DOI: 10.5061/dryad.t76hdr88q
title: To what extent is research on infrahumanization confounded by intergroup preference?

description: The most prominent social psychological account of dehumanization,
 infrahumanization theory, argues outgroups are dehumanized to the extent
 they are denied uniquely human emotions. Recent critiques have identified
 a confound in previous research whereby uniquely human emotions used as
 stimuli tend to be more prosocial than the emotions shared with other
 species. Consequently, apparent evidence for subtle dehumanization may be
 better explained by intergroup preference. While there is growing
 appreciation that some studies are confounded this way, the extent of this
 problem has proved controversial. To gauge prevalence of the confound, we
 systematically reviewed the infrahumanization literature and extracted all
 emotion terms used. Participants rated the extent to which these emotions
 appeared unique to humans and prosocial. From these data, we calculated
 the percentage of studies that confound humanness with prosociality. In
 the 10 most cited papers, 95.5% of reported studies were confounded in the
 predicted direction. Across all 152 studies, 79.6% showed the same issue.
 These findings point to a pervasive methodological problem, impacting our
 understanding of discrimination and the reliability of social
 psychological data. To facilitate progress moving forward, we introduce a
 freely accessible tool, powered by our emotion rating database, to help
 researchers generate rigorously controlled stimulus sets.
description: # To what extent is research on infrahumanization confounded by intergroup
 preference?
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.t76hdr88q](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.t76hdr88q) ## Description of the data and file structure This dataset contains materials supporting our study on infrahumanization and intergroup preference. Below is an overview of the included files: **File names and descriptions** 1\) Stage1_ExcludedStudies.xlsx Data supporting **Stage 1**. A list of studies that were excluded from our review, along with reasons for exclusion. 2\) Stage2_Data_Emotion_Ratings.xlsx Data supporting **Stage 2**. A full list of emotions extracted from eligible studies investigating infrahumanization. Each emotion is rated on the dimensions of humanness, prosociality and valence by separate participant samples (each *N* = 200). Contains individual participant ratings and mean ratings for each sample, measured on a 0-100 scale (higher values indicate stronger perceived humanness/prosociality/valence). Familiarity with each emotion term is recorded at both the participant level (Yes/No) and the overall sample level (*N* = 600, percentage familiar/unfamiliar). 3\) Stage3_IncludedStudiesEmotionsList.xlsx Data supporting **Stage 3**. The full list of eligible infrahumanization studies and their emotion term stimulus sets. Secondary and primary category emotions are recorded in comma-separated lists. In cases where a study manipulated valence, emotion terms are recorded separately as positive and negative for both secondary and primary emotions. "NaN" values indicate cases where a field was not applicable to that particular study. 4\) Stage4_Data_InfrahumanizationExperiment.xlsx Data supporting **Stage 4**. Results from an infrahumanization experiment in which participants attributed emotions from stimulus sets identified as confounding humanness with prosociality the most and least, using the intergroup context of Christians (ingroup) and Muslims (outgroup). Emotion attribution ratings indicate how strongly an emotion is thought to be typically felt by members of the groups, using a 0 ('Not at all') to 100 ('Very strongly') scale. 5\) EmotionStimuliSelector.xlsx The '**Emotion Stimuli Selector**’, our open-source tool designed to allow researchers to compare emotion term stimulus sets on multiple dimensions: perceived humanness, prosociality, valence and word familiarity. The workbook contains instructions on its use. Further details on these files are available in the publication: **Bunce, C., Eggleston, A., Brennan, R., & Over, H. (2025). To what extent is research on infrahumanization confounded by intergroup preference? *Royal Society of Open Science,* *12*, 241348.**\ [https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.241348](https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.241348)