Language use in intergroup contexts: The linguistic intergroup bias.

Maass, Anne; Salvi, Daniela; Arcuri, Luciano; Semin, Gün R.

doi:10.1037/0022-3514.57.6.981

Cited by 449 publications

(530 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…It should be noted, nonetheless, that we do not contend that high-level construals would never be used to represent the behaviors of socially close others. Indeed, people may sometimes be motivated to represent the behaviors of close others in terms of underlying goals and intentions and thus use higher level identifications to categorize their actions (see, Kozak, Marsh, & Wegner, 2006;Maass, Salvi, Arcuri, & Semin, 1989). We propose, however, that to the extent that interpersonal similarity reduces the perceived social distance from a target, lower level construals would be activated and used to represent that target.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is unclear why participants would use more subordinate identifications and less superordinate ones as personal involvement increases. In fact, it seems more likely that personal involvement should make one motivated to view the target in terms of his or her intentions and goals, and thus represent the target's actions in a high-level manner (see, Kozak et al, 2006;Maass et al, 1989). Likewise, there seems to be no a-priori reason why personal involvement should lead one to assign more weight to low-level features in judgments of others' decisions and performance, as demonstrated in Experiments 3 and 4.…”

Section: Involvemettmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Interpersonal similarity as a social distance dimension: Implications for perception of others’ actions

Liviatan

Trope

Liberman

2008

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

530

364

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Building on the assumption that interpersonal similarity is a form of social distance, the current research examines the manner in which similarity influences the representation and judgment of others' actions. On the basis of a construal level approach, we hypothesized that greater levels of similarity would increase the relative weight of subordinate and secondary features of information in judgments of others' actions. The results of four experiments showed that compared to corresponding judgments of a dissimilar target, participants exposed to a similar target person identified that person's actions in relatively more subordinate means-related rather than superordinate ends-related terms (Experiment 1), perceived his or her actions to be determined more by feasibility and less by desirability concerns (Experiment 3), and gave more weight to secondary aspects in judgments of the target's decisions (Experiment 2) and performance (Experiment 4). Implications for the study of interpersonal similarity, as well as social distance in general, are discussed. Keywords interpersonal similarity; social distance; construal level theory; social judgment; mental representations Imagine a close friend giving a job talk. Now imagine a stranger giving the same job talk. What type of representation would you construct for this action? Would you represent it in terms of an abstract superordinate goal (for instance, communicating one's research ideas) or rather bring to mind the subordinate, concrete means by which to achieve the goal (such as presenting power point slides)? And would your representation include primary and central aspects related to this action (for instance, the research question) or more secondary information (such as the slides' background design)?

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Involvemettmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interpersonal similarity as a social distance dimension: Implications for perception of others’ actions

Liviatan

Trope

Liberman

2008

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

530

364

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The first question was, Were we using a very sophisticated analytic device that was highly sensitive to barely perceptible or negligible differences with no psychological consequences? If this were the case, then a range of other phenomena investigated with similar analytic devices would also have questionable psychological implications, one example being the linguistic intergroup bias (e.g., Maass et al, 1989). The second question that arises is the following: If the observed differences in the narratives are real, then do others judge the narratives differently as a function of the condition under which they have been produced?…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The question–answer paradigm: You might regret not noticing how a question is worded.

Semin¹,

Poot²

1997

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Self Cite

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In 2 experiments the authors investigated how verb choice in question formulation influences respondents' answers. These studies show that (a) as hypothesized, the choice of verb type (action vs, state) in forming a question influences interviewees' narratives systematically by impacting, inter alia, which individual is implicitly described as the causal originator of a social event; (b) interviewees are not aware of how their answers are manipulated; and (c) others who listen to or read the very same answers are sensitive to the linguistic differences in the narratives that are shaped by verb choices in question formulation. The implications of these findings for the self-fulfilling prophecy are discussed.How one answers questions can have dramatic consequences. It can make a difference between getting or losing a job, being convicted or released, and being trusted or distrusted. Obviously, the way one asks questions is also crucial and can have similar existential implications, such as making the difference between getting married or being dumped or between going out on a date or picking daisies. In two studies, we investigated how answers are shaped by the verbs used in forming the questions. This issue gives rise to three interrelated questions that we address here: (a) Are respondents' answers influenced by the types of predicates (verbs) that are used in question formulation? (b) If so, are respondents aware of this influence? (c) Moreover, do third parties detect the influence of question formulation on the answers when they read or listen to the answers? The match or mismatch between respondents' and third parties' perceptions clearly also becomes a critical issue, because the implications of mismatches can be far reaching.The research paradigm that we used to investigate these questions is the question-answer paradigm (QAP; Semin, Rubini, & Fiedler, 1995). The core theme of the QAP is that there are systematic differences in the way in which people answer two questions that are similar on the surface but differ in terms of the type of verb used in formulating the question. Consider the questions ''Why do you like the Washington Post?" and "Why do you read the Washington Post?" Both questions may appear to be requests to explain one's newspaper preference. If, however, the different verbs used in these two questions lead to answers that differ systematically in terms of how the explanation is grounded, then one would conclude that the choice of verb influences answers.

