Bystanders' Collective Responses Set the Norm against Hate Speech
| dc.bibliographicCitation.issue | 1 | |
| dc.bibliographicCitation.volume | 11 | |
| dc.contributor.author | Zapata, Jimena | |
| dc.contributor.author | Sulik, Justin | |
| dc.contributor.author | von Wulffen, Clemens | |
| dc.contributor.author | Deroy, Ophelia | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-08-28T14:55:03Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-08-28T14:55:03Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2024 | |
| dc.date.updated | 2025-01-28T05:41:12Z | |
| dc.description.abstract | Hate speech incidents often occur in social settings, from public transport to football stadiums. To counteract a prevailing passive attitude towards them, governmental authorities, sociologists, and philosophers stress bystanders’ responsibility to oppose or block hate speech. Here, across two online experiments with UK participants using custom visual vignettes, we provide empirical evidence that bystanders’ expression of opposition can affect how harmful these incidents are perceived, but only as part of a collective response: one expressed by a majority of bystanders present. Experiment 1 ( N = 329) shows that the silence or intervention of three bystanders affects the harm caused by hate speech, but one bystander does not. Experiment 2 ( N = 269) shows this is not simply a matter of numbers but rather one of norms: only unanimous opposition reduces the public perception of the damage created by the incident. Based on our results, we advance an empirical norm account: group responses to hate speech modulate its harm by indicating either a permissive or a disapproving social norm. Our account and results, showing the need to consider responses to hate speech at a collective level, have direct implications for social psychology, the philosophy of language and public policies. | |
| dc.identifier.doi | 10.1057/s41599-024-02761-8 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://resolver.sub.uni-goettingen.de/purl?fidaac-11858/3648 | |
| dc.language.iso | eng | |
| dc.relation.journal | Humanities and Social Sciences Communications | |
| dc.rights | CC BY 4.0 | |
| dc.rights.license | Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. | |
| dc.subject.ddc | ddc:300 | |
| dc.subject.field | britishstudies | |
| dc.subject.field | socialscience | |
| dc.title | Bystanders' Collective Responses Set the Norm against Hate Speech | |
| dc.type | article | |
| dc.type.version | publishedVersion | |
| dspace.entity.type | Publication |