| dc.description.abstract | The thesis is titled “When Hatred Becomes Mundane: Desensitization After Repeated Exposure to Hate Speech” and written by Maren Langenkamp under the supervision of Milan Obaidi, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, and Rolf Reber, Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo. Hate speech is common on social media and sometimes in political speeches. In several instances, terrorists have been mainly or exclusively radicalized online. Therefore, it is important to understand how hate speech affects people and how psychological responsiveness to it changes upon repeated exposure. The main research question is, how does desensitization to hate speech occur, and under which circumstances does it occur? More specifically, do offensiveness perceptions change in the presence of familiar versus unfamiliar statements and do factors such as political viewpoint and generalized prejudice affect this process? Other repetition effects, such as the truth effect, have been studied with a repeated exposure paradigm. A design adapted from truth judgement research was used. Participants were recruited via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and located in the United States to three studies in total, a pilot study, Study 1, and Study 2. Data was collected for this project specifically, as it was a standalone project. Participants were exposed to offensive statements in two phases, an exposure phase, and a judgement phase. During the exposure phase, participants saw one-half of the statements in random order. During the judgement phase, participants saw all statements, the repeated statements from the exposure phase, as well as the new ones in random order. During the judgement phase, participants were asked to provide offensiveness ratings for all statements on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from not at all offensive to extremely offensive. The difference in offensiveness ratings for new versus repeated statements served as a measure of desensitization. The primary analyses for desensitization upon repetition are not supported, but an alternative analysis of desensitization over time shows that participants got desensitized slightly differently than expected. They rated earlier statements as more offensive than later statements. Participants were also more likely to rate statements targeting groups they favoured as more offensive than statements targeting groups they disfavoured. The relationship between generalized prejudice and desensitization remains unclear. Gender was related to offensiveness ratings in Study 1 but not in Study 2, and a previous exposure measure added in Study 2 showed no relationship between previous exposure and offensiveness ratings. The results have implications for our understanding of how people get desensitized to hate speech. | eng |