Truth From Language and Truth From Fit: The Impact of Linguistic Concreteness and Level of Construal on Subjective Truth

Hansen, Jochim; Wänke, Michaela

doi:10.1177/0146167210386238

Cited by 168 publications

(144 citation statements)

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“…Although our results are consistent with the literature on cognitive fluency, mental construal, and the sourcemonitoring framework (Alter & Oppenheimer, 2009;Hansen & Wänke, 2010;Johnson et al, 1993;Lindsay, 2008), there are alternative explanations for our findings. One possibility is that photos did not boost fluency nor foster the ability to imagine a claim, but that subjects used a rule in which they assumed that photos lent credibility to the claims.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

“…First, events that are closer in time are more detailed and concrete, and thus easier for people to bring to mind and imagine (Alter & Oppenheimer, 2008;Hansen & Wänke, 2010;Trope & Liberman, 2003. Perhaps when claims are close in time an accompanying photo would not add anything because people would find the claim easy to imagine and comprehend (Schwarz, 2010;Sherman et al, 1985;Unkelbach, 2007).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Evidence that photos promote rosiness for claims about the future

et al. 2016

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When people rapidly judge the truth of claims about the present or the past, a related but nonprobative photo can produce Btruthiness,^an increase in the perceived truth of those claims (Newman, Garry, Bernstein, Kantner, & Lindsay, 2012). What we do not know is the extent to which nonprobative photos cause truthiness for the future. We addressed this issue in four experiments. In each experiment, people judged the truth of claims that the price of certain commodities (such as manganese) would increase (or decrease). Half of the time, subjects saw a photo of the commodity paired with the claim. Experiments 1A and 1B produced a Brosiness^bias: Photos led people to believe positive claims about the future but had very little effect on people's belief in negative claims. In Experiment 2, rosiness occurred for both close and distant future claims. In Experiments 3A and 3B, we tested whether rosiness was tied to the perceived positivity of a claim. Finally, in Experiments 4A and 4B, we tested the rosiness hypothesis and found that rosiness was unique to claims about the future: When people made the same judgments about the past, photos produced the usual truthiness pattern for both positive and negative claims. Considered all together, our data fit with the idea that photos may operate as hypothesis-confirming evidence for people's tendency to anticipate rosy future outcomes.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence that photos promote rosiness for claims about the future

et al. 2016

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Section: Overview Of the Current Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If individuals are sensitive to this association with proficiency, it is possible that they will infer competence from a general abstract style of speech. It also seems possible that the reverse effect will be obtained, given that concrete speech conveys more details and is more easily verifiable (Hansen & Wänke, 2010) and therefore may signal knowledgeability.We therefore did not have any strong expectation for effects of abstraction on competence judgments. However, because power and competence are often related judgments (although, critically, these two characteristics are not always correlated; e.g., Fast & Chen, 2009), we felt it important to disentangle any effects of language on these two characteristics.…”

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confidence: 99%

Using Abstract Language Signals Power

Wakslak¹,

Smith²,

Han³

2013

AMPROC

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Language Signals Power 2 AbstractPower can be gained through appearances: People who exhibit behavioral signals of power are often treated in a way that allows them to actually achieve such power (Ridgeway, Berger, & Smith, 1985;Smith & Galinsky, 2010). In the current paper we examine power signals within interpersonal communication, exploring whether use of concrete versus abstract language is seen as a signal of power. Since power activates abstraction (e.g., Smith & Trope, 2006), perceivers may expect higher-power individuals to speak more abstractly and therefore will infer that speakers who use more abstract language have a higher degree of power. Across a variety of contexts and conversational subjects in six experiments, participants perceived respondents as more powerful when they used more abstract language (versus more concrete language). Abstract language use appears to affect perceived power because it seems to reflect both a willingness to judge and a general style of abstract thinking.Keywords: power, perception, distance, abstraction, social judgment Abstract Language Signals Power 3 Managing other's impressions of one's power is a critical skill. Being seen as powerful can elicit treatment from others that allows one to actually achieve such power (Ridgeway, Berger, & Smith, 1985;Smith & Galinsky, 2010). Having power means having more control over one's own life and therefore is associated with numerous positive outcomes for the individual, including an increased ability to achieve one's goals (e.g., Galinsky, Gruenfeld, & Magee, 2003;Guinote, 2007;Karremans & Smith, 2010) and the goals of one's organization (Overbeck & Park, 2006), increased freedom to express oneself (e.g., Anderson & Berdahl, 2002) and behave in line with one's core values (e.g., Chen, Lee-Chai. & Bargh, 2001;DeCelles, DeRue, Margolis, & Ceranic, 2012), and even an array of positive health outcomes (e.g., Marmot et al., 1991;Sherman et al, 2012). Thus, the possession of power is often a goal in itself. Moreover, individuals who occupy high-power positions but are not perceived as powerful risk their position being viewed as illegitimate . While some behaviors signaling power may be difficult to enact with limited resources (e.g., loaning money, exerting influence, taking action; Goldhamer & Shils, 1939), others may be relatively easy to adopt (e.g., a lower-pitched voice; Carney, ).In the current paper we examine whether a person's use of relatively concrete or abstract language can serve as a subtle but meaningful signal of power, exploring this idea across six studies that manipulate linguistic abstraction in various ways and measure power and leadership inferences. Linguistic Abstraction as a Power CueRecent research on power inferences has increasingly emphasized the subtle ways that people signal their degree of power. Converging evidence suggests that when power is associated with a behavioral signal people become sensitive to the signal itself, leading them to infer the presence of power when witnessing the ass...

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“…Here we propose that a claim coupled with a related but nonprobative photo might, in the moment, combine with confirmation bias to produce immediate truthiness (cf. Hansen & Wänke, 2010).…”

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confidence: 99%

Nonprobative photographs (or words) inflate truthiness

et al. 2012

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When people evaluate claims, they often rely on what comedian Stephen Colbert calls "truthiness," or subjective feelings of truth. In four experiments, we examined the impact of nonprobative information on truthiness. In Experiments 1A and 1B, people saw familiar and unfamiliar celebrity names and, for each, quickly responded "true" or "false" to the (betweensubjects) claim "This famous person is alive" or "This famous person is dead." Within subjects, some of the names appeared with a photo of the celebrity engaged in his or her profession, whereas other names appeared alone. For unfamiliar celebrity names, photos increased the likelihood that the subjects would judge the claim to be true. Moreover, the same photos inflated the subjective truth of both the "alive" and "dead" claims, suggesting that photos did not produce an "alive bias" but rather a "truth bias." Experiment 2 showed that photos and verbal information similarly inflated truthiness, suggesting that the effect is not peculiar to photographs per se. Experiment 3 demonstrated that nonprobative photos can also enhance the truthiness of general knowledge claims (e.g., Giraffes are the only mammals that cannot jump). These effects add to a growing literature on how nonprobative information can inflate subjective feelings of truth.

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Truth From Language and Truth From Fit: The Impact of Linguistic Concreteness and Level of Construal on Subjective Truth

Cited by 168 publications

References 62 publications

Evidence that photos promote rosiness for claims about the future

Evidence that photos promote rosiness for claims about the future

Using Abstract Language Signals Power

Nonprobative photographs (or words) inflate truthiness

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