Explaining Perceptions of Racist Speech

This two-part investigation evaluated four different explanations potentially governing theory on deprecating speech: social identity, expectancy violation, complexity-extremity, and desensitization. To test the descriptive and predictive usefulness of the first three theories, 614 participants made attributions of the perceived harm of actual racist slurs targeted at African, Asian, or Hispanic Americans. The results pointed to social identity as the most powerful theoretical construct to explain perceptions of racist speech. Although social identity concerns predicted participants' responses better than the two competing explanations, a second study further examined the complexity-extremity and desensitization theories. A sample of 36 Asian Americans demonstrated that previous exposure (low vs. high) mediated participants' perceptions of harm and levels of desensitization. Intergroup perceptions of racist speech seemingly derive from both social identity processes and previous experience. The study concludes with a discussion of the legal implications for hate speech.