Examining the influence of perspective and prosody on expected emotional responses to irony: Evidence from event-related brain potentials.

Abstract

Ironic language is typically more difficult to process and interpret than a literal equivalent, hence is assumed to serve several social and emotional functions not achieved by literal communication (such as politeness or introducing humour). Several factors may influence emotional responses to irony, such as the perspective from which the utterance is encountered (e.g., speaker vs. target) and the tone of voice (prosody) used. To examine these issues, we conducted two event-related brain potential (ERP) studies in which participants listened to scenarios describing emotional responses to either literal criticism or ironic criticism. Ironic criticism was delivered with either natural or ironic prosody. Scenarios either described an emotional response the speaker expected to elicit from the target (speaker perspective), or the target's actual emotional response (target perspective). Expected or actual emotional responses were described as either 'amused' (Experiment 1) or 'hurt' (Experiment 2). ERPs were calculated time-locked to the end of the ironic or literal statements, and to the audio presentation of the critical emotion words. Results showed a significant effect of perspective for amused conditions, reflected by a larger late posterior positivity for the target than speaker conditions, indicating amused responses are more expected from speaker than target perspective. This effect was not seen for hurt conditions, suggesting these are equally expected from target and speaker perspectives. The data also revealed a more negative-going ERP waveform specifically for ironic criticism delivered with ironic prosody, reflecting prosodic processing. This suggests prosody may be able to speed the identification of irony.

Individual differences in sarcasm interpretation and use: Evidence from the UK and China.

“…However, Bowes and Katz (2011) found that participants taking the perspective of the speaker rated both sarcastic and literal criticism as being more polite than when they were taking the recipient's perspective, and only participants taking the perspective of the speaker considered sarcasm more humorous than literal criticism. Evidence from eye-tracking during reading (Filik et al, 2017) and event-related brain potentials (Thompson et al, 2021) further suggests that when considering the perspective of the speaker, participants may find it easier to integrate a description of an amused response to criticism than when considering the perspective of the recipient. Investigating situations from multiple perspectives CULTURAL AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN SARCASM highlights the need to explore participants' ability to successfully adopt different perspectives.…”

Irony as a Test of the Presupposition-Denial Account: An ERP Study

“…The present research also contributes to the ERP literature on the on-line processing of irony. Previous ERP studies investigating the comprehension of irony have mainly concentrated on what happens during processing of the ironic phrase itself (e.g., Cornejo et al, 2007 ; Filik et al, 2014 ; Katz et al, 2004 ; Regel et al, 2010 , 2011 , 2014 , but see Thompson et al, 2021 ). Our results demonstrate that introducing irony into a discourse can also have important consequences for how subsequent text will be processed.…”

The psychology of saying what you don’t mean: Celebrating the research career of Professor Albert Katz.

“…The articles on irony and sarcasm involve multiple methodologies and populations, for example, those offered by both Olkoniemi and Kaakinen (2021) and Jared and Pandolfo (2021) pertaining to eye tracking for written irony, Pfeifer and Lai (2021) using event-related potential (ERP) data for written irony, and Thompson et al (2021) for spoken irony. These processing studies explore various cues that play a role in ironic language, including prosody and perspective and also explore various products of ironic interpretation including comprehension of speaker intent and the emotional impact of ironic versus literal remarks.…”