Subtle, Moderate, and Blatant Dehumanization of Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes

The study aimed to find whether the Caste system, an ancient system of social stratification that continues to be in existence affects cognitive processes - perception in specific. The three experiments in this study give evidence that the community placed at the bottom of the caste hierarchy - the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST) - are dehumanized. Study 1 gives evidence for subtle dehumanization through an Implicit Association Test (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). The participants associated the SC/ST targets with animal words and the General Category (dominant castes in the hierarchy) with human words. In study 2 consisted of a quasi-experimental study with participants belonging to both categories. Mind Attribution method (Haslam, Bain, Douge, Lee, & Bastian, 2005) was used to measure whether the targets are dehumanized when a moderately explicit tool was used. The results showed that the SC/ST targets were attributed less mind, while the General Category targets were not. The hypothesis was further supported using the Ascent of Man measure of dehumanization by Kteily, Bruneau, Waytz, & Cotterill (2015) in study 3. The results indicated blatant dehumanization of the SC/ST targets.本研究旨在探究仍存续于世的古老社会分层体系——种姓制度（Caste system）是否会对认知过程，尤其是知觉感知造成影响。本研究中的三项实验证实，处于种姓层级底层的群体——在册种姓/在册部落（Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes，简称SC/ST）——遭受了去人性化对待。 研究1通过内隐联想测验（Implicit Association Test，Greenwald、McGhee与Schwartz，1998）证实了隐性去人性化现象：实验参与者将SC/ST目标群体与动物词汇相关联，而将一般类别群体（即种姓层级中的优势种姓）与人类词汇相关联。 研究2为一项准实验研究，招募了来自两类群体的参与者。本研究采用心智归因法（Mind Attribution method，Haslam、Bain、Douge、Lee与Bastian，2005），以检验在使用中度显性测量工具时，目标群体是否遭受去人性化对待。结果显示，研究人员赋予SC/ST目标群体的心智感知更少，而一般类别群体则未出现此种情况。 研究3采用Kteily、Bruneau、Waytz与Cotterill（2015）开发的《人类进阶》去人性化测量工具，进一步验证了研究假设，结果表明SC/ST目标群体遭受了显性去人性化对待。