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Pseudospeciation is a form ofothering, the treatment of different human groups as if they were different biologicalspecies. It begins with the fact that cultural differences cause humans to separate into different social groups, with different language, dress, customs, etc. These cultural differences are claimed to be analogous to the formation of different biological species (speciation). In the extreme, pseudospeciation leads todehumanization of other cultural groups (out-groups).[citation needed]
Pseudospeciation, according to theOxford English Dictionary, refers to the tendency of members ofin-groups to consider members of out-groups to have evolved genetically into different, separate, and inferior species to their own.[citation needed] The term was first used byErik Erikson in 1966, according to his biographer, Lawrence J. Friedman.[1] Dehumanization is one possible outcome of pseudospeciation, as isethnic discrimination orgenocide.[citation needed]
Francisco Gil-White proposed in 2001 that humans evolved in such a way that the brain perceives different ethnic groups to be equivalent to different biological 'species', thus suggesting that pseudospeciation is innate. His hypothesis has yet to receive widespread empirical support.[citation needed] His theory and data are found inCurrent Anthropology, Vol. 42, No. 4, pp. 515–554.Pseudospeciation is an especially virulent form ofethnocentrism.Karl Marlantes, in his bookWhat It Is Like to Go to War (Grove Press, 2011), referred to pseudospeciation byAmerican soldiers inWorld War II and in theVietnam War as a coping mechanism for dealing withJapanese andVietnamese soldiers differently from European (Germans and Italians for instance) soldiers in those wars. Since an underlying precept of pseudospeciation is the dehumanization of the enemy, it helps the soldiers rationalize barbaric or socially unacceptable behavior visited upon soldiers of a race and culture visually and contextually different from their own.[citation needed] One example Marlantes posits is the treatment of prisoners, or what might be characterized as the murder of soldiers attempting to surrender.
