- Oxford Library of Psychology
- [UNTITLED]
- Oxford Library of Psychology
- About the Editor
- Contributors
- Language and Social Psychology: Introduction and Overview
- Language Attitudes: Social Determinants and Consequences of Language Variation
- Language, Identity, and Culture: Multiple Identity-Based Perspectives
- Language and Culture
- Gender Similarities and Differences in Language
- Working Together
- Perspective Taking and Its Impostors in Language Use: Four Patterns of Deception
- Hand and Facial Gestures in Conversational Interaction
- Interactive Alignment and Language Use
- Cognitive and Social Aspects of Coherence
- Shaping Intergroup Relations Through Language
- Language, Style, and Persuasion
- Language and Interpersonal Relationships
- Natural Language Use as a Marker of Personality
- Using Computerized Text Analysis to Track Social Processes
- Language and Social Comprehension
- Language and Attribution: Implicit Causal and Dispositional Information Contained in Words
- Me and My Stories
- The Role of Language on the Perception and Experience of Emotion
- Discursive Social Psychology
- Grounding Language in Our Bodies and the World
- Literal Versus Nonliteral Language: Novelty Matters
- Intentions in Meaningful Experiences of Language
- Electrophysiological Research on Conversation and Discourse Processing
- Politeness and Reasoning: Face, Connectives, and Quantifiers
- Language Variation in the Classroom
- Pragmatic Processes in Survey Interviewing
- Language and the Law: Illustrations from Cases of Disputed Sexual Consent
- The Role of Language in Conflict and Conflict Resolution
- Computer-Mediated Communication
- The Role of Natural Language and Discourse Processing in Advanced Tutoring Systems
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter is concerned with the role of language in mediating attributions, conceived as speech acts that explain other people’s and one’s own behavior. Attributions entail judgments about causes and reasons, motives and goals of action, about guilt, responsibility, authorship, and origins of emotions. As explained in the linguistic category model and in construal-level theory, strategic shifts between abstract and concrete language use can account for fundamental attribution error, actor-observer bias, egocentric bias, linguistic-intergroup bias, and behavioral phenomena associated with psychological distance. Language can also trigger the attribution of truth and suspicion. The reviewed research highlights the fact that attributional inferences are wired into the semantic meaning of lexical stimuli, in particular verbs, adjectives, and nouns.
Keywords: abstractness, actor-observer bias, concreteness, consensus, consistency, construal-level theory, distinctiveness, fundamental attribution error, linguistic category model, linguistic intergroup bias, truth assessment
Department of Psychology University of Heidelberg Heidelberg, Germany
Tobias Krüger is a PhD candidate at the University of Heidelberg.
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- Oxford Library of Psychology
- [UNTITLED]
- Oxford Library of Psychology
- About the Editor
- Contributors
- Language and Social Psychology: Introduction and Overview
- Language Attitudes: Social Determinants and Consequences of Language Variation
- Language, Identity, and Culture: Multiple Identity-Based Perspectives
- Language and Culture
- Gender Similarities and Differences in Language
- Working Together
- Perspective Taking and Its Impostors in Language Use: Four Patterns of Deception
- Hand and Facial Gestures in Conversational Interaction
- Interactive Alignment and Language Use
- Cognitive and Social Aspects of Coherence
- Shaping Intergroup Relations Through Language
- Language, Style, and Persuasion
- Language and Interpersonal Relationships
- Natural Language Use as a Marker of Personality
- Using Computerized Text Analysis to Track Social Processes
- Language and Social Comprehension
- Language and Attribution: Implicit Causal and Dispositional Information Contained in Words
- Me and My Stories
- The Role of Language on the Perception and Experience of Emotion
- Discursive Social Psychology
- Grounding Language in Our Bodies and the World
- Literal Versus Nonliteral Language: Novelty Matters
- Intentions in Meaningful Experiences of Language
- Electrophysiological Research on Conversation and Discourse Processing
- Politeness and Reasoning: Face, Connectives, and Quantifiers
- Language Variation in the Classroom
- Pragmatic Processes in Survey Interviewing
- Language and the Law: Illustrations from Cases of Disputed Sexual Consent
- The Role of Language in Conflict and Conflict Resolution
- Computer-Mediated Communication
- The Role of Natural Language and Discourse Processing in Advanced Tutoring Systems
- Index
