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This study identified and described adolescents’ exclusion rules and how they were related to their real world exclusionary behaviours. Adolescents (N5682) were asked to provide (a) an account and rationale for excluding a peer who wanted to join their group; and (b) general rules for when exclusion was fair. A content analysis of the narratives suggested seven rejection rules that were somewhat consistent with adolescents’ reported acts of social exclusion: (a) unattractive; (b) punishment; (c) dangerous; (d) group loyalty; (e) benevolent protection; (f) unqualified; and (g) never. The data demonstrated that adolescent peer groups provide fertile soil for cultivating and performing moral exclusion. Both theoretical and applied implications of the findings are discussed.

Although communication scholars have examined adult group processes, they have paid little attention to the peer group experiences of children and adolescents. Successfully gaining entry to peer groups is significant, in that rejection in childhood affects self‐concept, social skills, and school successes. Guided by a bona fide groups perspective, this study collected over 600 adolescent accounts of group rejection. Narrative accounts revealed five strategies peer groups used to communicate rejection (Ignoring, Disqualifying, Insulting, Blaming, and Creating New Rules). Rejection was stressful for observers as well as rejectees, with females, Caucasians, and regularly‐excluded students reporting highest levels. Females and those frequently rejected reported the most stress when observing the rejection of others. Specific interventions are discussed for primary and middle‐school teachers to stimulate prosocial group inclusion.

Although successful entry into childhood peer groups is a prerequisite for development of self-concept, social skills, and school successes, little is known about real-world attempts to penetrate social group boundaries. The authors collected more than 600 adolescent accounts of group rejections, as well as regrets concerning the failure to voice disagreement. Narrative accounts revealed six reasons for failing to voice disagreement with the social exclusion of others: (a) group dynamics, (b) social fears, (c) uncertainty, (d) social inadequacies,(e) qualities of the excluded individual, and (f) low motivation. Seventy percent of these adolescents shared specific language they now regretted not using at the time. Two cognitive frameworks emerged: (a) group membership was perceived as fragile and (b) rejection stigma was perceived as contagious. A model describing negative social reasoning used by those who remain silent during the rejection of others is offered, as well as intervention strategies to stimulate prosocial group inclusion.

This investigation assesses E. Hall's 1976 communication context as one explanatory mechanism governing interethnic perceptions of subtle racist speech. Six hundred thirteen participants evaluated the perceived harm of direct and indirect racist slurs made by a White (European American) speaker to a non-White (Asian, African, or Hispanic American) target. A series of 2×2×2 (Message Explicitness: Direct vs. Indirect × Group Membership: In-Group vs. Out-Group × Racial Slurs: Roommate vs. Class Discussion) mixed-effects ANOVAs revealed that lower and higher context communication styles mediated the perception of racist speech harm. Asian Americans were more sensitive to the communication context, evaluating indirect racist speech as the most problematic; whereas European, African, and Hispanic Americans relied more on the actual message, rating direct racist statements most disturbing. Both theoretical and applied implications of the findings are discussed.

Accuracy in detecting deception has been the focus of much research, and arguably this work has produced few firm conclusions about factors that increase or reduce detection accuracy. Consequently, this research explores factors that influence judgments about message deceptiveness. Results indicate that secure and anxious‐ambivalent respondents rated messages as more truthful in the presence of intimacy markers, whereas avoidant‐fearful and dismissing respondents were relatively likely to perceive the same messages as deceptive. Various consequences of this outcome are discussed, including implications for research on the truth‐bias heuristic.

Increasingly, hate groups have used the Internet to express their viewpoints, sell their paraphernalia, and recruit new members. This study explored the effectiveness of persuasive storytelling found on White supremacist Web pages. One hundred eight adolescents participated in a longitudinal study (pretest, Time 1, Time 2) conducted online. A 3 (receptivity: negatively inclined, neutral, predisposed) × 2 (narrative: high vs. low perceived) × 2 (message explicitness: implicit vs. explicit) factorial design found that immediately following exposure, high-narrative and implicit messages were more persuasive than low-narrative and explicit messages. Interestingly, high-narrative and implicit effects decayed, whereas low-narrative and explicit message effects endured or increased slightly over time. In addition, people's receptivity interacted with the message factors to further mediate persuasion. For example, disagreeing individuals resisted low-narrative, explicit messages significantly more than any other condition. The article concludes with a discussion of the social implications of these findings.

