Effects of the Prevention Program “HateLess. Together against Hatred” on Adolescents’ Empathy, Self-efficacy, and Countering Hate Speech

Abstract

Currently, there is a lack of empirically evaluated prevention programs targeting hate speech among adolescents. This is problematic because hate speech jeopardizes adolescents’ well-being and social integration. To this end, this study aims to evaluate the short-term effects of the newly developed anti-hate speech prevention program, “HateLess. Together against Hatred”, on adolescents’ empathy, self-efficacy, and counter-speech. Eight hundred and twenty adolescents between 12 and 16 (M = 13.27, SD = 1.04) from 11 German schools participated in this study. More specifically, 567 adolescents participated in the one-week prevention program, and 253 participants were assigned to the control group. Repeated measures ANOVAs showed that HateLess was successful, as there was a significant increase in empathy, self-efficacy, and counter-speech in the intervention group from the pretest (T1) to the posttest (T2) one month after the intervention. In contrast, no changes were found among adolescents in the control group. A multilevel mediation model revealed that the effect of being a member of the intervention group on counter-speech was partially mediated via empathy and self-efficacy. The findings indicate that HateLess is an effective, cost-efficient approach to enhance adolescents’ counter-speech directly and indirectly by altering the skills they need to become informed citizens in democratic societies.