Perception of Self as a Mediator in the Dehumanization Process

A body of literature in the fields of both clinical and personality psychology has centered on the assumption that a high acceptance of self is linked with a positive perception of others. In direct opposition, our own results, based on two independent field studies, one sampling 76 mental health workers, the other 204 elementary school children, concluded that individuals low in self-perception are more empathetic and more humanly treat a stimulus person while those high in perception of self dehumanize and detach themselves from the stimulus person. These findings are interpreted within a social psychological analysis of a modified deindividuation/ dehumanization model.