Adversarial Infrahumanization in the Abortion Debate

Primary emotions such as pleasure or fear are routinely attributed to both humans and animals, but secondary emotions such as pride or resentment are typically attributed only to humans. Infrahumanization occurs when secondary emotions are attributed to human ingroups but not outgroups, thereby portraying outgroup members as less than human. This phenomenon is well documented as a psychological process, but has not been investigated in communication. The present study explored communicative infra-humanization in the abortion debate. Analyses of the emotion language used by prolife and prochoice bloggers revealed a reliable tendency among both groups to attribute primary but not secondary emotions to their adversaries.