Associations between Social Competence, Perceived Parents’ Prosocial Educational Goals and Adolescents’ Hate Speech Perpetration in School

ABSTRACT

Hate speech is a global challenge, requiring research on adolescents’ hate speech perpetration in schools. We examined whether perceived parents’ prosocial educational goals moderate the association between social competencies (social perspective-taking, openness to diversity) and hate speech perpetration in schools. In total, 1,719 adolescents (aged 11–18 years) from 22 Swiss schools completed selfreport questionnaires (December 2020 to April 2021). Social perspective-taking and hate speech perpetration correlated negatively, alongside openness to diversity and hate speech perpetration. Perceived parents’ prosocial educational goals strengthened the negative association between openness to diversity and hate speech perpetration in schools but did not moderate the association with social perspective-taking.

KEYWORDS:

• Hate speech
• prosocial educational goals
• social perspective-taking
• school
• openness to diversity
• adolescents

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), grant number WA 4275/2-1, BI 1046/9-1, SCHU 1370/4-1 and the University of Teacher Education Bern, grant number 19s 0008 01. Ethical clearance was obtained from the Commission for Research and Development of the University of Teacher Education Bern in Switzerland (approval number 19s 0008 01).