Hate Speech on the Map of Stereotype Content

Abstract: Although hate speech is one of the crucial challenges of contemporary societies, it is still not obvious which groups will most often become its target. In this article, we apply the stereotype content model to answer this question. In a large cross-national survey ( N = 3,135) in Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom, we found that while the use of hate speech was associated with perceptions of warmth and competence, the effects were credibly stronger in the case of the latter dimension. The effect of competence (and to a smaller extent of warmth) was mediated by feelings of contempt toward the outgroups. Altogether, these findings suggest that hate-speech users often target their attacks at groups that are perceived to be inferior and disrespected, and thus – potentially – more dehumanized and less empathized with.