Experimental psychology on word confusion

lukeprog

Experimental psychology on word confusion — LessWrong

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Here's an RCT that might have already been done before:

Between-subjects design. Both groups are presented with descriptions of two different fictional political candidates. The descriptions presented to Group 1 are "neutrally worded." The descriptions presented to Group 2 are identical in denotative meaning to the descriptions presented to Group 1, but substitute some neutral words with connotatively "negative" words for Candidate 1 and connotatively "positive" words for Candidate 2.

Did the two groups favor different candidates, with a large effect size? This suggests that many people's choice would "switch" from one candidate to another based not on denotative meaning but on connotations, thus (presumably) choosing the "wrong" candidate for what they care about. (Lots of qualifications could be added here, of course.)

That's about sneaking in connotations, and something like that study has probably been done. I wonder if there experiments for other common "word-mistakes" like those listed in 37 Ways Words Can Be Wrong.

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beoShaffer14y00

I had a chance to talk to my old cog sci teacher about this. He pointed out that your example is extremely similar to the way the the wording of questions can greatly effect survey results, even if the chance doesn't seriously effect the actual meaning of the question or the content of the explicit information provided. In a later email he also suggested that Tversky, Amos; Kahneman, Daniel (1981). "The Framing of decisions and the psychology of choice". Science 211 (4481): 453–458.doi:10.1126/science.7455683. PMID 7455683.
might be of interest.

2Unnamed14y

Connotations/euphemisms get discussed in moral psychology, often under the headings moral disengagement, dehumanization, and construal. One example I recall hearing is that people would be more willing to cheat on a test if it's thought of as "peeking at my neighbor's paper" (although searching for this, it looks like it's not from a study, just a hypothetical example in a Trope & Lieberman article%20Temporal%20Construal.pdf)). What I've seen of the moral disengagement literature mostly involves theorizing and correlational studies using personality measures, rather than experimental studies (e.g. Bandura et al., 1996). I did come across one experimental study on dehumanization, which finds that people give more electric shock to other people who have been called "animals" (described here), although it's not a very well-controlled study.

2beoShaffer14y

Following up on my earlier comment the following papers on euphemisms looked at least somewhat useful. I've sorted them in decreasing order of relevance ( not overall quality). Swearing, euphemisms, and linguistic relativity Doctors' use of euphemisms and their impact on patients' beliefs about health: An experimental study of heart failure. Avoiding the term ‘obesity’: An experimental study of the impact of doctors’ language on patients’ beliefs. 'People first--always': Euphemism and rhetoric as troublesome influences on organizational sense-making--a downsizing case study. Contamination and Camouflage in Euphemisms. The connotations of English colour terms: Colour-based X-phemisms.

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