POKEN language is an identifying feature of members of a national or cultural group and any listener's attitude toward members of a particular group should generalize to the language they use. From this viewpoint, evaluational reactions to a spoken language should be similar to those prompted by interaction with individuals who are perceived as members of the group that uses it, but because the use of the language is one aspect of behavior common to a variety of individuals, hearing the language is likely to arouse mainly generalized or stereotyped characteristics of the group. Thus, when one hears a radio broadcast of an international meeting and encounters passages of a foreign language, one's evaluational reactions to the communication are attributable, in part, to the language used and likely reflect generalized attitudinal reactions to the group that uses it.The purpose of the present investigation was to determine the significance spoken language has for listeners by analyzing their evaluational reactions to English and French. Since we were interested in reactions that are attributable primarily to the language itself, we attempted to minimize the effects of both the voice of the speaker and his message by employing bilingual speakers reading the same message in two languages. In view of previous studies (sec Licklider & Miller, 1951 which have shown that evaluations of personality based solely upon voice have little or no reliability, it was predicted that the differences in the favorableness of any S's, evaluations of the French and English guises of speakers would reflect his attitude toward members of his own and members of the other language group. The study was carried out with 5s living in Montreal, a community whose history centers largely in a French-English schism

IThis report, as submitted by the contractor, has been cleared for felease to Defense Technical I nfor motion center (DTIC) to comply with regulatory requirements. It has been given n rmr itiuinohrta oDI S r i e ( T S . T e v w s i n n a n l fnin g c o n t a n e d i n o i p r a r e d s r th o o t h e r anut or I n and will be available only through DIC or other reference services such as the National Technical information j hould not be cnruJaanoicaOptetofheAmy position, policy, or decision, unless so designated by rother official documentation. .. ';_' UNCLASSIFIED SECURITY CLASSIFICATION OF TI41S PAGE (When Data Entered) -_ REPORT DOCUMENTATION PAGE READ INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE COMPLETING FORM . REPORT NUMBER J2. GOVT ACCESSION NO, S. RECIPIENT'S CATALOG NUMBER ARI Research Note 88-451 7... TITLE (and Subtitle) S. TYPE OF REPORT A PERIOD COVEREDThis research note reports on two studies run to determine whether the interpretations of statements, or forecasts, using vague probability and frequency expressions such as "likely", "improbable","frequently", "rarely" were sensitiv. to the base rates of the events involved. In the first experiment, professional weather forucasters judged situations drawn from a medical context. In the second, students judged matched forecast scenarios of common semantic content that differed only in prior probability (as determined by an independent group (OVER) O t D 3 E L-nO OF I NOV 65 IS OBSOLETE JAN 73UNCLASSIFIED) SECURITY CLASSIFtCATfOR OF THIS PAGE (When Date Entered)

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