How Slave Owners Justified Dehumanizing Acts. A Psychological Perspective

Essay from the year 2020 in the subject Psychology - Personality Psychology, , language: English, abstract: This paper tries to find out how a slaveholder could possibly justify holding another human being hostage merely for economic profit? What could make someone think such violent and cruel actions were defensible? These are fundamental questions that have burned in the back of many minds throughout the world. If it weren’t for the study of psychology, these questions would be nearly impossible to answer. Psychology plays a crucial role in the understanding of why people do what they do. Therefore, one cannot fully comprehend the concept of slavery from the slaveholders’ point of view without consulting the ever-expanding domain of psychology.