Perceiving outgroup members as lacking humanness (outgroup dehumanization) undermines social harmony and equality. Because humanness often manifests in social interactions, outgroup dehumanization may be influenced by both perceivers' own cross-group ties and their knowledge of outgroup members' relationships with others. However, existing research on the humanizing effects of outgroup members' social relationships has focused primarily on the former, with little attention to the latter. Therefore, the present research aimed to examine, within an egocentric social network framework, how first-party ties to outgroup contacts and third-party knowledge of connections among these contacts and other contacts were related to outgroup humanness attribution.


Study 1 (N = 683) examined men's and women's perceptions of the other gender; Study 2 (N = 349) investigated how residents of megacities in China perceived migrants. We collected data on participants' egocentric networks and adopted a profile correlation approach to index their attributions of human nature (HN) and human uniqueness (HU) to the outgroup. The overall strength of first-party ties to the outgroup contacts and the closeness centrality of these contacts (an index of third-party relationships) were assessed via social network analysis. In Study 2, we also measured perceived social status of and closeness to the outgroup as potential mediators.


Multilevel regression and mediation analyses revealed that stronger ties to other-gender contacts were associated with attribution of more HN but not HU to the gender outgroup, whereas higher closeness centrality of other-gender contacts was related to greater outgroup HU but not HN attribution. Among mega-city residents, these direct associations did not emerge; however, the closeness centrality of migrant contacts was indirectly linked to greater HU attribution toward migrants through higher perceived social status of this social group. These findings suggest that interventions strengthening intergroup ties and increasing outgroup contacts' closeness centrality may help reduce outgroup dehumanization.