A linguistic analysis of Nazi propaganda suggests that dehumanization of Jews shifted over time, with propaganda after the onset of the Holocaust portraying Jews as having a greater capacity for agency, relative to earlier propaganda focused on disengaging moral concern. Alexander Landry of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, California, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on November 9, 2022.
A linguistic analysis of Nazi propaganda suggests that dehumanization of Jews shifted over time, with propaganda after the onset of the Holocaust portraying Jews as having a greater capacity for agency, relative to earlier propaganda focused on disengaging moral concern. Alexander Landry of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, California, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on November 9, 2022.
Widespread views hold that dehumanization is a precursor to mass violence. Many believe that dehumanization promotes violence by removing moral inhibitions against harming fellow humans. However, few studies have actually examined empirical evidence for this idea.
To better understand the role of dehumanization in mass violence, Landry and colleagues conducted a linguistic analysis of Nazi propaganda—including hundreds of posters, pamphlets, newspapers, and political speech transcripts—from before and during the Holocaust.
