Psychological essentialism and the differential attribution of uniquely human emotions to ingroups and outgroups
Open accessAbstract
According to the psychological essentialism perspective, people tend to explain differences between groups by attributing them different essences. Given a pervasive ethnocentrism, this tendency implies that the human essence will be restricted to the ingroup whereas outgroups will receive a lesser degree of humanity. Therefore, it is argued that people attribute more uniquely human characteristics to the ingroup than to the outgroup. The present article focuses on secondary emotions that constitute such characteristics. Study 1 showed that members of high‐ and low‐status groups attribute more positive secondary emotions to the ingroup than to the outgroup. Study 2 verified that the differential attribution extended also to negative secondary emotions. No exemplars of emotions were provided in Study 3. Instead, participants had to estimate the means of two distributions of numbers that supposedly represented characteristics of the ingroup and of the outgroup. The results of this third experiment illustrated the reluctance to attribute secondary emotions to the outgroup. The findings are discussed from the perspective of psychological essentialism. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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Outgroups are not perceived as experiencing complex human emotions to the same extent as ingroups, a phenomenon termed infra-humanization.
“Outgroups are not perceived as experiencing complex human emotions to the same extent as ingroups, a phenomenon termed infra-humanization (Leyens et al., 2001, 2003).”
From Dehumanized Perception: A Psychological Means to Facilitate Atrocities, Torture, and Genocide? (2011) · cites this paper as Leyens et al., 2001
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“Outgroups are not perceived as experiencing complex human emotions to the same extent as ingroups, a phenomenon termed infra-humanization (Leyens et al., 2001, 2003).”
BackgroundShamay-Tsoory, S. G., Abu-Akel, A., Palgi, S., Sulieman, R., Fischer-Shofty, M., Levkovitz, Y., & Decety, J. (2013) · Psychoneuroendocrinology · doi:10.1016/j.psyneuen.2013.09.015 · Cited by 123 · see citing works
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- Authors
- Leyens, J., Rodriguez‐Perez, A., Rodriguez‐Torres, R., Gaunt, R., Paladino, M., Vaes, J., & Demoulin, S.
- Affiliations
- UCLouvain (BE)
- Universidad de La Laguna (ES)
- Corresponding author
- Leyens, Jacques‐Philippe
- Venue
- European Journal of Social Psychology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2001-07
- Volume
- 31
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 395-411
- ISSN
- 0046-2772 (ISSN-L)
- 1099-0992
- OpenAlex
- W1973065199
- Cited by
- 622
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 25 · 2025: 22 · 2024: 41 · 2023: 29 · 2022: 34 · 2021: 34 · 2020: 50 · 2019: 44 · 2018: 23 · 2017: 38 · 2016: 24 · 2015: 38 · 2014: 16 · 2013: 24 · 2012: 36
- FWCI
- 20.59
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- figshare.com
- Locations
- European Journal of Social Psychology (publishedVersion)
- Lincoln Repository (University of Lincoln) (acceptedVersion)
- Digital Access to Libraries (Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), l'Université de Namur (UNamur) and the Université Saint-Louis (USL-B)) (submittedVersion)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Iris (University of Trento) (submittedVersion)
- Padua Research Archive (University of Padova) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Cultural Differences and Values
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social Power and Status Dynamics
- Keywords
- psychological essentialism, in-group favoritism, out-group bias, secondary emotions, ethnocentrism, group status, human essence
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