Harm inflation: Making sense of concept creep
By Nick Haslam, Brodie C. Dakin, Fabian Fabiano, Melanie J. McGrath, J. Rhee, Ekaterina Vylomova, Morgan Weaving, Melissa A. Wheeler. 2020
64 citations recorded by the source corpus.
ABSTRACT “Concept creep” is the gradual semantic expansion of harm-related concepts such as bullying, mental disorder, prejudice, and trauma. This review presents a synopsis of relevant theoretical advances and empirical research findings on the phenomenon. It addresses three fundamental questions. First, it clarifies the characterisation of concept creep by refining its theoretical and historical dimensions and presenting studies investigating the change in harm-related concepts using computational linguistics. Second, it examines factors that have caused concept creep, including cultural shifts in sensitivity to harm, societal changes in the prevalence of harm, and intentional meaning changes engineered for political ends. Third, the paper develops an account of the consequences of concept creep, including social conflict, political polarisation, speech restrictions, victim identities, and progressive social change. This extended analysis of concept creep helps to understand its mixed implications and sets a multi-pronged agenda for future research on the topic.
Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Sociology and Political Science, Cognitive Science & Psychology, Social Sciences & Humanities
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Citations in the corpus
- Anticipating Safety Issues in E2E Conversational AI: Framework and Tooling (2021, background): “For example, Haslam et al. (2020) show that there has been a gradual semantic expansion of harm-related concepts such as bullying, mental disorder, prejudice, and trauma.”