REVENGE AND IGNORANCE AS WEAPONS OF HATE SPEECH

<doi>10.24250/JPE/2/2019/GK/DR/RM/ED/AE/EB</doi>

Abstract

The year 2019, among some positive aspects, reflects some worrying aspects. Among them, the most harmful seems to be hate speech. Present at all levels of society, both in Romania and in the world, hatred brings with it the rejection of difference, negativity, violence and aggression. To tackle psychological sources of hate speech, our project Hate’s Journey, financed by Erasmus+, 2018-2-ES02-KA205-011733 has designed an online questionnaire composed by some single item research questions, general data collection and tests regarding emotional regulation, internet content awareness and helping attitudes. The hypothesis of this research is that the revenge thinking pattern and ignoring attitude towards the negative effects of hate speech are powerful predictors of future online perpetrator pattern of hate speech. Research’s 206 participants are residents of Latvia in 24.8%, Romania 24.8%, Spain 24.8%, and Turkey 25.7%, with an age mean of m=30 years, 39.8% males and 60.2% females. A multiple linear regression was calculated to predict the online hate speech perpetrator pattern. As results show, revenge thinking pattern (B=0.365, SE=0.082, Beta=0.317, t=4.452 at a p < 0.001) and ignoring attitude towards the negative effects of hate speech (B=0.233, SE=0.076, Beta=0.219, t=3.076 at a p < 0.005) are significant predictors of hate speech perpetrator pattern. Conclusions and implications are discussed.