Valuing Liberty or Equality? Empathetic Personality and Political Intolerance of Harmful Speech

Abstract

Political tolerance is a core democratic value, yet a long-standing research agenda suggests that citizens are unwilling to put this value into practice when confronted by groups that they dislike. One of the most disliked groups, especially in recent times, are those promoting racist ideologies. Racist speech poses a challenge to the ideal of political tolerance because it challenges another core tenet of democratic politics – the value of equality. How do citizens deal with threats to equality when making decisions about what speech they believe should be allowed in their communities? In this article, we contribute to the rich literature on political tolerance, but focus on empathy as a key, and understudied, personality trait that should be central to how – and when – citizens reject certain types of speech. Empathy as a cognitive trait relates to one’s capacity to accurately perceive the feeling state of another person. Some people are more prone to worry and care about the feelings of other people, and such empathetic people should be most likely to reject speech that causes harm. Using a comparative online survey in Canada (n = 1,555) and the United States (n = 1627) conducted in 2017, we examine whether empathetic personalities - as measured by a modified version of the Toronto Empathy Scale - predict the tolerance of political activities by “least-liked” as well as prejudicially motivated groups. Using both a standard least-liked political tolerance battery, as well as a vignette experiment that manipulates group type, we test whether higher levels of trait empathy negatively correlate with tolerance of racist speech. Our findings show that empathy powerfully moderates the ways in which citizens react to different forms of objectionable speech.

Le Petit Machiavellian Prince: Effects of latent toxoplasmosis on political beliefs and values

“…There are also well studied associations between personality traits and political views, e.g. [54][55][56][57]. While the direction of causality needs to be studied further [58] and while the human-centred field of parasite induced changes in personality traits is regrettably understudied and quite complex [59], we might expect at least some effect of infectious diseases on political attitudes caused by shifts of personality traits.…”

The Realignment of Political Tolerance in the United States

“…At the root of the realignment, we show, is the growing salience of egalitarian concerns in how people evaluate speech controversies involving historically marginalized groups (Chong 2006; Chong and Levy 2018; Harrell, Hinckley, and Mansell 2021). The emergence of equality as a counterweight to freedom has muted or upended the established correlates of tolerance identified in almost all prior research.…”

When Society Deteriorates: Political Intolerance, Perceived Anomic Threat and Participation in Anti-system Collective Actions in the Context of Authoritarian Democracy

“…In fact, empirical research reveals that tolerance is positively correlated with individual freedom and facilitates dissent [7]. However, public opinion researchers observe that some individuals and groups are reluctant to accept these principles when confronted with specific groups with whom they disagree [26]. These observations form the basis of research on political intolerance [22].…”

“…It is even considered the key to understanding it. Concretely, this is observed in cases where individuals have lost power or perceive that this power is threatened or when they are dogmatic and ignorant about the values governing the true principles of democracy [23,26]. These factors then limit the possibilities of participating in collective actions against social injustices or the acceptance of the involvement of third parties in these actions, as is often the case in contexts of authoritarian democracy where the governing systems make recourse to political repression because they consider that protest movements against the regime in place are unacceptable [41].…”