In the eye of the beholder: Situational and dispositional predictors of perceiving harm in others' words

One manifestation of society's increased sensitivity and reactivity to harm is the notion that words can be labeled as harmful, regardless of how subtle and regardless of their intent, if perceived as harmful by the receiver of that speech (Haslam, 2016). However, it is unclear what specific words should be considered harmful, particularly if harm is in the eye of the beholder (Lilienfeld, 2017). Here, we tested the hypothesis that situational and dispositional factors can prime individuals to interpret others' verbal communications as harmful. In Study 1 (n = 217 U.S. college students), a one-sentence prime about harmful words led individuals to perceive ambiguous phrases from others as harmful. In Study 2 (n = 1092 U.S. college students), participants showed far more within-person than between-person consistency in their emotional reactions to widely varying ambiguous statements, and negative emotionality was a consistent predictor of between-person differences in feeling hurt and anxious by such statements. Taken together, findings from the two studies raise the possibility that well-intentioned efforts to boost awareness of the potential harm conveyed in others' words may have the inadvertent effect of exacerbating perceptions of harm, particularly among individuals already inclined toward such perceptions.