Front in the mouth, front in the word: The driving mechanisms of the in-out effect.

Abstract

Words for which the consonantal articulation spots wander from the front to the back of the mouth (inward) elicit more positive attitudes than words with the reversed order (outward).The present paper questions the common theoretical explanation of this effect, namely an association between articulation movements and oral movements during ingestion and expectoration (inward resembles eating which is positive; outward resembles spitting which is negative). In four experiments (total N = 468), we consistently replicated the basic in-out effect; but no evidence was found supporting an eating-related underlying mechanism. The inout effect was not modulated by disgust inductions (Experiments 1, 2, 4, and 10) or food deprivation (Experiment 3). In six further experiments (total N = 1,067), we explored a novel alternative explanation, namely that the in-out effect is simply a position-specific preference for front consonants over back consonants. In these experiments, we found in-out-like preference effects for fragments that lacked an actual front-to-back movement but featured only starting (e.g., B _ _ _ _) or ending (e.g., _ _ _ K) consonants (Experiments 6-8).Consonants that are articulated in the front of the mouth were generally preferred over those articulated in the back of the mouth, and this basic preference was stronger at the beginning of a word-like stimulus (Experiments 6-10), thus explaining the preference pattern of the in-out effect. The present evidence speaks against an eating-related (embodied) explanation and suggests a simple word-morphologic explanation of the in-out effect.

The “ins” and “outs” of product and services marketing: The influence of consonant wanderings in consumer decision‐making

“…Very recently, Körner, Bakhtiari and Topolinski (2019), suggested the role of motor fluency in shaping the in–out effect and demonstrated that training outward articulation sequences could block or even invert the established preference for inward wandering ones (see Godinho & Garrido, 2019 and also Maschmann, Körner, Boecker, & Topolinski, 2020 for an overview of the state of the art). Independently of the debate surrounding the origin of the effect, these findings demonstrate that the in–out effect is permeable to fluency manipulations.…”

Sound symbolism overrides articulation dynamics in the taste continuum

“…This stream of research also shows that since bilabials are associated with innocence and children, when creating names for villains, respondents tend to avoid using bilabials (Kawahara, 2019). Such examples and prior research suggest a link between early communication (e.g., bilabials, front consonants which appear early in life) with concepts (e.g., pleasantness, likability) (Maschmann et al, 2020). Similarly, languages have developed from both manual and lip gestures-the earliest forms of communication.…”

“…vomiting) was originally proposed as the mechanism behind the in/out effect, recent evidence suggests alternative explanations (e.g. pronounceability, fluency, greater preference for first consonants) (Maschmann et al, 2020;Topolinski et al 2014). For example, one alternative explanation is that in natural languages, words with sounds originating from the front of the mouth (e.g., /m/) are more abundant than words with sounds originating from the back of the mouth.…”

“…For the analysis, we segregated bilabials (/b/, /m/, /p/), liquids (/l/, /r/) and nasals (/m/, /n/) as soft sounds, as these have often been associated with pleasant concepts (e.g. softness, child-like) (Kawahara, 2019;Pathak, Calvert, & Velasco, 2017;Maschmann et al, 2020;Sakamoto & Watanabe, 2018).…”

“…Recently, researchers have also offered alternative explanations (e.g., fluency, pronounceability) behind the phenomenon (e.g., Bakhtiari, Körner & Topolinski, 2016). Similarly, Maschmann and colleagues have argued that other explanations are behind the in-out effect and people generally prefer front consonants to back consonants and the oral kinematics alone might not be the only mechanism governing the effect (Maschmann et al, 2020). Since Topolinski et al's original finding, over twenty further papers have been published in a wide variety of journals demonstrating the robustness of the in/out effect.…”