The association between uncivil behavior and dehumanization

Résumé

This doctoral dissertation presents an empirical approach to the concept of civility from tthe perspective of social psychology. The general aim is to check if there is relationship between civility and humanness. From the literature on dehumanization, it has been theoretically considered that civility is a basic attribute to define the humanness of others. Specifically, in Haslam's (2006) dual model of dehumanization, it is pointed out that civility is a basic attribute of the dimension of humanness known as human uniqueness (HU). However, this theoretical statement has not been verified with empirical evidence. Throughout five chapters we deal with the issue of civility and humanness and we verify their relationship empirically. The first chapter presents a theoretical approach to the issue of civility and its relationship with the attribution of humanness and the research questions generated from the review of the previous literature, the general and specific objectives of the dissertation are presented. In the second chapter, we consider the automatic association between the concepts of civility and incivility and humanness using the implicit measure of the single category implicit association test (SC-IAT). We present three studies that provide empirical evidence of the existence of a clear association between civic and uncivil behaviours and the concepts of humans. In the third chapter, we examine the impact of uncivil behaviour on the human perception of the perpetrator agent. Through two studies, we provide empirical evidence that civil behaviour favours the attribution of humanness, specifically of the HU dimension. At the same time, we verify that uncivil behaviour makes it difficult to attribute these traits of humanness, thus favouring animalistic dehumanization. In the fourth chapter, we analyse the effect of the physical context where the performance of uncivil conduct is framed in the attribution of humanness to the perpetrator agent. In two studies we verify how contexts in nature and open contexts favour the amplification of the dehumanization produced by uncivil conduct. Finally, in the fifth chapter we summarize the results obtained by integrating them into a framework that helps to explain how uncivil behaviour affects the attribution of humanness to the people who perpetrate it and the importance of the physical context in this process. In addition, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these results in relation to the study of civility and dehumanization theory.