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“AUSCHWITZ begins whenever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals,” wrote the philosopher and social commentator Theodor Adorno, reflecting on the Holocaust. He argued that humans degrade, exploit and wilfully murder “under-valued” other people once they are considered to be animal-like. Genocides can happen, therefore, when we think of members of other groups – outgroups – to be considerably less human than ourselves. This process unleashes a raft of negativity as the moral protections normally afforded to humans are cast aside.

We have a long history of feeling vastly superior to other animals, not only in terms of language, culture, sentience and intelligence, but through the presumed right to control other species. The book of Genesis sanctions this, stating that Adam was provided with animals to satisfy his needs and goals. But we also have a long, sad history of inflicting discrimination, hatred, misery and even genocide on our own species, in a manner unmatched among non-human animals.

These observations led prejudice researchers, including us, at Brock University in Ontario, Canada, to develop two novel propositions about the nature of dehumanisation and prejudice. The first is that the perception of a divide between humans and animals fuels prejudice toward human outgroups, such as immigrants or racial minorities. The second is that this animal-human divide effect is explained by heightened dehumanisation of the outgroups, itself the direct result of undervaluing animals relative to humans. Our two propositions underpin a theory we call the interspecies model of prejudice.

We know very little about the origins of dehumanisation. And we don’t know much about the mechanisms through which it turns into prejudices, but we and researchers in other labs have found clear evidence that dehumanisation predicts prejudice in adults. Recently, we have turned our attention to explaining the prejudices expressed by children in terms of dehumanisation. This research represents crucial evidence linking human-animal relations with prejudices against outgroups. It may also highlight strategies for intervening at an early stage.

Building on experiments with university students, our recent studies involved white Canadian children aged between 6 and 10 – and their parents. We showed the children photographs of black and white boys and girls, and photos of various animals. Participants were asked to attribute to the images of the children what are widely considered to be uniquely human emotions (sympathy, love, embarrassment, guilt) and non-uniquely human emotions (happiness, excitement, sadness, fear). We also asked them to attribute to the target children uniquely human personality traits (curious, creative, careless, disorganised), and also non-uniquely human ones (nervous, calm, friendly, mean).

To tap children’s beliefs that humans are different from animals, we asked them to place pictures of people of various races and animals of various species closer together or farther apart on a horizontal board, with greater distance between human and animal pictures reflecting a child’s greater belief in the distance between them. A vertical board was used to gauge perceptions of human superiority over animals. Wider distances between the targets reflected stronger beliefs in human superiority over animals.

The results were fascinating, providing the first direct evidence that young children dehumanise other children along racial lines. Importantly, those who believed most strongly in the superiority of humans over animals showed the greatest dehumanisation in that they regarded the black children as possessing fewer uniquely human qualities, which in turn predicted increased prejudice toward black children.

Involving the parents also turned out to be very important. Using measures designed for adults, we replicated these patterns among the parents. We also used some standard tests to discover pre-existing racial prejudices, and whether they held ideological preferences for hierarchical or egalitarian relationships between groups. We were intrigued to find that parents who endorsed social hierarchy and inequality reared children with stronger beliefs in the human-animal divide – which, as we noted above, kicks off dehumanisation and racial prejudice.

Across various studies in our lab, we found that the correlation between the perceived human-animal divide and human prejudices, for example, against immigrants, is as strong as the correlation between a host of other psychological factors featuring in other research that have gained traction. For example, the amount of contact between groups is known to be an important driver of prejudice between them, as are cultural stereotypes and the perception that a group constitutes a threat to another.

So what are the implications of our work? Well, it seems Adorno’s hunch was spot on: dehumanising outgroups is driven largely by our sense of superiority, importance and value over animals. It only “works” if we agree animals are inherently of lesser value. Fortunately, these findings also show ways to reduce dehumanisation.

In several experiments, we found framing animals as similar to humans (elevating animals “up” to the human level) stops dehumanisation in its tracks, significantly reduces prejudice and extends moral concern to marginalised groups. Conversely, consistent with the reasoning in our model, emphasising human similarity to animals – psychologically “demoting” humans to the “inferior” status of animals – exacerbates negativity as much as emphasising the human-animal divide.

Fortunately, exposing children to media presentations that emphasise animal similarity to humans decreases their perception that humans are naturally superior to animals. But it has not proven to reduce the dehumanisation or prejudice they exhibit. This suggests that we may need to use more concrete strategies, including having children interact with animals.

It is important to note that it is largely irrelevant whether humans are objectively superior to animals. In many domains, our abilities greatly exceed those of animals, but in other areas we are clearly inferior. But our rights as humans should not supersede those of other animals simply because we possess superior abilities in some domains. After all, we no longer follow that rule as a species: we morally and legally protect people without full mental capacity, people with physical disabilities, the young and the elderly.

We face the same struggle for animal rights as we did for civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights or children’s rights. Historically, we resisted the abolition of human slavery on the grounds that the economic damage would be insurmountable, and we hear these same arguments about animal rights. Rather than considering moral conduct a luxury, we need the courage to reinvigorate the ideas of the Enlightenment to meet the challenges of the 21st century. This makes sense morally and scientifically: how we treat animals not only says a lot about us as a species, but it directly affects how we treat each other.

“How we treat animals directly affects how we treat each other”