This study examines how people experience hate speech. Specifically, it assesses people’s perceptions regarding both the antecedents and outcomes of such expression targeted at Jews and homosexuals. One hundred twenty university students read (and in some cases also supplied) real-life epithets aimed at their social identity and then provided an assessment of their (a) perceived short- and long-term consequences, (b) understanding of the motive behind the message, (c) response to the sender, and (d) response to the message in terms of soliciting social support. A content analysis of the accounts produced the following patterns: (a) short- and long-term consequences mirrored a three-stage sequence found within other traumatic experiences; (b) respondents described motives as enduring, not situational, states; (c) the most common response strategies were passive; and (d) participants often sought support. The discussion focuses on implications for interventions that may mitigate negative consequences of hate speech.

This research broadly maps the territory of moral exclusion to include communication within its boundaries. Communicative strategies may provide the means for the interruption or even the reversal of the moral-exclusion cycle. While the current studies do not provide empirical verification of the reversal mechanism, they do prepare the theoretical groundwork through the use of a contemporary example: Romanian orphans. The first study is a survey of 225 Romanian students designed to reveal how they analyze the social issue of orphans and whether it is possible to differentiate between those who have and those who have not excluded orphans from their scope of justice. The second study consists of 2 focus-group discussions conducted in Bucharest: one with project managers from nongovernment organizations working with children in crisis, and the other with ordinary citizens. The results and discussion concentrate on the im plications and practical applications for potentially countering moral exclusion.

This descriptive study investigates people's responses to incendiary hate sites found on the World Wide Web. Drawing on legal guidelines for other classes of unprotected speech, this study explores the parallels between First Amendment formulas and people's perceptions of hate sites. Additionally, it examines perceptions of harmfulness and persuasiveness. Two hundred sixty-six volunteers in an on-line study each read and evaluated one of 11 white supremacist Web pages. One test indicated that the communicative value of the expression was low, while a second test suggested people perceived an indirect, insidious threat rather than "imminent" lawless action. Viewing short-term effects as the legal harm, white supremacist hate rhetoric is protected speech. If one considers indirect or long-term effects, however, hate speech may reside at the border of First Amendment protection. The results inform the debate regarding protection for Internet hate speech.

It has been argued that linguistic masking devices can create different versions of reality. This study investigated whether systematic language shifts using three of these lower level devices (permutation, truncation, and generalization) influenced people’s perceptions. One hundred and ninety-three students participated in an attribution experiment in which each person read a brief news story based on an actual Navy clash between South and North Korea. A 2× 2× 2 analysis of variance (ANOVA) demonstrated that serial prominence, abstract language, and truncation produced greater attributions of responsibility as well as influenced impressions of aggressiveness and status. The results confirmed that linguistic masking holds consequences for perceived reality. The study concludes with a discussion of practical implications for news reporting and writing.

In this paper, Charles Taylor's political philosophy is applied to the influence of inflammatory speech (e.g., militia anti‐government rhetoric) that gained national attention in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. The humanities and social science traditions provide insights for this analysis. Perceived effects of anti‐ and pro‐government speech on national climate and general harm were investigated in one quantitative study. Specifically, negative rhetoric impacted national climate in terms of increasing feelings of fear and hostility and reducing the sense of security and solidarity. Positive rhetoric influenced the national climate by affecting security and solidarity. Furthermore, people found negative speech more socially detrimental and personally upsetting than positive speech. A discussion of the implications and importance of these findings concludes with the paradox that free speech involving negative rhetoric both underscores democratic values as well as undermines them.

Attachment theory was investigated as an alternative inter-personal theory for understanding how audience members form parasocial relationships with television personalities. Attachment theory posits that people develop relationships in either a secure or insecure fashion. We explored whether attachment styles influenced the extent to which individuals engage in parasocial interaction. A total of 115 students completed the parasocial scale and two attachment style questionnaires. Results provided evidence that attachment styles are related to parasocial behavior: Anxious-ambivalents were the most likely to form parasocial bonds, Avoidants were the least likely to develop such relationships, and Secures were in the middle, with the more mistrusting Secures showing a tendency to engage in parasocial interaction. The discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for the attachment process.

This study extends previous research to examine the perceptions of harm resulting from racist speech. Using moderately intense messages, it explores these perceptions between Asian American and Caucasian ethnic groups. There is some evidence to suggest that the ethnic-group membership of the speaker will affect the perception of harm. We also note a theoretically based methodological concern regarding the manipulation of message explicitness.

Verbally disturbing communication, or what is broadly referred to as harmful speech (e.g., racist, sexist, and ageist speech), is a growing but fragmented area of inquiry in need of integration. In an effort to capitalize on various traditions’ insights and make connections across academic boundaries, the authors present a model for summarizing findings and generating and guiding research for several intergroup forms of deprecating speech. To begin, seven of the more established research areas—verbal aggression, gender, age, physical disability, ethnicity, jurisprudence, and rhetoric—are overviewed. These are then integrated into a model that describes the dynamics and processes underlying the type of communication that results in harm. The general utility of the framework lies in (a) its comprehensive elucidation of many types of harmful speech; (b) its specificity, because it allows for the complexity and interaction of a variety of situational, psychological, affective, social, and communicative factor...

