Language use and reification of social information: Top‐down and bottom‐up processing in person cognition

Abstract

AbstractThe present research addresses the interface of social cognition and the use of interpersonal language. Based on a linguistic category model proposed by Semin and Fiedler (1988), it is demonstrated that under different conditions language users tend to describe other people's behavior either in concrete and specific terms (descriptive or interpretive action verbs) or in abstract, dispositional terms (state verbs, adjectives) A two‐stage process is postulated by which these variations in abstractness can lead to the reification of social information: In the first stage, the rules of cooperative and efficient communication encourage the use of abstract statements about other people. Once the social information is represented on an abstract level, a top‐down bias will then, in the second stage, influence the interpretation and judgments of subsequent specific behaviors in a way which tends to reify or confirm the abstract statements. While the abstraction tendency is expected in free communication, when information is taken for granted, the reverse top‐down bias should be observed in social judgment tasks, when the truth or validity of statements is open to be judged. Study 1 demonstrates the abstraction tendency in a serial communication game involving the successive re‐telling of person descriptions. Study 2 utilizes a priming technique to examine the top‐down bias in social judgment: influences of prior judgments regarding abstract attributes on subsequent judgments of specific attributes are stronger than transfer influences in the reverse direction. Moreover, this top‐down bias is independent of whether the applicability of the prime attribute to the target person is affirmed or denied. Study 3 supports the view that abstract language is due to taken‐taken‐for‐granted conditions, showing a reversal from abstract to more specific language even in free communication when the validity of statements is challenged.