Use of hate speech and social evaluation of a politician’s image

Abstract We investigated whether the use of hate speech by politicians impacts the social evaluation of their image, as measured by the semantic differential method developed by Cwalina et al. (2000). The participants (N = 105, Polish nationals) evaluated the profiles of three well-known Polish politicians from different parties – Krzysztof Bosak, Radosław Sikorski, and Włodzimierz Czarzasty – and a fictional politician named Jacek Wiśniewski. Participants made evaluations before and after reading hateful posts from each politician. The participants’ political views and their alignment with the electoral programs of the politicians being evaluated, as well as demographic variables such as gender and age were also measured. The results showed that hate speech adversely affected the politician’s image, as evaluated by the participants. As a consequence of the experimental manipulation, all of the politicians whose profiles were presented for evaluation were judged more negatively. In particular, the negative evaluations concerned the politicians’ competences (unqualified and provincial), their emotionality (excitable and aggressive), and their attitude towards other people (insincere and unfriendly). Detailed analyses also showed that: (a) respondents who sympathized with the views of specific politicians tended to evaluate them more positively, (b) hate speech was more harmful to the image of politicians judged by women than by men, and (c) there was a relationship between age and evaluations on several dimensions of the semantic differential.