Retraction of "Dehumanization without antipathy: Subtle and blatant measures reveal a shared regulatory function," by Fincher et al. (2025).

Published in

Journal of experimental psychology. General. Volume 155. Issue 6. Pages 1511.

Abstract

Reports the notice of retraction of "Dehumanization without antipathy: Subtle and blatant measures reveal a shared regulatory function" by Katrina M. Fincher, Asteya Percaya and Starlett Hartley (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Advanced Online Publication, Oct 27, 2025, np; see record 2026-79271-001). A reader reported an error in the paper's reference list. Further inspection identified nine references with multiple other errors. In addition, errors in data processing and reporting were identified that affected the structure of the data and the resulting analyses, leading to changes in parameter estimates and the statistical significance of several reported effects. The article authors were made aware of these issues and confirmed errors in data analysis and in the reporting of the results as well as non-disclosed possible use of artificial intelligence tools in the generation of the reference list. The authors revised the analyses and updated the data and code that was posted to the online repository and drafted corrections to the paper. After reviewing the corrections, the Editor determined that the nature and scope of errors in the published paper were beyond what could be addressed with a correction notice. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2026-79271-001.) Dehumanization, the perception of others as less than fully human, is widely invoked in discourse on ethnopolitical conflict. Yet its validity as a psychological construct has come under growing scrutiny. Critics have questioned its divergent validity, arguing it may merely reflect interpersonal and intergroup bias, and its convergent validity, given the proliferation of diverse and potentially unrelated measures. The present research speaks to both concerns by leveraging the context of contagious disease, which introduces motivational conflict between recognizing others' humanity and managing personal risk. Because contagious disease threatens friends and family as much as strangers, this context provides a stringent test of whether dehumanization operates independently of prejudice. It also enables a test of functional convergence: whether diverse dehumanization measures respond in parallel to a shared motivational input. Findings from six studies (N = 5,253) assessing four common operationalizations-blatant dehumanization, animalization, mechanization, and mind denial-support the construct's distinctiveness and its coherence. Contagion cues reliably elicited dehumanization, and this effect was not moderated by relational closeness: Perceived disease risk increased dehumanization equally for friends and family. Findings also support the construct's coherence: All four measures responded similarly to disease threat. Multilevel models treating the measure as a random effect revealed substantial shared variance across operationalizations. Together, these findings support the distinctiveness and coherence of psychological conceptions of dehumanization as a flexible regulatory mechanism. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

PMID:
42295261
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 15 Jun 2026.

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