Interpersonal Verbs Research Articles

The Answer is in the Question: The Effect of Verb Causality on Locus of Explanation

Two studies investigated how verb causality in question formulation affects the locus of causal origin for answers. It was hypothesized that questions formulated with action verbs (join, help, cheat) cue the logical subject of a question sentence as the causal origin for answers. The reverse tendency was expected for answers to questions formulated with state verbs (like, hate, abhor), where the logical object of the question was expected to be the causal origin. The experiments provide support for the hypothesis and also show that choice of verb type in question formulation affects respondents' answers in a way that modfies the expected differences between actors' and observers' viewpoints. The influence of the causality implicit in interpersonal verbs on methodological issues in applied and theoretical settings is discussed.

Implicit Causality and Memory: Evidence for a Priming Model

Previous research has demonstrated an asymmetrical bias in attributions of causality for events described by interpersonal verbs. The authors used a cued recall procedure to examine possible explanations for this implicit causality effect. Subjects in four experiments were asked to form impressions of the people described in minimal sentences containing either action verbs (e.g., help) or state verbs (e.g., hate). Later, subjects were unexpectedly asked to recall the names associated with the verbs. As expected, subjects recalled more names that occupied the agent role than the patient role (Experiments 1 and 2) and more names that occupied the stimulus role than the experiencer role (Experiments 3 and 4). These results lend support to a priming process account of the implicit causality effect.

"Multiple inference-inviting properties" of interpersonal verbs: Event instigation, dispositional inference, and implicit causality.

The properties of interpersonal verbs (e.g., help, dislike, etc.) that systematically influence «implicit causality» are analyzed in 3 studies. It is argued that interpersonal verbs have a set of properties (multiple inference-inviting properties [MIIPs]) that are differentially elicited as a function of the type of property primed by the type of inference request

"Multiple inference-inviting properties" of interpersonal verbs: Event instigation, dispositional inference, and implicit causality.

"Multiple inference-inviting properties" of interpersonal verbs: Event instigation, dispositional inference, and implicit causality.

Discourse models, pronoun resolution, and the implicit causality of verbs.

Some interpersonal verbs, such as admire and amaze, describe an action or property of one person (the reactor) that is necessarily a response to an action or property of another (the initiator). We hypothesized that these verbs make the initiator relatively more accessible in a comprehender's discourse model and that this change in relative accessibility aids identification of the referent of a pronoun in a subsequent because clause. We predicted that, as a result, subjects would be faster to recognize a character's name after a because clause that uses a pronoun to refer to that character than after one that refers to some other character. Four experiments confirmed this prediction. Three further experiments demonstrated the importance of the verb's causal structure and of the presence of the connective because to this result.

Interpersonal verbs: Implicit causality of action verbs and contextual factors

AbstractThe hypothesis that the degree of contextual dependence of interpersonal verbs (as defined by Semin and Fiedler (1988) in their LCM) significantly affects the strength of causality implicit in such verbs is assessed in an experiment.Results show that both the strength of causal inference induced by the verb and the degree of respondents' confidence in their own judgements increases from descriptive action verbs (DAV), to interpretive action verbs (IAV), to state action verbs (SAV), to state verbs (SV). Furthermore, the effect of contextual factors (gender of the stimulus sentence subject and object and respondents' gender) is shown to be stronger for more descriptive verbs like DAV and weaker for more abstract verbs like SV.

Interpersonal verbs and dispositional adjectives: The psychology of causality embodied in language.

Interpersonal verbs and dispositional adjectives: The psychology of causality embodied in language.

Interpersonal verbs and dispositional adjectives: The psychology of causality embodied in language.

A series of studies showed that the tendency to assign greater causal weight to one interactant than to the other in sentence-events such as A doted on B or A detested B is related to the attributive reference of the adjective derived from the sentence verb. Thus, the pattern of causal weights for doted on (which has the derived form doting to describe A but none to describe B) favors A more so than does the pattern for detested (which has the form detestable to describe B but none to describe A). The effect was shown to be completely general across the verb types studied and was also obtained in an experiment using nonsense verbs and adjectives

Pitting Verbal Schemas against Information Variables in Attribution

The implicit causal schemas of interpersonal experience verbs such as “admire” and “astonish” were shown to moderate the influence of information concerning consensus and distinctiveness on causal attributions. Causal schemas in sentences such as “A astonishes B” were pitted against incongruent information concerning consensus (e.g., “A astonishes few other people”) or distinctiveness (e.g., “Many other people astonish B”), with consensus and distinctiveness defined in terms of internal and external locus rather than sentence subject and object. Subjects' causal ratings revealed that the implicit causality significantly moderated the informational influence but did not overpower it.

