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

Julia Kansok-Dusche, BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg; Alexander Wettstein, Institute for Research, Development and Evaluation, Bern; Ludwig Bilz, BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg; Sebastian Wachs, University of Potsdam; Melisa Castellanos, Institute for Research, Development and Evaluation, Bern

Hate speech is a global challenge, but little is known about the factors associated with adolescents' perpetration of hate speech in schools. We examined the role of two social competencies in relation to school-based hate speech perpetration, namely social perspective-taking and openness to diversity. Hate speech perpetration, however, may not be exclusively the result of individual social competencies, but may instead be moderated by young people's perceptions of their parents' educational goals. Thus, we examined whether perceived parental prosocial educational goals weaken or strengthen the association between these social competencies and hate speech perpetration in schools. Self-report questionnaires were completed by 1,719 adolescents (aged 11-18 years; 53.6% girls) from 22 German-speaking schools in Switzerland. As expected, we found significant negative correlations between social perspective-taking and hate speech perpetration, as well as between openness to diversity and hate speech perpetration. As hypothesized, perceived parents' prosocial educational goals moderated the association between openness to diversity and hate speech perpetration in schools. However, they did not moderate the association between social perspective-taking and hate speech perpetration in schools. This research provides evidence that social competence plays a role in hate speech perpetration. It also highlights the ecology of the family as a context that influences adolescents' behavior in school.

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