A Rose by Any Other Name? A Subtle Linguistic Cue Impacts Anger and Corresponding Policy Support in Intractable Conflict

Idan, Orly; Halperin, Eran; Hameiri, Boaz; Tagar, Michal Reifen

doi:10.1177/0956797618772823

Cited by 20 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 36 publications

(29 reference statements)

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“…in terms of Purity more so than Care) may lead to more effective persuasion (Feinberg & Willer, 2012; see Feinberg & Willer, 2019, for a review). Similar 'reframing' may also be possible in the linguistic domain: a recent intervention study demonstrated that using certain grammatical constructions over others in describing intergroup conflict can reduce anger and improve policy support in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Idan, Halperin, Hameiri, & Reifen Tagar, 2018). These findings demonstrate the practical value of this field of research.…”

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confidence: 78%

“…Why might Social Conservatives prefer Nouns? Nouns, rather than Verbs or Adjectives, are believed to provide more abstract descriptions of individuals (Fiedler, Semin, & Bolten, 1989) or situations (Idan et al, 2018). Based on this, Cichocka et al (2016) suggested that the association of Nouns with Social Conservatism may be related to the cognitive trait…”

Section: The Mechanisms Of Noun Use Among Social Conservativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Grammar of Politics, through the lens of Surveys and Web-based Social Network methods

Karmannaya¹,

de-Wit²

2021

Preprint

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Political conflict and misunderstanding pose dangers to society. Psychological science has the potential to reduce this by providing unique insights into cognitive patterns associated with different political ideologies. A recent study (Cichocka et al., 2016) found that a seemingly unrelated behaviour – the use of Nouns when completing sentences describing individuals – correlated with political Social Conservatism. The following three-part study further investigated this association, its manifestations in spontaneous communication, and potential underlying mechanisms.Study 1 replicated the association between Noun use and Social Conservatism in a UK-based survey, using a broader set of political measures. It also found that the trait Essentialism, or the tendency to perceive individuals through stable underlying essences, may mediate the effect, alongside differences in education level. Study 2 extended the investigation to spontaneous communication, making use of network and linguistic data from the social networking site Twitter. This study also differentiated between Common Nouns and Proper Nouns, and found that Conservatives, on average, used more Proper Nouns per tweet than Liberals, while the effects for Common Nouns were inconsistent across various measures of Noun use. Study 3 aimed to validate the novel finding with Proper Nouns in a controlled questionnaire setting. The association between Conservatism and Proper Noun use was not confirmed, but the original effect with Common Nouns was replicated, and potentially mediated by sex and/or Essentialism. These findings suggest that the psychological characteristics differentiating Liberals from Conservatives, perhaps including the trait Essentialism, may affect their use of Nouns, although the direction of influence and potential demographic confounds need to be investigated experimentally. These results also suggest that in spontaneous, contextualised communication, such as that on Twitter, these differences may manifest themselves in the use of Proper rather than Common Nouns. Finally, the three studies demonstrate the benefits of combining short and simple, yet highly controlled questionnaires with more exploratory and larger-scale, web-based observations of spontaneous language use for the advancement of knowledge in Political Psychology and Psycholinguistics.

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confidence: 78%

Section: The Mechanisms Of Noun Use Among Social Conservativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Grammar of Politics, through the lens of Surveys and Web-based Social Network methods

Karmannaya¹,

de-Wit²

2021

Preprint

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“…While the current research focuses on the abstractness of language usage, there are other differences in how things are said that may leak information of influence to people involved in IS projects. For example, a recent study by Idan et al (2018) found that giving similar descriptions of a situation using either verbs (e.g., "settling") or nouns (e.g., "the settlement") can influence emotions of readers and their support for specific courses of action. This suggests there may be more to the effects of verbs than only the abstraction level.…”

Section: Directions For Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detection of early warning signals for overruns in IS projects: linguistic analysis of business case language

Benschop

Hilhorst

Nuijten

et al. 2020

European Journal of Information Systems

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Many Information Systems (IS) projects fail to be completed within budget and on schedule. A contributing factor is the so-called planning fallacy in which people tend to underestimate the resources required to complete a project. In this paper, we propose that signals of the planning fallacy can be detected in a project's business case. We investigated whether language usage in business cases can serve as an early warning signal for overruns in IS projects. Drawing on two theoretical perspectivesthe Linguistic Category Model (LCM) and Construal Level Theory (CLT)two sets of rival hypotheses were tested concerning the relationship between project overruns and whether the language usage in a business case is abstract or concrete. A linguistic analysis of the business cases of large IS projects in the Netherlands suggests that concrete language usage in the business case is associated with bigger budget and schedule overruns. For researchers, our study contributes to the existing literature on the importance of language usage. For practitioners, our study provides an early warning indicator for overruns.

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“…adjective versus noun form) can activate different construal, affecting judgment and behavioral preferences [37,38,39]. For example, results across three experimental studies, in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict supported this conclusion, with reduction in anger mediating the salutary impact of noun versus verb labels on support for conciliatory policies [40]. Acknowledging the importance of emotions in affecting judgment and activating perceptions, the current research examines the role of language in inducing emotions in the context of the negotiation process and outcomes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

And sympathy is what we need my friend—Polite requests improve negotiation results

2019

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The wording negotiators use shapes the emotions of their counterparts. These emotions, in turn, influence their counterparts’ economic decisions. Building on this rationale, we examined how the language used during negotiation affects discount rate and willingness to engage in future deals. In three studies, participants assumed the role of retailers. Alleged counterparts (actually a computerized program) asked for a discount under three conditions: request, want, and demand. Results show that less extreme language (request/want) resulted in better outcomes than demanding a discount. Moreover, while the language used by the customer had an effect on experienced emotions, the positive emotions (sympathy and empathy) participants felt toward the customer mediated the relationship between the linguistic cue and the negotiation outcome. Our results inform both psycholinguistic research and negotiation research by demonstrating the causal role of linguistic cues in activating concept-knowledge relevant to different emotional experiences, and point to the down-the-line impact on shaping negotiation preferences.

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A Rose by Any Other Name? A Subtle Linguistic Cue Impacts Anger and Corresponding Policy Support in Intractable Conflict

Cited by 20 publications

References 36 publications

The Grammar of Politics, through the lens of Surveys and Web-based Social Network methods

The Grammar of Politics, through the lens of Surveys and Web-based Social Network methods

Detection of early warning signals for overruns in IS projects: linguistic analysis of business case language

And sympathy is what we need my friend—Polite requests improve negotiation results

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