On the Causal Information Conveyed by Different Interpersonal Verbs: The Role of Implicit Sentence Context

The study reported here addresses the issue of why two different verb categories in sentences regularly elicit causal attributions to either the subject or the object of the sentence. State verbs (e.g., “hate,” “love”) predominantly evoke object attributions, whereas interpretive action verbs (e.g., “cheat,” “help”) evoke subject attributions. Different attempts to explain the phenomenon of implicit causality are critically discussed, and an argument is advanced for an alternative approach that focuses on the differential information these verb categories provide about the antecedent and consequent conditions of a sentence. An empirical study examining the inferences subjects draw concerning sentence contexts provides support for this contention. In the context of sentences with state verbs, inferences about the objects of the sentences appeared as antecedent conditions, while inferences about the subjects appeared as consequences, thus implying object causation. The reverse pattern was observed for sente...

A Reexamination of Sex Differences in Interpersonal Verbs

A study by Thompson, Hatchett, and Phillips (1981) found that males and females differed in their judgment of interpersonal verbs (IPVs). Females were said to give more extreme affect ratings and less extreme control ratings to IPVs than did males. The present study re-examined these findings utilizing multidimensional scaling techniques. Similarity/dissimilarity ratings of 105 combinations of 15 paired IPVs were made by 43 female and 39 male students. Analysis via COSPA yielded two dimensions of meaning underlying IPVs which were similar to those used by Thompson et al.: Affect and Control. Analyses of the data using three different approaches failed, however, to bear out Thompson et al.'s findings of sex differences in the judgment of IPVs.

A verb is worth a thousand words: The causes and consequences of interpersonal events implicit in language

This research examines people's sensitivity to the causes and consequences of events implicit in interpersonal verbs. In Study 1, adults consistently attributed the cause of an action to the Agent for some action verbs (e.g., telephone), and to the Patient for others (e.g., thank). They consistently attributed the cause of an experience to the Stimulus rather than to the Experiencer for experiential verbs (e.g., amaze, admire). Also, the consequences of interpersonal events were often judged to affect the Patient or Experiencer rather than the Agent or Stimulus. Study 2 showed that adults were sensitive to the causality implicit in interpersonal verbs even when they had not been explicitly asked to infer about the causes of the depicted events. In the last study, preschoolers were also sensitive to the implicit causality in interpersonal verbs, and their causal schemas were quite adult-like.

Sex Differences in the Judgment of Interpersonal Verbs

In the present study, male and female college students were asked to make judgments concerning the affective and control connotations of 71 sentences describing interpersonal relationships. Each sentence described a relationship between two people, using a different interpersonal verb (e.g. “likes,” “takes care of,” “humiliates,” etc.). Subjects were asked to judge the affective positivity and negativity of each relationship as well as the implication for interpersonal control. The results indicated an overall pattern in which females judged interpersonal relations to be more extreme in affect than did males, while males judged the same relations to be more extreme in control than did females. These results were interpreted within the framework of agency and communion, and their implications for communication problems between individuals of opposite sex were discussed.

Speculation on the structure of interpersonal intentions

A model is presented in which bipolar dimensions are hypothesized to operate as a simultaneous bundle of distinctive features in mediating the meanings of interpersonal behavioral events. A set of a priori semantic features is developed through rational analysis of the language of interpersonal behavior. A relatively small number of such distinctive features is shown to be capable of differentiating among a relatively large number of interpersonal verbs (IPVs). An initial set of six features, proposed on intuitive grounds, was tested for discriminating power over a sample of 210 representative IPVs, drawn from index categories of Roget's Thesaurus. On the basis of coding distributions and correlations with other features, two of these original features were discarded. Inspection of the sets of quasi- synonyms created by the surviving four features suggested the operation of six additional features, three of them affective in nature. The simultaneous application of these 10 semantic features provides intuitively satisfying differentiation among the sample of interpersonal verbs. It is suggested that, if the dimensional structure of interpersonal intentions (that is, their semantic features) can be shown to be culturally invariant, then manifest differences in behavioral prescription and expression can be economically compared across cultures.