emotional costs of helping.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by National Science Foundation grant #1450943 awarded to Daryl Cameron.

Notes

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