“Let’s Make the Difference!” Promoting Hate Counter-Speech in Adolescence Through Empathy and Digital Intergroup Contact (Community & Applied Social Psychology)

Through empathy for victims of hate speech, the study contends that the quality of intergroup contact may encourage counter-speech reactions. “Let’s Make the Difference!” is an ad hoc conversational storytelling web-app module that was created and given to a sample of 433 Italian teenagers (278 in the experimental group and 155 in the control group, Mage = 14.33). Teenagers simulated digital intergroup communication by chatting with an outgroup avatar using the web-app. In contrast to the control group, the experimental condition’s counter-speech intentions significantly increased between the pre-test and post-test, according to the results. According to our theories, the quality of interaction elicited by the conversational agent raised the intervention group’s empathy for the victim and, consequently, their determination to combat hate speech. Implications for theory and practice are examined.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/casp.70028