Previous research has shown that gender-inclusive pronouns can facilitate mental representation of nonbinary individuals. However, considering that gender and pronoun use are politicized in many countries, such that individuals with a right-wing political orientation show more skepticism toward nonbinarity, these effects may be compromised. Across four studies ( N total = 2,847), we tested whether the gender-inclusive pronouns hen (Swedish) and they (English) evoke mental representations of individuals with stereotypical gender-nonconforming versus gender-conforming appearances, depending on the participants’ political orientation. Studies 1a and 1b showed that a right-wing political orientation was related to a lower likelihood of associating gender-inclusive pronouns with stereotypical gender-nonconforming appearances. Studies 2a and 2b showed that these results were robust both when the function of the pronoun was to anonymize the referent and when the function was to refer to a nonbinary individual. Study 2b further showed that binary gender beliefs contributed to this relationship. These results suggest that the capacity for gender-inclusive pronouns to contribute to mental representation of nonbinary individuals varies in part with the recipient's political orientation and preexisting beliefs about gender. More broadly, the results contribute to the understanding of how political orientation influences the processes of social categorization related to gender.

This paper presents results from the first formal empirical test of Information Manipulation Theory 2 (IMT2). Specifically, two hypotheses were posited based upon three of the information manipulation (IM) propositions of IMT2. First, we predicted that a systematic rank ordering should be observable regarding the frequency of various types of information manipulation within deceptive messages; such that Gricean Quality violations are more frequent than Manner violations, which in turn occur more often than Relation violations. Second, we predicted that as the contextual problematicity of specific information units increases, so too should the likelihood of Quality violations related to the message production of these units. Two different data collections from two different institutions were conducted. Results from analyses of these data confirmed both hypotheses. Additionally, using the UCM method of unitizing and coding message data, we were able to identify the specific units of information within messages that were most likely to be falsified, thereby confirming the general premise of IMT2: the single strongest determinant of whether someone will deceive is the nature of the information they possess in working and long-term memory.

People generally prefer fluent, or easy, information processing experiences. Consequently, processing fluency often impacts individuals’ judgments and evaluations of information. Previous research found that processing fluency influenced headline selection and recognition. The present experiment replicated and extended this work by testing whether type of fluency, comparing conceptual (language difficulty) and perceptual (figure-to-background contrast) fluency manipulations, impacts selection and recognition of news headlines. Results demonstrated that individuals showed strong preferences for fluent news headlines, across both types of fluency manipulations. However, only the conceptual fluency manipulation impacted recognition, such that easy language was associated with higher recognition.

The “n-word” remains one of the most offensive racial slurs, yet it is used by both Black and non-Black individuals. Across three studies (total N = 1,063), we examined how Black people perceive its use based on the speaker's racial identity and racial self-identification, while also varying valence and context. In Study 1, we varied the target race who used the n-word (Black, Black–White biracial, White); in Study 2, we manipulated the valence in which the n-word was used (positive or negative); and in Study 3, we explored how a biracial person racially self-identified (Black-identified, biracial-identified, or Black-disidentified) shaped reactions. Black participants reported more negative perceptions and affective responses when a White (Studies 1 and 2) or Black-disidentified biracial (Study 3) target used the word, compared to Black, Black–White biracial (Studies 1 and 2), or Black-identified biracial (Study 3) targets, highlighting how racial identity shapes perceptions of those who use racial slurs.

Verbs, as the conventional linguistic category for expressing action and motion, possess meta-semantic associations specifically with action-orientation—associations not typically found in other grammatical classes (e.g., nouns). The central aim of this research was to examine whether the proposed association between verbs and action manifests in shorter response times for verbs compared to other grammatical forms. In Studies 1a and 1b ( N 1a = 136, N 1 b = 323), we examined the impact of exposure to verbs versus nouns on overall completion time for a complex questionnaire survey. In Studies 2a and 2b ( N 2a = 92, N 2b = 96), we employed a syntactic classification task to investigate behavioral responses to verbs and nouns, using a pseudoword paradigm in which carefully constructed lexical stimuli were devoid of semantic meaning but clearly conveyed grammatical class through suffixes. Across all four experiments, we consistently observed shorter response times for verbs and pseudoverbs compared to nouns and pseudonouns, suggesting that grammatical class exerts meta-semantic effects on behavior.

