How Our Brains Respond to People Who Aren't Like Us

Are we dehumanizing people who are part of our out-groups today? We are the most evolved life forms on Earth, but we still cling onto our evolutionary history. Humans are tribal creatures. We all contain multiple in-groups and, in turn, multiple out-groups. And this is natural; implicit association tests, or IATs, show that more often than not, people align closely with their in-groups over their out groups. Think about sports fans; they root for their team and no matter what, that’s their team. People who also root for that team are their “in group.” Anyone not a fan of that team is their “out-group". We tend to view our in-groups more favorably than our out groups. But we can also see our out-groups as homogeneous, and some research has shown that people can go so far as to dehumanize others in their out-groups.