Refine
Document Type
- Article (6)
Language
- English (6)
Has Fulltext
- yes (6)
Keywords
- Deutsch (4)
- Bias (3)
- Soziale Wahrnehmung (3)
- Stereotyp (2)
- Worthäufigkeit (2)
- Affekt (1)
- Akzent (1)
- Assoziationsexperiment (1)
- Culture (1)
- Deutsches Referenzkorpus (DeReKo) (1)
Publicationstate
- Postprint (6) (remove)
Reviewstate
- Peer-Review (6) (remove)
Publisher
- Wiley (6) (remove)
This replication study aims to investigate a potential bias toward addition in the German language, building upon previous findings of Winter and colleagues who identified a similar bias in English. Our results confirm a bias in word frequencies and binomial expressions, aligning with these previous findings. However, the analysis of distributional semantics based on word vectors did not yield consistent results for German. Furthermore, our study emphasizes the crucial role of selecting appropriate translational equivalents, highlighting the significance of considering language-specific factors when testing for such biases for languages other than English.
Basic grammatical categories may carry social meanings irrespective of their semantic content. In a set of four studies, we demonstrate that verbs—a basic linguistic category present and distinguishable in most languages—are related to the perception of agency, a fundamental dimension of social perception. In an archival analysis of actual language use in Polish and German, we found that targets stereotypically associated with high agency (men and young people) are presented in the immediate neighborhood of a verb more often than non-agentic social targets (women and older people). Moreover, in three experiments using a pseudo-word paradigm, verbs (but not adjectives and nouns) were consistently associated with agency (but not with communion). These results provide consistent evidence that verbs, as grammatical vehicles of action, are linguistic markers of agency. In demonstrating meta-semantic effects of language, these studies corroborate the view of language as a social tool and an integral part of social perception.
Nonnative accents are prevalent in our globalized world and constitute highly salient cues in social perception. Whereas previous literature has commonly assumed that they cue specific social group stereotypes, we propose that nonnative accents generally trigger spontaneous negatively biased associations (due to a general nonnative accent category and perceptual influences). Accordingly, Study 1 demonstrates negative biases with conceptual IATs, targeting the general concepts of accent versus native speech, on the dimensions affect, trust, and competence, but not on sociability. Study 2 attests to negative, largely enhanced biases on all dimensions with auditory IATs comprising matched native–nonnative speaker pairs for four accent types. Biases emerged irrespective of the accent types that differed in attractiveness, recognizability of origin, and origin-linked national associations. Study 3 replicates general IAT biases with an affect IAT and a conventional evaluative IAT. These findings corroborate our hypotheses and assist in understanding general negativity toward nonnative accents.
Communication of stereotypes in the classroom: biased language use of German and Turkish adolescents
(2014)
Little is known about the linguistic transmission and maintenance of mutual stereotypes in interethnic contexts. This field study, therefore, investigated the linguistic expectancy bias (LEB) and the linguistic intergroup bias (LIB) among German and Turkish adolescents (13 to 20 years) in the school context. The LEB refers to the general phenomenon of describing stereotypes more abstractly. The LIB is the tendency to use language abstraction for in-group protective reasons. Results revealed an unmoderated LEB, whereas the LIB only occurred when foreigners were in the numerical majority, the classroom composition was perceived as a learning disadvantage, or the interethnic conflict frequency was high. These findings provide first evidence for the use of both LEB and LIB in an interethnic classroom setting.
In a recent article, Meylan and Griffiths (Meylan & Griffiths, 2021, henceforth, M&G) focus their attention on the significant methodological challenges that can arise when using large-scale linguistic corpora. To this end, M&G revisit a well-known result of Piantadosi, Tily, and Gibson (2011, henceforth, PT&G) who argue that average information content is a better predictor of word length than word frequency. We applaud M&G who conducted a very important study that should be read by any researcher interested in working with large-scale corpora. The fact that M&G mostly failed to find clear evidence in favor of PT&G's main finding motivated us to test PT&G's idea on a subset of the largest archive of German language texts designed for linguistic research, the German Reference Corpus consisting of ∼43 billion words. We only find very little support for the primary data point reported by PT&G.
Social perception studies have revealed that smiling individuals are perceived more favourably on many communion dimensions in comparison to nonsmiling individuals. Research on gender differences in smiling habits showed that women smile more than men. In our study, we investigated this phenomena further and hypothesised that women perceive smiling individuals as more honest than men. An experiment conducted in seven countries (China, Germany, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Republic of South Africa and USA) revealed that gender may influence the perception of honesty in smiling individuals. We compared ratings of honesty made by male and female participants who viewed photos of smiling and nonsmiling people. While men and women did not differ on ratings of honesty in nonsmiling individuals, women assessed smiling individuals as more honest than men did. We discuss these results from a social norms perspective.