Blatant Dehumanization Scale
Also known as: Ascent of Man Scale, Ascent Dehumanization Measure, Kteily-Bruneau Dehumanization Scale, Blatant Animalistic Dehumanization Measure
The Blatant Dehumanization Scale, also called the Ascent of Man measure, captures the willingness to overtly deny full humanity to an out-group. Developed by Nour Kteily, Emile Bruneau, Adam Waytz, and Sarah Cotterill in 2015, it uses the iconic evolutionary image of a creature progressing from ape to upright human and asks respondents to rate, on a slider from zero to one hundred, how evolved different social groups are. The gap between how human respondents rate their own group and how human they rate an out-group is a strikingly direct, robust predictor of hostility, support for coercive policies, and aggression that goes beyond ordinary dislike.
Key highlights
- Captures overt, conscious denial of humanity that subtle and implicit measures miss.
- Simple, intuitive slider yields a continuous, comparable score across groups.
- Shows incremental validity over warmth and dislike in predicting hostile outcomes.
- Strongly predicts support for aggression, coercive policy, and real-world hostility.
Intuition
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How it works
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When to use it
Use the Blatant Dehumanization Scale when you want to measure the most extreme, overt denial of out-group humanity and predict severe hostile attitudes, support for coercive or violent policy, and aggression. It is well suited to studies of immigration, counterterrorism, ethnic and religious conflict, and affective polarization where ordinary prejudice measures may underestimate animus. It is less appropriate when the relevant process is subtle or implicit dehumanization, when the visual evolutionary framing is culturally inappropriate or could prime responses, or when researchers need a measure free of the controversy that the explicit ape imagery can provoke among participants.
Strengths & limitations
- Captures overt, conscious denial of humanity that subtle and implicit measures miss.
- Simple, intuitive slider yields a continuous, comparable score across groups.
- Shows incremental validity over warmth and dislike in predicting hostile outcomes.
- Strongly predicts support for aggression, coercive policy, and real-world hostility.
- Explicit ape imagery is sensitive and may be objectionable or culturally inappropriate in some contexts.
- The evolutionary framing could itself prime or shape responses.
- As a self-report it cannot capture dehumanization that respondents will not consciously express.
- Cross-sectional use makes it hard to disentangle dehumanization from the hostility it predicts.
Common pitfalls
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Applications
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Frequently asked
Is blatant dehumanization just another word for prejudice or dislike?
No. Kteily and colleagues show that the Ascent measure is empirically distinct from how warm or cold respondents feel toward a group. People can dislike a group without denying its humanity, and the blatant measure predicts severe outcomes, support for violence and coercive policy, even after dislike is controlled. This incremental validity is the central evidence that dehumanization captures something beyond ordinary prejudice.
How is the dehumanization score computed?
Respondents rate each group's humanness on the zero-to-one-hundred Ascent slider. Relative blatant dehumanization is usually the in-group rating minus the out-group rating, so a large gap means the out-group is placed lower on the evolutionary image than the respondent's own group. The raw out-group rating is sometimes used as well, but the in-group comparison is what defines the relative measure most commonly reported.
What is meta-dehumanization?
Meta-dehumanization is the perception that one's own group is being dehumanized by an out-group. Kteily and Bruneau show that feeling dehumanized by others provokes reciprocal dehumanization and hostility, creating self-reinforcing cycles of conflict. Researchers measure it with a parallel set of items asking how human respondents believe the out-group considers their in-group to be, and it has become important for explaining escalation in intergroup and partisan conflict.
Sources
- 1.Kteily, N., Bruneau, E., Waytz, A., & Cotterill, S. (2015). The Ascent of Man: Theoretical and Empirical Evidence for Blatant Dehumanization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109(5), 901-931.
- 2.Kteily, N. S., & Bruneau, E. (2017). Backlash: The Politics and Real-World Consequences of Minority Group Dehumanization. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43(1), 87-104.
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Cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 23). Blatant Dehumanization Scale. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/political-psychology/blatant-dehumanization-scale