Summary of:
Montiel, C. J., de la Paz, E., & Cerafica, Z. I. (2019). (De) humanization and trust in an asymmetric Muslim–Christian conflict: Heroes, Kafirs, and Satanas. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 25(4), 300.
Background & Theory
Dehumanization refers to the phenomenon where strangers or members of an outgroup are considered less than human or lack human qualities, while members of one’s own group seem fully human. Studies rarely associate trust with humanization, which are key elements to fostering peace. This study attempts at doing the same in the context of the Muslim–Christian conflict: Heroes, Kafirs, and Satanas in the southern Philippines.
Research Question(s)
The researchers worked on the following question-
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Is there any empirical relation between intergroup (de)humanization and trust during asymmetric conflicts?
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Methods
The authors sourced both conventional and social media reports at the height of the Muslim–Christian intergroup conflict from a day after the armed clash on January 26, 2015, until 5 weeks later on February 28, 2015. They applied mathematical procedures to their data corpus through text mining (Montiel et al., 2017). This corpus consists of newspaper articles and Facebook public posts. They also computed for correlational links between trust and (de)humanization utterances during the Mamasapano controversy.
Results
The researchers found that an identical set of conflict utterances evokes a greater sense of dehumanization from the low-power group, while the high-power group remains relatively unperturbed. They also found that high trust toward one’s ingroup goes hand-in-hand with dehumanizing the enemy. Further, the language of dehumanization occurs through negative religious images like the word kafir or unbeliever for Christians, while Muslims are dehumanized through the use of words like Satanas (Satan) and demonyo (demon).
How This Translates for the Workplace
- Build trust– Building trust between communities and departments regularly is a useful investment of time. Look at beliefs and the social environment at work- who is the in-group, who is the out-group? If a certain department has great synergy, they also might likely look at other departments as the “other”, which is not healthy for maintaining peace in the social environment long-term.
- Build strong mechanisms against dehumanization– Online platforms often have policies against hate speech. Similarly at work, as this study suggests, there can be subtle forms of dehumanization happening via innocent slurs. Notice the language of employees while addressing each other behind closed doors. This is what shows who is biased and tilted towards stereotypes. We at PPS offer training for workplaces in diversity, inclusion, as well as conflict resolution. Contact us to make your workplace more inclusive!
