Super-Human or Sub-Human? Positive Dehumanization and Gender in Public Performance Evaluations

• Author: Stephen M. Utych,Luke Fowler
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00953997211069047
• Published date: 01 October 2022
• Date: 01 October 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00953997211069047

Administration & Society

2022, Vol. 54(9) 1689 –1709

© The Author(s) 2022

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00953997211069047

journals.sagepub.com/home/aas

Article

Super-Human or

Sub-Human? Positive

Dehumanization and

Gender in Public

Performance Evaluations

Stephen M. Utych1 and Luke Fowler1

Abstract

Dehumanizing language, language that compares human beings to animals or

machines, is typically thought of in problematic cases, where it is designed

to denigrate individuals or entire groups in society. But, this language can

also be used to praise—describing an employee as a machine can be done

to signify super-human characteristics. We find that positive dehumanizing

language has no effect on evaluations of a public employee’s competence,

but do have an effect on evaluations of warmth. Contrary to expectations,

we find no differences in these effects based on the gender of the employee.

Keywords

dehumanization, gender, performance evaluations, trait evaluations

“Humans are not machines – we are something more. We have feelings and

experiences” –Dalai Lama (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2009/2/22/700437/-)

When evaluating performance of employees, managers, and evaluators

have many routes to praise exceptional performance. One common practice

to praise employees is to suggest that their performance transcends the

1Boise State University, ID, USA

Corresponding Author:

Stephen M. Utych, Boise State University, 1910 University Drive – MS 1935, Boise, ID 83725,

USA.

Email: stephenutych@boisestate.edu

1069047AAS0010.1177/00953997211069047Administration & SocietyUtych and Fowler

research-article2021

1690 Administration & Society 54(9)

typical bounds of human ability. Calling someone a “machine” or a “beast”

typically has positive connotations—calling an employee a machine suggests

they are able to consistently perform at a high-level, unencumbered by the

typical constraints of humanity, while calling someone a beast suggests a

super-human ability, allowing them to perform at levels beyond that of a

human being. While these terms are meant to praise, they often serve to deny

key aspects of humanity to those being described in these ways (Lane, 2007).

This works through the process of dehumanization, where comparisons to

animals or machines deny human traits to individual (Haslam, 2006). While

dehumanization is typically examined through the lens of dehumanization

designed specifically to denigrate and deny aspects of humanity (see Haslam,

2006 for a review), we argue that less nefarious types of dehumanization—

positive dehumanization, designed to praise rather than denigrate—can still

have key consequences for how we view others.

This dehumanization in often commonplace in how we talk about public

sector employees. The metaphor of public organizations as a machine, and

employees as cogs in that machine, has long dominated rhetoric about how

bureaucracy should, and does, work (Taylor, 1919). While these metaphors

are often neutral (e.g., it is unclear if being a cog in a machine is good or

bad—though it is clearly dehumanizing), they are pervasive in how we dis-

cuss how public organizations operate (Peters, 2012). Despite this, little work

has studied how these metaphors serve to influence how we view public

employees.

Positive dehumanization is understudied, relative to negative dehuman-

ization, but evidence suggests that dehumanizing employees in a positive

way can serve to create negative evaluations of those employees on traits

related to humanity, like personal warmth (Fowler & Utych, 2020). However,

this work is only just emerging, and does not specifically address public

employees, who may be easier to dehumanize given how they are portrayed,

mostly negatively, in popular media (Van de Walle, 2016). Further, this work

does not examine how gendered aspects of dehumanization operate. While

women certainly face dehumanization in a different way than men, especially

as it relates to sexualization and objectification of their bodies (Vaes et al.,

2011), little work has examined gender differences in more mundane, and

less sexualized, dehumanization.

Using an original survey experiment conducted on a large, nationally

diverse sample, we find that dehumanization of public sector employees has

no positive effect, compared to non-dehumanizing praise. However, we do

find a consistent negative effect—individuals who are dehumanized are rated

lower than those who are not on personal, non-work-related traits such as

how caring, nice, honest, and trustworthy they are. Importantly, we also find