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Freedom of Racist Speech: Ego and Expressive Threats

Overview of attention for article published in Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, September 2017
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (98th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (81st percentile)

Mentioned by

news
11 news outlets
twitter
117 X users
facebook
2 Facebook pages
video
1 YouTube creator

Citations

dimensions_citation
49 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
143 Mendeley
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1 CiteULike
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Title
Freedom of Racist Speech: Ego and Expressive Threats
Published in
Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, September 2017
DOI 10.1037/pspi0000095
Pubmed ID
Authors

Mark H. White, Christian S. Crandall

Abstract

Do claims of "free speech" provide cover for prejudice? We investigate whether this defense of racist or hate speech serves as a justification for prejudice. In a series of 8 studies (N = 1,624), we found that explicit racial prejudice is a reliable predictor of the "free speech defense" of racist expression. Participants endorsed free speech values for singing racists songs or posting racist comments on social media; people high in prejudice endorsed free speech more than people low in prejudice (meta-analytic r = .43). This endorsement was not principled-high levels of prejudice did not predict endorsement of free speech values when identical speech was directed at coworkers or the police. Participants low in explicit racial prejudice actively avoided endorsing free speech values in racialized conditions compared to nonracial conditions, but participants high in racial prejudice increased their endorsement of free speech values in racialized conditions. Three experiments failed to find evidence that defense of racist speech by the highly prejudiced was based in self-relevant or self-protective motives. Two experiments found evidence that the free speech argument protected participants' own freedom to express their attitudes; the defense of other's racist speech seems motivated more by threats to autonomy than threats to self-regard. These studies serve as an elaboration of the Justification-Suppression Model (Crandall & Eshleman, 2003) of prejudice expression. The justification of racist speech by endorsing fundamental political values can serve to buffer racial and hate speech from normative disapproval. (PsycINFO Database Record

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 117 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 143 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 143 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 33 23%
Student > Master 20 14%
Student > Bachelor 17 12%
Student > Doctoral Student 9 6%
Professor 9 6%
Other 23 16%
Unknown 32 22%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Psychology 56 39%
Social Sciences 25 17%
Business, Management and Accounting 8 6%
Arts and Humanities 6 4%
Linguistics 4 3%
Other 10 7%
Unknown 34 24%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 155. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 22 February 2024.
All research outputs
#265,522
of 25,537,395 outputs
Outputs from Journal of Personality & Social Psychology
#336
of 7,435 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#5,620
of 324,897 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of Personality & Social Psychology
#6
of 27 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,537,395 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 98th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 7,435 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 29.7. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 95% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 324,897 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 27 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 81% of its contemporaries.