Conversations about politically contentious issues often break down due to a lack of shared understanding, with language playing a central role in this failure—particularly in discussions of abortion, one of the most polarizing topics in U.S. public life. Mutual understanding requires that speakers achieve high latent semantic similarity (LSS) by using words in similar ways. While extraversion has been linked to higher LSS, likely due to its association with social engagement and attentional focus, semantic alignment also depends on speakers’ capacity for empathic attunement, suggesting that empathy may serve as a key mechanism linking extraversion to LSS. This study examined whether empathy mediates the relationship between extraversion and LSS in computer-mediated conversations between unacquainted dyads ( N = 170) discussing the politically contentious topic of abortion. Results showed that empathy fully mediated this relationship, indicating that empathic attunement—not sociability alone—drives LSS. Findings inform communication theories by underscoring empathy's central role in fostering common ground understanding and highlight LSS as an observable linguistic marker of empathic engagement.

This study investigates how linguistic cues influence implicit gender-profession associations and whether gender-fair language can reduce such biases. Using a two-alternative forced-choice task, participants selected between two faces differing in masculinity-femininity traits to match an Italian cue word. In Study 1, participants were presented with gender-marked pronouns as cue words, and they consistently chose faces matching the pronoun's gender. Study 2 replaced pronouns with common gender nouns denoting professional roles, revealing a gender-career bias: female-dominated jobs were matched with more feminine faces, and male-dominated jobs with more masculine ones. Study 3 introduced gender-marked articles, which eliminated the bias of Study 2, suggesting that explicit linguistic markers can override implicit associations. Across all studies, effects were stronger when facial traits were clearly distinct. The findings highlight how language shapes cognitive biases and introduce a novel paradigm for assessing implicit associations. This research offers practical insights for promoting gender equality through language-based interventions.

This contribution examines the role of linguistic abstraction and valence of terms in the portrayal of immigrants and Italians in national and local newspapers with different political leanings. Specifically, it investigates how linguistic abstraction and valence of terms vary between the two most popular Italian national outlets and between these and a highly read local newspaper. The sample consisted of 218 newspaper articles on immigration. Results showed that across newspapers, immigrants are generally described using negative terms at a higher level of abstraction than Italians, as well as with negative terms at a higher level of abstraction than positive terms. Furthermore, national newspaper articles used terms at a higher level of abstraction than those in the local newspaper when describing immigrants and Italians. This contribution offers novel insights into how linguistic intergroup discrimination is conveyed in newspapers of a country where immigration is increasingly becoming a debated topic.

Individuals are quickly categorized as members of a group (e.g., national, migrants) based on their standard or nonstandard accent. However, this has usually been studied in the context of the native language, and less is known about accent-based categorization when individuals speak a second language. In this research, we tested whether speaking in Portuguese or English would influence Portuguese participants’ evaluations and recall of Portuguese-accented and Brazilian-accented speakers. In Study 1, we investigated the perceived warmth and competence, the potentiality of forming relationships, and the assumed economic status of Portuguese-accented and Brazilian-accented men speaking in their native (Portuguese) or non-native language (English). Results indicated that Brazilians speaking English received the worst judgments compared to all other categories by Portuguese listeners. Study 2 used a Who Said What paradigm to test language and accent categorization in a different experimental setting, and predicted that Portuguese participants would be more likely to make errors when recalling Brazilian-accented men speaking in English. However, Portuguese-accented men speaking in English received the most errors (although, Brazilian-accented men speaking English were second). Overall results from this project provide insight into the nuanced effects of social categorization and evaluations of standard and nonstandard accented individuals speaking in their native and non-native languages in Portugal.

Online support communities play an important role in providing access to quality social support. Additionally, those who experience health concerns that face social stigma, such as depression, are more likely to seek support online. To identify effective strategies that help individuals seeking support for depression receive high-quality social support online, we explore the role of two linguistic features in encouraging polite responses to their posts. This study employed a 2 (agency: human vs. depression) × 2 (causality: biological vs. nonbiological) factorial design. The politeness package for R was used to identify linguistic indicators of negative politeness and our results demonstrated that attributions of agency and causality did not have a significant direct effect on the prevalence of negative politeness in support responses. This suggests that support seekers’ understanding of the etiology of depression, and how they present it to support providers, has little impact on the quality of support provided in terms of negative politeness.