Individual Differences in Political Ideology and Disgust Sensitivity Affect Real-Time Spoken Language Comprehension

Lyall, Isabell Hubert; Järvikivi, Juhani

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.699071

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 105 publications

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“…This demonstrates that disgust ratings can serve as a good proxy for participant’s disgust and adds to the growing body of evidence regarding the effects of disgust proneness on cognition in general and language processing in particular. [ 40 , 41 ] found that disgust sensitivity was positively correlated with pupil dilation during the processing of stereotype-based clashing statements, suggesting that more disgust-prone individuals may experience greater arousal when interacting with stimuli that are disgusting either physically or morally. The results of the current study further indicate that even single word processing can be significantly affected by the participant’s disgust sensitivity.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVIDisgust: Language processing through the lens of partisanship

Puhacheuskaya

Lyall²,

Järvikivi³

2022

PLoS ONE

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Disgust is an aversive reaction protecting an organism from disease. People differ in how prone they are to experiencing it, and this fluctuates depending on how safe the environment is. Previous research has shown that the recognition and processing of disgusting words depends not on the word’s disgust per se but rather on individual sensitivity to disgust. However, the influence of dynamically changing disgust on language comprehension has not yet been researched. In a series of studies, we investigated whether the media’s portrayal of COVID-19 will affect subsequent language processing via changes in disgust. The participants were exposed to news headlines either depicting COVID-19 as a threat or downplaying it, and then rated single words for disgust and valence (Experiment 1; N = 83) or made a lexical decision (Experiment 2; N = 86). The headline type affected only word ratings and not lexical decisions, but political ideology and disgust proneness affected both. More liberal participants assigned higher disgust ratings after the headlines discounted the threat of COVID-19, whereas more conservative participants did so after the headlines emphasized it. We explain the results through the politicization and polarization of the pandemic. Further, political ideology was more predictive of reaction times in Experiment 2 than disgust proneness. High conservatism correlated with longer reaction times for disgusting and negative words, and the opposite was true for low conservatism. The results suggest that disgust proneness and political ideology dynamically interact with perceived environmental safety and have a measurable effect on language processing. Importantly, they also suggest that the media’s stance on the pandemic and the political framing of the issue may affect the public response by increasing or decreasing our disgust.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVIDisgust: Language processing through the lens of partisanship

Puhacheuskaya

Lyall²,

Järvikivi³

2022

PLoS ONE

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Rating gender stereotype violations: The effects of personality and politics

Hammond-Thrasher

Järvikivi²

2023

Front. Commun.

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The Gender Stereotype Effect in language comprehension refers to the increased processing load that occurs when comprehenders encounter linguistic information that is incongruent with their understanding of gender stereotypes; for example, upon encountering the pronoun he in the sentence The maid answered the phone because he heard it ring. We investigate the Stereotype Effect using appropriateness and correctness ratings and ask whether it is modulated by individual differences in participants' personality and political ideology. Results from this study indicate that the Stereotype Effect can be replicated in an offline paradigm and that the Effect is specific to a discourse character's gender: sentences describing male agents fulfilling stereotypical female roles were rated lower in both appropriateness and correctness than sentences describing female agents fulfilling stereotypical male roles. Further, more open, conscientious, liberal, and empathetic individuals were more sensitive to the character gender-specific effect, rating stereotype incongruent sentences, particularly female role-male pronoun pairings, lower than congruent ones. Overall, these results point to certain individual differences being associated with differences in the strength of stereotype perception, indicating the possibility that these individuals use more top-down language processing, where comprehenders higher on these scales might be able to make more use of extra-linguistic, sociocultural factors in their language comprehension. Additionally, the results indicate a character gender-based difference in sociocultural stereotypes.

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Individual Differences in Political Ideology and Disgust Sensitivity Affect Real-Time Spoken Language Comprehension

Cited by 2 publications

References 105 publications

COVIDisgust: Language processing through the lens of partisanship

COVIDisgust: Language processing through the lens of partisanship

Rating gender stereotype violations: The effects of personality and politics

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