When vowels make us smile: the influence of articulatory feedback in judgments of warmth and competence

Garrido, Margarida; Godinho, Sandra

doi:10.1080/02699931.2021.1900076

Cited by 8 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…A caveat of the present research is that we examined only one language. The same phenomenon, more positive valence for /i/ compared with other vowels, has recently been observed in other languages as well (see Garrido & Godinho, 2021;Yu et al, 2021); we would expect these findings to be caused by the same mechanism. However, because we did not test generalizability of the mechanism across languages, this is mere speculation.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

“…The present results could also have implications beyond psycholinguistics. For example, there is first evidence that valence sound symbolism affects how people with sound symbolically positive compared with negative names are evaluated (Garrido & Godinho, 2021), similar to other research demonstrating the influence of sound symbolism of names on personality attributions (Sidhu et al, 2019). In general, given that valence has a pervasive influence throughout psychology, subtle sound symbolic associations might influence judgments in multiple contexts, from personality and social behavior to product evaluations (Klink & Wu, 2017).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 62%

“…Similar results were obtained when participants invented names for valenced objects (e.g., a coffin or a dolphin, Rummer & Schweppe, 2019, Experiments 3 and 4). Moreover, the positive valence of /i/ compared with other vowels has been recently replicated for speakers of languages besides German, namely European Portuguese (Garrido & Godinho, 2021), Mandarin Pinyin, and English (Yu et al, 2021).…”

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confidence: 88%

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Articulation contributes to valence sound symbolism.

Körner¹,

Rummer²

2022

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Vowels are sound-symbolically associated with valence. Specifically, words containing /i/ (vs. /o/) are judged more suitable to denote positive (vs. negative) objects. Here, we examine the psychological processes driving valence sound symbolism by testing competing predictions for the vowel /y/. The articulatory hypothesis predicts /y/ to be associated with negative valence, because its articulation inhibits smiling; while the pitch-based hypothesis predicts /y/ to be associated with positive valence, because of its high intrinsic pitch. In four experiments, /i/ was associated with more positive valence than both /o/ and /y/ when reading (Experiments 1-3) and when hearing words (Experiment 4). The more negative valence of /y/ compared with /i/ supports the articulatory hypothesis; the similar (or even more negative) valence of /y/ compared with /o/ contradicts the pitch-based hypothesis. Thus, the present finding suggests that valence sound symbolism has its basis rather in articulatory than auditory phoneme properties. This advances our understanding of psychological processes in valence-vowel associations and in sound symbolism more generally.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 62%

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confidence: 88%

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Articulation contributes to valence sound symbolism.

Körner¹,

Rummer²

2022

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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“…Therefore, our results raise the possibility that non-arbitrariness is realized in the form of complex multiple mappings, in which each semantic feature is associated with several phonological characteristics and vice versa. Possible explanations for the existence of such patterns nicely underline the articulatory hypothesis (Garrido & Godinho, 2021; Körner & Rummer, 2021; Zajonc et al, 1989).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 57%

Palatal is for happiness, plosive is for sadness: evidence for stochastic relationships between phoneme classes and sentiment polarity in Hungarian

Benczes

Kovàcs

2022

Lang. cogn.

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The past couple of decades have seen a substantial increase in linguistic research that highlights the non-arbitrariness of language, as manifested in motivated sound–meaning correspondences. Yet one of the challenges of such studies is that there is a relative paucity of data-driven analyses, especially in the case of languages other than English, such as Hungarian, even though the proportion of at least partially motivated words in Hungarian vocabulary is substantial. We address this gap by investigating the relationship between Hungarian phoneme classes and positive/negative sentiment based on 3,023 word forms retrieved from the Hungarian Sentiment Lexicon. Our results indicate that positive polarity word forms tend to contain more vowels, front vowels, continuants, fricatives, palatals, and sibilants. On the other hand, negative sentiment polarity words tend to have more rounded vowels, plosives, and dorsal consonants. While our analysis provides strong evidence for a set of non-arbitrary form–meaning relationships, effect sizes also reveal that such associations tend to be fairly weak tendencies, and therefore sentiment polarity cannot be derived from the relative frequencies of phoneme classes in a deterministic fashion.

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“…On online markets, short and easily pronounced usernames have been shown to be helpful in creating a trustworthy seller image (Silva et al 2017). Even the phonetics of usernames can influence our impressions of users (Garrido & Godinho 2021;Garrido et al 2019).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Bonehead to @realDonaldTrump

Hämäläinen

2022

names

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In many online services, we are identified by self-chosen usernames, also known as nicknames or pseudonyms. Usernames have been studied quite extensively within several academic disciplines, yet few existing literature reviews or meta-analyses provide a comprehensive picture of the name category. This article addresses this gap by thoroughly analyzing 103 research articles with usernames as their primary focus. Despite the great variety of approaches taken to investigate usernames, three main types of studies can be identified: (1) qualitative analyses examining username semantics, the motivations for name choices, and how the names are linked to the identities of the users; (2) experiments testing the communicative functions of usernames; and (3) computational studies analyzing large corpora of usernames to acquire information about the users and their behavior. The current review investigates the terminology, objectives, methods, data, results, and impact of these three study types in detail. Finally, research gaps and potential directions for future works are discussed. As this investigation will demonstrate, more research is needed to examine naming practices in social media, username-related online discrimination and harassment, and username usage in conversations.

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When vowels make us smile: the influence of articulatory feedback in judgments of warmth and competence

Cited by 8 publications

References 30 publications

Articulation contributes to valence sound symbolism.

Articulation contributes to valence sound symbolism.

Palatal is for happiness, plosive is for sadness: evidence for stochastic relationships between phoneme classes and sentiment polarity in Hungarian

From Bonehead to @realDonaldTrump

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