Permissive Attitudes Toward Use of Slurs are Predicted by Racism & Low Empathy as well as Non-Conformity & Intelligence

Permissive Attitudes Toward Use of Slurs are Predicted by Racism & Low Empathy as well as Non-Conformity & Intelligence

In recent years it has been a hot cultural debate over who can use what words considered slurs, whether it is reflective of someone being hateful or if it depends on context, etc. In this paper, using data from Cloudfindings (2024), I tested a model explaining why people do and don’t say slurs to give insight into this problem.

I hypothesize that racism, non-conformity, low affective empathy, high cognitive empathy, low authoritarianism, intelligence, and low moral absolutism may predict usage of slurs that target demographics the person saying them is not part of. Low affective empathy and high moral absolutism are associated with racism and likely increase malicious use of slurs. Non-conformity, high cognitive empathy, low authoritarianism, intelligence, and low moral absolutism, the core being non-conformity, likely also increase use of slurs but for non-malicious intent (e.g., for comedic purposes). The variables used to test this hypothesis were a non-conformity scale created with items from other scales in the study [Table 1], a cognitive empathy factor extracted from all cognitive empathy measures in the study [Table 2], an empathy/care factor using items from the affective empathy and harm-morality scales [Table 3], an authoritarianism factor extracted from items from both liberalism and authoritarian scales in the study [Table 4], the intelligence factor, the moral absolutism factor, the xenophobia factor, and the added scores of two items assessing attitudes about slurs.

Results

Table 1

Non-conformity	PC1
Other people see me as slightly eccentric (odd).	0.62
I am an odd, unusual person.	0.59
{reverse} Do you consider yourself to be pretty much an average sort of person?	0.54
Do you at times have an urge to do something harmful or shocking?	0.66
Do you often feel like doing the opposite of what other people suggest even though you know they are right?	0.40
I am typically the black sheep in situations where most people are divided on an issue	0.75
I like people who are unusual or have radical opinions	0.74
I am friends with people that most would consider weird or bad	0.77
I am wary of people who seem like they might be a weird or bad person	-0.32
If a person I knew said things that were unusual and shocking, I would avoid them	-0.56
{reverse} Conventional, uncreative	0.21

Table 2

Cognitive Empathy	PC1
Social Information Processing	0.83
Social Skills	0.35
Social Awareness	0.86
Literal language	-0.79
Intuitive psychology understanding	0.67

Table 3

Empathy/Care	PC1
I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me	0.78
Sometimes I don't feel very sorry for other people when they are having problems	-0.71
When I see someone being taken advantage of, I feel kind of protective towards them	0.78
Other people's misfortunes do not usually disturb me a great deal.	-0.76
When I see someone being treated unfairly, I sometimes don't feel very much pity for them.	-0.78
I am often quite touched by things that I see happen.	0.56
I would describe myself as a pretty soft-hearted person.	0.66
Compassion for those who are suffering is the most crucial virtue.	0.76
One of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal.	0.35
Ultimately, the most morally wrong things are things that aim to cause suffering	0.42

Table 4

Authoritarianism	PC1
It's important to maintain law & order	0.42
Without a strong authority, the morality of a society will decay.	0.55
Humans cannot handle true freedom.	0.56
There should be little restrictions on who can sell, what they can sell, who they can sell too, etc	-0.31
I would never judge someone based on their appearance	-0.35
People who want to express their gender in an atypical way should not be judged	-0.84
All sexual orientations are fine, as long as they don’t harm anyone	-0.79
Women shouldn’t have to wear shirts or bras in public if they don’t want to	-0.42
Everyone should be treated equally and individually	-0.79
Drug use should be decriminalized	-0.71

Predictions

Correlation results - Regression results

Permissive slur attitude		Permissive slur attitude
0.49	Non-conformity	0.3 (p=0.002)	Non-conformity
-0.007	Cognitive empathy	1.8 (p=0.081)	Cognitive empathy
-0.43	Affective empathy	-0.15 (p=0.14)	Affective empathy
0.35	Authoritarianism	3.6 (p=0.001)	Authoritarianism
0.15	Intelligence	-1.8 (p=0.08)	Intelligence
-0.16	Moral Absolutism	-3.9 (p=<0.001)	Moral Absolutism
0.42	Xenophobia	1.8 (p=0.08)	Xenophobia

PCA Results

	PC1	PC2	PC3	PC4
Nonconformity	-0.53	-0.60	-0.13	-0.35
Cognitive empathy	0.34	-0.30	0.74	0.41
Affective empathy	0.49	0.48	0.30	-0.18
Authoritarianism	-0.76	0.40	0.31	0.05
Intelligence	-0.15	-0.58	0.56	-0.49
Moral Absolutism	-0.41	0.77	0.23	-0.17
Xenophobia	-0.83	0.27	0.08	0.07
Permissive slur attitude	-0.67	-0.45	-0.02	0.42

Discussion

As hypothesized, principal components analysis of the variables resulted in two main components associated with permissive attitudes towards slurs: a dimension with loadings on xenophobia, authoritarianism, moral absolutism, and low empathy in the direction with slur permissiveness, and a dimension with loadings on non-conformity, low moral absolutism, intelligence, and cognitive empathy in the direction with slur permissiveness, which also had a small opposite loading on xenophobia, suggesting people high in this dimension who may use racial slurs are less racist, likely because of the overlap between moral absolutism, conformity, and prejudice (Cloudfindings 2024). A third factor loading on permissive slur attitude was difficult to interpret, however was found to correlate with agreeableness (0.23), neuroticism (0.32), and low openness (-0.33), though cognitive empathy loaded with permissiveness on this factor, showing support for cognitive empathy conferring non-absolutist morality as discussed previously (Cloudfindings 2024). The association with intelligence agrees with previous literature showing that intelligence is associated with permissiveness to offensive language (Cloudfindings 2024). Those who have a permissive attitude to using slurs are racist, non-conformist & liberal, or a mix of the two, whereas those who are opposed to use of slurs are less prejudiced and high in conformity. 

The structure obtained from these variables closely resembles the structure used on all variables in (Cloudfindings 2024), with an absolutist-non-conformist dimension, an anti-intellectual-intelligent dimension, feminine-masculine, and traditionalism-liberalism [Figure 1].

Figure 1

Cloudfindings (2024) The Structure of Political Orientations and Underlying Psychological Causes: Part 1 - Statistical Extraction of a Psycho-Political Compass