Invisible Mind: Flexible Social Cognition and Dehumanization

  Lasana Haris takes a social neuroscience approach to explain how people can take part in radically motivated violence and then tenderly cradle a baby. The answer, he argues, in Invisible Mind (MIT University Press) is that our social cognition— the ability to infer the mental state of another person— can be turned on or off. By withholding social cognition, one can effectively dehumanize another person.