“Eerily Just Validating”: Self-Dehumanization Makes Killing Work

The most destructive forms of intergroup violence are not isolated outbursts of cruelty, but sustained practices organized by institutions designed to inflict harm. Psychological research has largely overlooked these institutional contexts, focusing instead on individual dispositions or decontextualized mechanisms. We address this blind spot by investigating how institutions shape perpetrators’ self-concepts — and how this transformation enables lethal violence. Drawing on in-depth interviews with U.S. and Ukrainian soldiers, we develop a phenomenologically grounded account of mechanistic self-dehumanization: a psychological state in which individuals experience themselves as instruments lacking emotional responsiveness and reflective self-awareness. We show how this state is cultivated by institutionalized practices that suppress individuality, restrict autonomy, and automate lethal action. We find that mechanistic self-dehumanization facilitates violence by dulling moral reflexivity while preserving behavioral control. Strikingly, it can also render violence affirming — allowing perpetrators to experience killing not only as tolerable, but as a source of professional pride. In doing so, mechanistic self-dehumanization bridges two dominant psychological perspectives: one that sees violence as a burdensome act requiring moral disengagement, and one that sees it as subjectively rewarding. These findings refine the construct of self-dehumanization, illuminate its institutional origins, and deepen our understanding of how lethal violence becomes not only tolerable but, at times, gratifying.