Less than human: psychopathy, dehumanization, and sexist and violent attitudes towards women

Psychopathy is associated with a variety of negative attitudes and behaviours towards women; however, the mechanisms that underlie these associations have yet to be fully examined. The current work examined dehumanization, a social-psychological construct, as a potential mechanism facilitating the association between sub-clinical psychopathy and negative attitudes towards women. Two online studies with all-male samples were conducted to examine whether dehumanization helps to explain the association between psychopathy and sexist and violent attitudes towards women. In Study 1 (n = 514), path analyses indicated that psychopathy was indirectly related to sexist and violent attitudes towards women through dehumanization. Study 2 (n = 265) replicated the findings of Study 1 regarding sexism. It also included a date rape analogue measure of violent attitudes and was able to expand on the findings of Study 1, though only for the interpersonal and affective components of psychopathy. These results may suggest that individuals high in psychopathic traits see women as sub-human, this dehumanizing appraisal may be facilitating attitudes and behaviours that are consistent with the idea that women are less than human and deserve to be treated as such. Our results suggest that dehumanization may be an important mechanism for understanding, and potentially mitigating, the association between psychopathy and negative attitudes towards women.