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“…People systematically vary their language use in communications about stereotype inconsistent and stereotype consistent information. The linguistic intergroup and expectancy bias, for example, shows that people tend to use more concrete, descriptive language when describing behavior that violates stereotypic expectancies, whereas they use more abstract language when the same behavior is consistent with stereotypic expectancies (i.e., Maass et al, 1989;Wigboldus et al, 2000).Thus, when describing a man demonstrating behavior which is inconsistent with the male stereotype (e.g., crying), people use relatively concrete language (e.g., he has tears in his eyes). In contrast, when describing a woman demonstrating the same behavior, people tend to use more abstract language to describe this stereotype consistent event (e.g., she is emotional; Wigboldus et al, 2000).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These three items were combined into one scale (Cronbach's α = .83), after reverse coding the second item and recoding the third item, such that 1 = situational attribution, 7 = dispositional attribution (see also Wigboldus et al, 2000). As an additional measure of dispositional inference, we assessed repetition likelihood (see also Wigboldus et al, 2000;Maass et al, 1989). Participants indicated the chance with which the target would be likely to repeat the behavior in the future (in percentage 1-100 %).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The negation bias: When negations signal stereotypic expectancies.

Beukeboom¹,

Finkenauer²,

Wigboldus³

2010

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

110

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Research on linguistic biases shows that stereotypic expectancies are implicitly reflected in language and thereby subtly communicated to message recipients. We examined whether these findings extend to the use of negations (e.g., not smart instead of stupid). We hypothesized that people use more negations in descriptions of stereotype inconsistent behavior than in descriptions of stereotype consistent behavior. In three studies, participants either judged the applicability of experimentally controlled person descriptions, or spontaneously produced person descriptions themselves. Results provided support for this hypothesis. Moreover, a fourth study demonstrated that negations have communicative consequences. When a target person's behavior was described with negations, message recipients inferred that this behavior was an exception to the rule, and that it was more likely caused by situational circumstances than by dispositional factors. These findings indicate that by using negations people implicitly communicate stereotypic expectancies, and that negations play a subtle but powerful role in stereotype maintenance. The negation bias 3The Negation Bias: When Negations Signal Stereotypic ExpectanciesWhen people describe others' behaviors they can choose different words and formulations.For example, people can describe a person's dim comment as Harry was stupid or Harry was not smart. Which description they choose seems arbitrary at first sight. Both sentences adequately describe the event and people do not seem to give their choice of words muchthought. Yet, research shows that rather than being arbitrary, people's choice of words and language use is driven by systematic and implicit social cognitive processes. For instance, research on linguistic biases shows that people's prior expectancies and stereotypes influence their choice of words in describing others. That is, people use more abstract predicates to describe stereotype consistent behaviors than stereotype inconsistent behaviors. This biased language use not only reflects a speaker's stereotypic expectancies about a person, but, importantly, also transmits these expectancies to recipients. In this way, biased language use is one of the predominant means of stereotype maintenance at an interpersonal level (Maass, 1999;Maass, Salvi, Arcuri & Semin, 1989;Sekaquaptewa et al., 2003;Wigboldus, Semin & Spears, 2000).To extend our knowledge on linguistic biases, the present paper introduces the negation bias. Negation descriptions contain a negation marker such as not or no to deny the truth value of a particular proposition (e.g., Harry was not smart). We will refer to descriptions of others' behavior that include such negation markers as negations. Conversely, affirmation descriptions assert the truth value of a particular proposition and may be used to describe the same behavioral event (e.g., Harry was stupid). In the present research, we investigate whether the use of negations is influenced by people's stereotypic expectancies and whether negations...

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Language use in intergroup contexts: The linguistic intergroup bias.

Cited by 449 publications

References 38 publications

Interpersonal similarity as a social distance dimension: Implications for perception of others’ actions

Interpersonal similarity as a social distance dimension: Implications for perception of others’ actions

The question–answer paradigm: You might regret not noticing how a question is worded.

The negation bias: When negations signal stereotypic expectancies.

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