Controlling the Narrative: Euphemistic Language Affects Judgments of Actions while Avoiding Perceptions of Dishonesty

Walker, Alexander; Turpin, Martin Harry; Meyers, Ethan Andrew; Stolz, Jennifer A.; Fugelsang, Jonathan A.; Koehler, Derek J.

doi:10.31234/osf.io/aw453

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…But the greater partisan trustworthiness that telling a (policy) FF prompts should, independently, add more of a partisan bent to the falsehood-delivering politician's perceived morality. Whereas Walker et al (2021) argued that a major reputational risk for lying is undermining trustworthiness, the present findings suggest the importance of distinguishing general from partisan trustworthiness.…”

Section: General and Partisan Trustworthinesscontrasting

confidence: 74%

“…Notably, most definitions of lying are agnostic as to whether the statement is actually true. Instead, what matters is whether the speaker believes their statement to be true, and thus whether they intended to communicate a false statement (Leth, 2021;Mahon, 2008;Walker et al, 2021). Intentionality has long been identified as a key precondition for moral culpability (Cushman, 2008;Malle et al, 2007;Shaver, 1985;Weiner, 1995;Young & Saxe, 2011), especially when it comes to deception (Croson et al, 2003).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Who sees which political falsehoods as more acceptable and why: A new look at in-group loyalty and trustworthiness.

Galak¹,

Critcher²

2023

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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Many politicians—even those who occupy some of the most powerful offices in the world—lie. Five studies examined how conservative and liberal Americans responded to media reports of politicians’ falsehoods—that is, flagged falsehoods (FFs). Even accounting for partisan biases in how much participants dismissed such reports as fake news and assumed that such lies were unintentional, we consistently observed partisan evaluations in how much FFs were seen as justifiable: Republicans and Democrats alike saw their own party’s FFs as more acceptable (Studies 1–4). This charitability did not reflect unconditional in-group favoritism. Instead, it was strongest for policy FFs—those meant to advance a party’s explicit agenda—as opposed to personal FFs about a politician’s past (Study 2) or electoral FFs that strayed from parties’ explicit goals by aiming to disenfranchise legally eligible voters (Study 4). Although FFs can undermine general trustworthiness in the eyes of both in-group and out-group members, policy FFs in particular signal partisan trustworthiness (Studies 3–5)—the belief that a politician can be trusted by their own political side and not by the other. For likeminded partisans, such partisan trustworthiness predicted not only the perceived acceptability of FFs, but also perceptions of the politician as a more prototypically moral actor, even outside of the political sphere. These findings validate the importance of our dual conception of trustworthiness in intergroup contexts.

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Section: General and Partisan Trustworthinesscontrasting

confidence: 74%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Who sees which political falsehoods as more acceptable and why: A new look at in-group loyalty and trustworthiness.

Galak¹,

Critcher²

2023

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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show abstract

“…For example, compared to their more moderate peers, American politicians with extreme ideological positions acquire more followers on social media (Hong & Kim, 2016). Similarly, politically-biased language increases the perceived trustworthiness of in-group speakers (Walker et al, 2024) while negative tweets about one's out-group are rewarded with enhanced audience engagement (Rathje et al, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extremely Partisan Samples Distort Perceptions of Group Beliefs

van der Valk,

Walker,

Fugelsang

et al. 2024

Preprint

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How do we infer the beliefs of an entire group (e.g., Democrats) after being exposed to the beliefs of only a handful of group members? What if we know that the beliefs we encountered were selected in a biased manner? Across two experiments, we recruited 640 U.S. residents and assessed whether they could correct for known sample bias. Some participants viewed biased samples that exclusively presented the political beliefs of extreme partisans while others viewed representative samples free from selection biases. We find evidence that people correct for known sample bias, but do so insufficiently, leading them to make inaccurate inferences that are aligned with sample bias. Specifically, participants overestimated the ideological extremity of Democrats and Republicans to a greater extent when exposed to explicitly biased—compared to representative—samples. We discuss how peoples’ tendency to insufficiently adjust from transparently biased samples leads to partisan misperceptions that amplify political polarization.

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“…[13,14,15] The article has analyzed the works of modern foreign and Ukrainian researchers A. Terry, A. Aitan, S. Olimata, A. Walker, Sharif, O. Kulchytska et al, which consider euphemisms and dysphemisms in various aspects of language. [9, 5,8,2,3] Several articles published by the Guardian in February-August 2022, were also selected to demonstrate the functions of euphemization and dysphemization in journalistic and political discourse. [10,11] The dynamism and multidimensional nature of euphemisms is the reason for the wide variety of their lexical and grammatical forms, emotional neutrality or stylistic coloring, and the variability of their euphemistic potential.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, doublespeak does not involve making objectively false claims but rather involves the strategic use of language to stretch the truth in ways that impart a reality that is most desirable for the speaker." [2] The concept of dysphemia is exactly the opposite of the concept of euphemia. In the Merriam-Webster dictionary, dysphemism is defined as "the substitution of a objectionable, offensive, or disparaging expression for an agreeable or inoffensive one."…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Functional and Pragmatic Role of Euphemisms and Dysphemisms in English Political Discourse and the Media

I Sydoruk,

I Samoilenko

2022

Mìžnar. fìlol. čas.

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This article examines the definition of euphemisms, areas of use, positive and negative aspects, styles of use and the relationship between euphemisms and dysphemisms, their role in modern English-language political and journalistic texts. The functioning of euphemistic and dysphemistic units in political and journalistic discourses is also highlighted, all the reasons for their occurrence in various communicative situations are analyzed. We tried to present the main functions and role of euphemisms and dysphemisms in political discourse and mass media. In the language of politicians and modern mass media, the phenomenon of euphemism and dysphemia is one of the bright indicators of social transformations. Researchers of these phenomena speak of a tendency to avoid direct nomination of objects and abstract things, due to the reluctance to offend others. In order not to hurt someone's feelings, people often try to mitigate the potentially negative impact of statements by using more acceptable alternatives. This means that whenever we are faced with a sensitive topic, we choose words that minimize the offensive or harsh effect on listeners. A decisive role for distinguishing between euphemisms and dysphemisms is played by the broad context of the utterance, which includes the extralinguistic situation, as well as the immediate linguistic environment of the lexeme. Euphemism and dysphemia reflect social, cultural, moral values, and even peculiarities of worldview and thinking not only in the speech of individual personalities, but also in the language portrait of modern society in general. Euphemisms and dysphemisms completely depend on the assessments of certain phenomena accepted in society, on the definition of what is permissible and what is not. Hence the need for their systematic study in connection with cultural and social changes.

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Controlling the Narrative: Euphemistic Language Affects Judgments of Actions while Avoiding Perceptions of Dishonesty

Cited by 4 publications

References 26 publications

Who sees which political falsehoods as more acceptable and why: A new look at in-group loyalty and trustworthiness.

Who sees which political falsehoods as more acceptable and why: A new look at in-group loyalty and trustworthiness.

Extremely Partisan Samples Distort Perceptions of Group Beliefs

Functional and Pragmatic Role of Euphemisms and Dysphemisms in English Political Discourse and the Media

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