Polite speech emerges from competing social goals

Yoon, Erica J.; Frank, Michael C.; Tessler, Michael Henry; Goodman, Noah D.

doi:10.31234/osf.io/67ne8

Cited by 24 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Covert signaling may therefore be part of what enables a healthy diverse, cosmopolitan society. In this respect, covert signaling bears a similarity to norms of politeness in that it may enable interactions between people who disagree on important issues by proscribing some overt utterances that would impede coordination or even foment conflict (Clark and Schunk, 1980;Yoon et al, 2018). If covert signaling is favored when costs of being disliked are high and the ability to assort on identity is weak, what happens when these factors change?…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indirect speech can yield plausible deniability of intent when suggestions are rejected (Lee and Pinker, 2010). Ambiguous or vague speech allows for multiple interpretations by different receivers, maximizing apparent agreement and minimizing confident disagreement (Eisenberg, 1984;Aragones and Neeman, 2000;Yoon et al, 2018). Previous discussions of intentionally unclear communication are related to the present discussion, but these generally assume either a single receiver or that signals reflect particular static facts about the state of the world.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

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Covert signaling is an adaptive communication strategy in diverse populations

Smaldino¹,

Turner²

2020

Preprint

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Identity signals are those common components of communication transmissions that inform receivers of the signaler’s membership (or non-membership) in a subset of individuals. Such signals may be overt, broadcast to all possible receivers, or covert, encrypted so that only similar receivers are likely to perceive their identity-relevant meaning. Here we present an instrumental theory of covert signaling, based on the function of identity signals in social assortment. We argue that covert signaling is favored when signalers are generous toward strangers, when costs of being discovered as dissimilar are high, and when the ability to assort only with preferred partners is restricted. We further argue that covert signaling should be more common among members of "invisible" minorities, who are less likely to encounter similar individuals by chance. We formalize this theory with an evolutionary model to more rigorously explore the consequences of our assumptions. Our results have implications for our understanding of numerous aspects of social life, including communication, cooperation, social identity, humor, pragmatics, politics, hate speech, and the maintenance of diversity.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Covert signaling is an adaptive communication strategy in diverse populations

Smaldino¹,

Turner²

2020

Preprint

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“…The rational integration model is derived from a more general framework for pragmatic inference, which has been used to explain a wide variety of phenomena in adults' language use and comprehension. 37,38,[59][60][61][62] Thus, it can be generalized in a natural way to capture word learning in contexts that offer more, fewer, or different types of information.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How young children integrate information sources to infer the meaning of words

Bohn¹,

Tessler²,

Merrick³

et al. 2020

Preprint

Self Cite

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Before formal education begins, children typically acquire a vocabulary of thousands of words. This learning process requires the use of many different information sources in their social environment, including their current knowledge state as well as the context in which they hear words used. How is this information integrated? We specify a model according to which children consider all available information sources and integrate them via Bayesian inference. This model accurately predicted 2-to-5 year-old children’s word learning across a range of experimental conditions. Model comparison suggests that the integration process is stable across development and that the main locus of development is an increased sensitivity to individual information sources. We present a quantitative developmental theory of information integration for language learning, embedded in a larger framework that grounds language use and learning in social cognition.

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“…Speakers choose signals relative to the probability that the chosen signal will be interpreted correctly (taking the listener's perspective), and listeners infer meaning relative to the probability that a speaker would have produced the observed signal given that meaning (taking the speaker's perspective). RSA has been successfully used to explain language games (Frank & Goodman, 2012;Frank et al, 2017;Khani, Goodman, & Liang, 2018), implicatures (Goodman & Stuhlmüller, 2013;Bergen, Levy, & Goodman, 2016), noisy signals (Bergen & Goodman, 2015), polite speech (Yoon, Frank, Tessler, & Goodman, 2018), and convention formation (Hawkins et al, 2017;Cohn-Gordon, Goodman, & Potts, 2018;Hawkins, Frank, & Goodman, 2020).…”

Section: Computational Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Computational challenges in explaining communication: How deep the rabbit hole goes

Braak¹,

Dingemanse²,

Toni³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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When people are unsure of the intended meaning of a word, they often ask for clarification. One way of doing so—often assumed in models of communication—is to point at a potential target: “Do you mean [points at the rabbit]?” However, what if the target is unavailable? Then the only recourse is language itself, which seems equivalent to pulling oneself up from a swamp by one’s hair. We created two computational models of communication, one able to point and one not. The latter incorporates inference to resolve the meaning of non-pointing signals. Simulations show agents in both models reach perceived understanding equally quickly. While this means agents think they are successfully communicating, non-pointing agents understand each other only at chance level. This shows that state- of-the-art computational explanations have difficulty explaining how people solve the puzzle of underdetermination, and that doing so will require a fundamental leap forward.

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Polite speech emerges from competing social goals

Cited by 24 publications

References 26 publications

Covert signaling is an adaptive communication strategy in diverse populations

Covert signaling is an adaptive communication strategy in diverse populations

How young children integrate information sources to infer the meaning of words

Computational challenges in explaining communication: How deep the rabbit hole goes

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