Dehumanization is a mental loophole that lets us harm other people.
"A recent experiment took a group of 5-year-olds and showed them a series of pictures of faces. The pictures were of humans, humans digitally manipulated to look like plasticky dolls, or somewhere in between. When the kids were told they were looking at people from a foreign land, the number of images they considered to be human decreased."
"Nour Kteily is a psychologist at Northwestern University whose research is about understanding one of the darkest, most ancient, and most disturbing mental programs encoded into our minds: dehumanization, the ability to see fellow men and women as less than human.
“'We have this incredible capacity for cooperation; it’s what makes us human in many ways,' Kteily says. 'And yet we have this capacity for othering.'
"And that conclusion is opening a Pandora’s box of revelations about the new wave of intolerance toward Muslims and immigrants in America under President Donald Trump — and what it could bring about.
“'Dehumanization doesn’t only occur in wartime,' says Nick Haslam, a psychologist who is the world’s current leading expert on the topic. 'It’s happening right here, right now. And every day, good people who don’t see themselves as being prejudiced bigots are nevertheless falling prey to it.'”
Article: The Dark Psychology of Dehumanization, Explained