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-ma...