Effects of Emotional Intelligence on the Impression of Irony Created by the Mismatch between Verbal and Nonverbal Cues.

Heike Jacob,Dirk Wildgruber,Astrid Schütz,Sophia Nizielski,Benjamin Kreifelts

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0163211

Heike Jacob, Dirk Wildgruber + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0163211

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Abstract

Emotional information is conveyed through verbal and nonverbal signals, with nonverbal cues often being considered the decisive factor in the judgment of others’ emotional states. The aim of the present study was to examine how verbal and nonverbal cues are integrated by perceivers. More specifically, we tested whether the mismatch between verbal and nonverbal information was perceived as an expression of irony. Moreover, we investigated the effects of emotional intelligence on the impression of irony. The findings revealed that the mismatch between verbal and nonverbal information created the impression of irony. Furthermore, participants higher in emotional intelligence were faster at rating such stimuli as ironic expressions.

Highlights

Emotions are involved in daily social interactions, with human beings elaborately applying both verbal and nonverbal cues to express their feelings
The main aim of the study was to evaluate whether the mismatch between verbal and nonverbal cues would create the impression of irony in the perceiver even in the absence of any further contextual information and to determine how this would be related to perceivers’ emotional intelligence (EI)
Because our interest was in nonverbal dominance, we considered this important finding by Trimboli and Walker [23] and made sure that only a small number of the stimuli were strongly incongruent (24 of 120 stimuli = 20%) and that the vast majority were congruent (48 of 120 stimuli = 40%) and slightly incongruent (48 of 120 stimuli = 40%)

Summary

Introduction

Emotions are involved in daily social interactions, with human beings elaborately applying both verbal (e.g., spoken language) and nonverbal cues (e.g., facial expressions, tone of voice) to express their feelings These two levels of emotional information can either resonate with each other, leading to congruent signals, or conflict with each other, leading to incongruent signals. Besides the utilization of contextual information (i.e., standing in the rain while stating “what a beautiful day”), the intended meaning of an ironic message can be encoded as a contrast between linguistic and paralinguistic (nonverbal) signals. In this case, as specified by Anolli and colleagues As specified by Anolli and colleagues ([5], p. 155), the decoding of an ironic meaning does not seem to require further contextual knowledge: PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0163211 October 7, 2016

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