Language modality influences risk perception: Innovations read well but sound even better

Geipel, Janet; Hadjichristidis, Constantinos; Savadori, Lucia; Keysar, Boaz

doi:10.1111/risa.13917

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 75 publications

(84 reference statements)

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“…The data of all our studies are available on the Open Science Framework, see https://osf.io/wyqh6/?view_only=63c7efa4e0e840e59b3ff9f5f67569dc (Geipel & Keysar, 2021). All materials are presented in the .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Listening speaks to our intuition while reading promotes analytic thought.

Geipel¹,

Keysar²

2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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It is widely assumed that thinking is independent of language modality because an argument is either logically valid or invalid regardless of whether we read or hear it. This is taken for granted in areas such as psychology, medicine, and the law. Contrary to this assumption, we demonstrate that thinking from spoken information leads to more intuitive performance compared with thinking from written information. Consequently, we propose that people think more intuitively in the spoken modality and more analytically in the written modality. This effect was robust in five experiments (N = 1,243), across a wide range of thinking tasks, from simple trivia questions to complex syllogisms, and it generalized across two different languages, English and Chinese. We show that this effect is consistent with neuroscientific findings and propose that modality dependence could result from how language modalities emerge in development and are used over time. This finding sheds new light on the way language influences thought and has important implications for research that relies on linguistic materials and for domains where thinking and reasoning are central such as law, medicine, and business.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Listening speaks to our intuition while reading promotes analytic thought.

Geipel¹,

Keysar²

2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Apocalypse now or later? Nuclear war risk perceptions mirroring media coverage and emotional tone shifts in Italian news

Lauriola,

Di Cicco,

Savadori

2024

Judgm. decis. mak.

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This study delves into the progression of nuclear war risk perceptions during the initial 6 months of the Ukraine war. It particularly investigated the influence of Italian media coverage changes and the affective tone of war representation. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, two separate yet interconnected studies were conducted. The first study employed web scraping and keyword selection techniques to assess emotional language and quantify war-related content in the headlines of Italian online newspapers from March to July 2022. Results demonstrated a linear decrease in war-related news and an emotional shift, with a significant decrease in fear and an increase in joy noted between March and May. The second study examined nuclear war risk perceptions at an individual level, surveying a panel of 397 Italians at three distinct points during the same time frame. The findings revealed a similarity between the media’s affective tone and individuals’ affective risk perceptions. Analytic risk perception, in contrast, showed a linear decrease that matched the decline in war-related news volume. The study found preexisting individual differences, among women and older participants, to be significant determinants in shaping risk perception evolution. These groups exhibited higher initial risk perceptions and more resistance to change as the scenario unfolded. This research contributes to the existing body of work that underscores the media’s role in influencing risk perceptions by illuminating the relationship between media representation of the Ukraine war and individual-level affective risk perception. Furthermore, it highlights individual differences as significant moderators of risk perception change during a crisis.

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It is, uh, very likely? The impact of prosodic uncertainty cues on the perception and interpretation of spoken verbal probability phrases

Vromans,

van de Ven,

Willems

et al. 2024

Risk Analysis

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People typically use verbal probability phrases when discussing risks (“It is likely that this treatment will work”), both in written and spoken communication. When speakers are uncertain about risks, they can nonverbally signal this uncertainty by using prosodic cues, such as a rising, question‐like intonation or a filled pause (“uh”). We experimentally studied the effects of these two prosodic cues on the listener's perceived speaker certainty and numerical interpretation of spoken verbal probability phrases. Participants (N = 115) listened to various verbal probability phrases that were uttered with a rising or falling global intonation and with or without a filled pause before the probability phrase. For each phrase, they gave a point estimate of their numerical interpretation in percentages and indicated how certain they thought the speaker was about the correctness of the probability phrase. Speakers were perceived as least certain when the verbal probability phrases were spoken with both prosodic uncertainty cues. Interpretation of verbal probability phrases varied widely across participants, especially when rising intonation was produced by the speaker. Overall, high probability phrases (e.g., “very likely”) were estimated as lower (and low probability phrases, such as “unlikely,” as higher) when they were uttered with a rising intonation. The effects of filled pauses were less pronounced, as were the uncertainty effects for medium probability phrases (e.g., “probable”). These results stress the importance of nonverbal communication when verbally communicating risks and probabilities to people, for example, in the context of doctor–patient communication.

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Language modality influences risk perception: Innovations read well but sound even better

Cited by 4 publications

References 75 publications

Listening speaks to our intuition while reading promotes analytic thought.

Listening speaks to our intuition while reading promotes analytic thought.

Apocalypse now or later? Nuclear war risk perceptions mirroring media coverage and emotional tone shifts in Italian news

It is, uh, very likely? The impact of prosodic uncertainty cues on the perception and interpretation of spoken verbal probability phrases

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