From wsj.com
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Many people now believe that words can cause lasting harm.
This belief has grown strong enough for some to justify violence. A recent survey by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression found that more than 40% of Gen Z respondents said it can be acceptable to use physical violence to prevent someone from giving a speech.
A newly published paper led by Samuel Pratt at UCLA seeks to measure this belief directly. The researchers built what they call the “Words Can Harm Scale,” a survey asking people how much they agree with statements like, “I could be left emotionally scarred by something I read.”
The first finding is that this belief is stable. People who score high on the scale tend to score high again two weeks later. Some people simply see words as more dangerous than others do, and this appears to be a fixed trait.
Who holds this view? The pattern won’t surprise many readers. As the researcher put it, “People higher in the belief that words can harm tended to be younger, female, non-White, and politically liberal.” They “rated themselves as higher in intellectual humility, empathy, moral grandstanding, and the belief in the importance of silencing others.”
People who believe words can harm report stronger concern for others and a greater desire to protect the vulnerable. At the same time, they exhibit lower emotional stability and a greater tendency to see themselves as victims in everyday conflicts. Moreover, they report higher levels of anxiety and depression.
In other words, people who view themselves as highly compassionate also tend to be more volatile and psychologically fragile. This combination has real effects on society. The researchers find strong links between believing that words can harm and supporting policies that limit speech.
Importantly, the belief that words can harm predicts support for censorship better than straightforward measures of political ideology.
Why? The answer lies in how people think about harm. When something is seen as harmful, it becomes a moral issue. We don’t simply dislike it. We want to stop it. If words are seen as a form of injury, then restricting speech feels like protection as opposed to censorship. Of course, we should be careful here. The study doesn’t prove cause and effect. There are at least three ways to interpret the findings.
The first is that experience shapes belief. People who have faced harsh or abusive speech may come to see words as dangerous. This aligns with the finding that the groups more likely to believe words can harm also report more exposure to hostile language.
The second is that belief shapes experience. If you hold the belief that words can harm you, you may react more strongly to them. You may feel more stress and pull back from more uncomfortable situations. Over time, that could make you less resilient, thus explaining the link between fragility and the belief that words can harm.
The third interpretation is that a deeper trait drives both of the aforementioned tendencies at once: People see words as more dangerous and feel more stressed and less resilient in their everyday lives.
What should we take from all this? One lesson is that the debate over speech is, at its core, not merely about politics. It’s also about psychology. Indeed, a 2025 report from the Manhattan Institute found that mental health appears to influence political ideology more than political ideology influences mental health, with increases in psychological distress predicting a subsequent shift toward political liberalism.
Another lesson is that good motives can have mixed effects. Concern for others is admirable. But when it leads to a broad view of harm, it can justify extreme limits on speech, thereby shielding people from the ordinary stress that arises from social interactions. The same outlook that drives empathy may also erode resilience.
There is a certain irony in the finding that the most empathic people support the least tolerant policies. Compassion, expressed through a broad and ever-expanding conception of harm, becomes a mechanism for control. The path forward requires something other than empathy: the willingness to let others be offended.