Metadehumanization, the perception that members of an outgroup dehumanize your group, has been found to exacerbate intergroup conflict by inspiring reciprocal dehumanization of the offending outgroup. Moreover, metadehumanization is distinct from metaprejudice (i.e., the perception that an outgroup hates your group). Given the mutual animosity reported in public opinion polls toward the other side, we believed US–Russia relations would be a worthwhile context in which to extend this model. Therefore, we measured Americans’ levels of metadehumanization and metaprejudice of Russians to determine the association between these perceptions and their hostility toward Russians (Study 1). In this novel intergroup conflict, metadehumanization remained a consequential predictor of outgroup hostility over and above metaprejudice, suggesting that it can exacerbate a broader range of intergroup conflicts than those heretofore examined. Given these findings, we then sought to experimentally differentiate between metadehumanization and metaprejudice. In Study 2, we manipulated both metadehumanization and metaprejudice to (a) determine whether one or both cause greater outgroup hostility and (b) elucidate the underlying mechanisms by which they may produce this effect. Whereas metadehumanization produced greater hostility, metaprejudice did not. Moreover, although both metaperceptions inspired greater prejudice, only metadehumanization led to greater dehumanization. We conclude that metadehumanization may be a particularly potent fomenter of hostility because it inspires reciprocal dehumanization over and above more general negative bias.

Metadehumanization是一种外部团体成员使您的团队非人性化的观念，已被发现通过激发违规的外部团体的相互非人性化而加剧了群体间的冲突。此外，超人类化与超偏见是不同的（即，偏见是群体讨厌您的团队）。鉴于民意测验中对另一方的相互敌意，我们认为美俄关系将是扩展这种模式的一个有价值的背景。因此，我们测量了美国人对俄罗斯人的超人类化程度和偏见的程度，以确定这些看法与他们对俄罗斯人的敌意之间的联系（研究1）。在这场新颖的群体间冲突中，元人类化仍然是超越元偏见的群体外敌意的结果，这表明，与迄今为止所研究的相比，它可以加剧更广泛的群体间冲突。鉴于这些发现，我们然后尝试通过实验区分元人类化和元偏见。在研究2中，我们操纵了metadehumanization和metaprejudice，以（a）确定一个或两者是否引起更大的群体外敌视，以及（b）阐明它们可能产生这种作用的潜在机制。元人类化产生了更大的敌意，而元偏见却没有。而且，尽管两种元感知都激发了更大的偏见，但只有元人类化导致了更大的非人类化。我们得出的结论是，超人类化可能是敌对行动的一个特别强大的诱因，因为它激发了除更普遍的负面偏见之外的相互反人类化。