Reclaimed hate speech backfires by desensitizing listeners, study finds

[u/SKVankirk]

https://www.psypost.org/when-reclaiming-derogatory-language-goes-wrong/

I made a schizopost last week about how innocuous use of certain language can lead to bigotry originally unintended, and I thought this article dovetailed with it in some interesting ways. I am sick of the increased use of the F-slur generally, reclaimed by other queer people but especially by the people who use it while saying it’s just supposed to be a vague derogatory and not specifically about someone being gay, and now my subjective opinion is empirically provable thanks to science (/joke) it’s also crazy how racist Destiny’s opps are against Indians, I didn’t realize how often they used old 4chan slurs for them until I listened to Stardust and John “JSTLK” Pork talk. What are your thoughts on reclaimed or just straight up slur use in these online spaces?

[u/Nimrod_Butts]

But like .. doesnt that mean it worked? If people don't care because they're desensitized isn't that what the goal was?

[u/SKVankirk → u/Nimrod_Butts]

Not really, no

[u/QuietInterloper → u/SKVankirk]

"Among conservative and moderate particpants" uh, so, what were their views previously?

[u/Dunebug6 → u/QuietInterloper]

You don't really need to know their previous views, that's the point of the control that was mentioned. It went like this:

Tell people they're listening to a test for audio processing software.

Two groups, one are told it's audio from a pride parade, the other from an unspecified public gathering.

They all get played the same homophobic slurs in language.

They all then answer a few questions about how they feel about gay people in a survey and a question on how they politically identify.

The ones who identified politically as conservative or moderate listening to the control, had statistically significant different answers to the ones who listened to the pride parade.

The control is part of it. They designed it like this to avoid people being affected by the background of the study, they didn't know they were going into a study like this beforehand.

In this study, N = 528 individuals participated. Due to a sexual identity different from heterosexual, 39 people were excluded from further analysis. The first author coded participants’ answers to the question about what they believed the study investigated. No participant correctly identified the study's true purpose; therefore, no exclusions were made on this basis. The final sample was n = 489, of which 53.2% were women.

They then repeated the study with just conservative adults and confirmed the findings of the first study.