This research extends growing work on the interplay between language and social cognition by examining the use of linguistic masking devices in an intergroup context. The authors conducted three studies to explore the use offour lower-level masking devices identified as influential in creating differing versions of reality. In Study 1, African American and Caucasian students read one news brief involving an encounter between Caucasian police officers and African American males and then were asked to generate headlines describing the event. These headlines were content analyzed according to permutation, truncation, generalization, and nominalization. Results were inconclusive, and a follow-up study (Study 2) examined the differential use of these masking devices in headlines written by Caucasian police officers and African American respondents. A final study was conducted (Study 3) to rule out the possibility that the differential use of linguistic masking devices was due to factors other than intergroup bias.

The following investigations juxtapose jurisprudence and communication literatures to examine under what conditions racist speech is perceived as harmful. Specifically, one theory of legal liability, the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress, and one intergroup approach, social identity theory, guided three empirical studies investigating verbally disturbing communication targeted at Asian Americans. The studies examined how the attribution of harm was influenced by variables such as group membership, message severity, message explicitness and the medium ofpresentation. One finding in particular, an interaction between group membership and message explicitness (direct vs. indirect), emerged across the three studies. Results revealed that as “objective” evaluators of deprecating speech, out-group members attributed the direct messages of racism to be more harmful than in-group members did, but, conversely, in-group members evaluated the indirect messages of racism to be more harmful than the out-group members did. Theoretical explanations for this finding and its resulting legal implications are discussed.

Les As. proposent une evaluation transdisciplinaire des conceptualisations et des operationalisations de l'ethnicite. D'une part, ils examinent les divers fondements definitoires et theoriques de l'ethnicite et de l'identite ethnique, et d'autre part, ils presentent, a partir d'une vaste recherche sur CDROM, une analyse de contenu portant sur les articles de revues qui abordent le theme de l'ethnicite. Ils se concentrent notamment sur : 1) les relations entre theorie et mesure ; 2) les types de mesure ; 3) les relations entre la mesure de l'ethnicite dans la discipline de la communication et dans les autres disciplines sociales. Ils terminent par des recommandations methodologiques pour les travaux futurs

Social psychological studies of language cover a wide range of research domains, most of which ignore written communication to societally visible figures. Toward ameliorating this, the authors focus on letters written to Hollywood celebrities. The authors'goal is to extend the 1991 research of Dietz et al. that has examined threatening and inappropriate letters to entertainment celebrities. The authors present a comparative view by investigating the features of normal fan behavior. A total of 294 university students were asked to express their motivations for contacting celebrities. Next, 83 fan letters received by one Hollywood celebrity were content analyzed in terms of the senders' motivations for writing. The authors compared the university students' rationale to the ones articulated in the actual letters and also compared the latter with characteristics found in Dietz et al. `s more sinister sample. Finally, a case study of one fan is undertaken to illustrate how distinguishing between a sycophantic fan and the obsessed unwanted pursuer poses a challenging task.

Language Awareness (LA) programmes are often implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, assumed to aid in the promotion of intercultural tolerance. Drawing on sociopsychological theory and research on intergroup relations, it is argued that awareness should not necessarily lead to tolerance. In an exploratory study, 253 westcoast American students’ general responses to LA issues are investigated in relation to their own self‐reported LA and tolerance levels. In general, the findings only reflected extremely modest and uncertain relationships between LA and tolerance. Consequently, insights gleaned from intergroup relations (as well as accommodation processes) may serve as valuable resources for the development and refinement of LA programmes.

This paper is an attempt to articulate basic questions in this fragmented field in pursuit of a more interdisciplinary framework, one which recognises the important mediating roles of individual cognitions as a complement to sociostructural analyses. As an untapped resource, there is an ever‐increasing number of, admittedly diverse, theoretical models in the sociopsychological areas of ethnolinguistic differentiation, ethnic language attitudes, second language learning, intercultural accommodation, communication breakdown, ethnic values, beliefs about talk, and so forth which are relevant for a more rounded understanding of minority language situations. These will be integrated into a framework leading to a set of predictive propositions which, it is argued, will elaborate the psychosocial climate under which different degrees of group level maintenance on the one hand, and the processing of majority‐minority encounters and the kinds of interactive strategies within them on the other, will prevai...