Many of life's joys and sorrows are directly or
indirectly attributable to what we say. Our feelings typically
result from what we say to ourselves. If you have a 2010 Nissan and
tell yourself you should have a 2016 Lexus, you might discount the benefits of
your present car and obsess about the supposed wonders of the car that you do
not have, resulting in brooding discontent. Conversely, if you tell yourself
that the Nissan is yours free and clear of a loan obligation and that it gets
great gas mileage, the words can promote serenity What we say also
can cause interpersonal repercussions. The old adage, “It’s not what
you say but how you say it” is relevant here. If you tell your
spouse that he/she is "selfish" for eating the last two oranges in
the refrigerator, you invite recrimination such as, "You are so
greedy. There were a dozen oranges in there last week; you ate the
other ten!" On the other hand, more carefully chosen words
might elicit a constructive spousal response. If you stated, "I
have been eating a lot of oranges recently, we should buy a couple more next
time," your partner might get your message without needing to rebut a
criticism.
If you know that internal mental health and your external public relationship health are profoundly affected by the words you use, are
you also cognizant of what you are saying in real time, and, more important, do
you takes steps to correct maladaptive internal or interpersonal comments?
" To be cognizant in those ways, you must understand the
relationships between words and emotions.
Research repeatedly has demonstrated that there
are three major features of the affective/emotional meanings of words (Osgood
et al., 1957): evaluation (from very positive to very negative), potency (from
very strong to very weak), and activity (from very active to very
passive). For instance, saying to yourself or others, “I hate never
having learned to ride a bicycle. I just was born uncoordinated” is
negative, weak, and passive. By contrast, saying “I’m a very good
bicyclist. I got that way because I ride at least ten miles per day,
rain or shine” is positive, strong, and active.
What
others say to you is no less rich in their affective
influences. Loftus and Palmer (1974) conducted a classic study
demonstrating how the emotional valence of words influenced judgements. After
viewing video clips of motor vehicle accidents, subjects were asked, “About how
fast were the cars going when they XXXX into each other?” The
missing verb varied across the five test groups, each fifth being given the
verb smashed, collided, bumped, hit, or contacted. The subjects
estimates of car speed were: smashed=40.8 mph, collided=39.3 mph, bumped=38.1
mph, hit=34.0 mph, and contacted=31.8 mph. Clearly,
the subjects verb-oriented emotional reactions “impacted” (pardon the pun)
their speed judgements.
The Loftus and Palmer study is an instance of
“semantic prosody,” a somewhat arcane but very interesting feature of affective
meaning that David J. Hauser and Norbert Schwarz (2016) believe influences our
judgements. In short, the idea is that some words tend to occur
together almost exclusively in contexts that are either positive or negative,
and in so appearing they promote within the listener an expectation of
positivity or negativity that biases our evaluative conclusion. In
the study just reviewed, the fact that the word “car” appeared in contexts with
“smashed,” “collided, “bumped,” “hit,” and “contacted” profoundly influenced
our judgements in an affectively significant manner. If in a cooking presentation one used the very same verbs to describe how potatoes
were handled when making a stew, the emotional implications of the comments
obviously would have been quite different.
Learn to pay attention to how you and others,
especially physicians, use words to characterize matters that are important
for your physical and mental health. Know that the words will affect
you. Try to clarify both the objective and subjective features of
those communications to understand what you are confronting and how to proceed
in a way that is most health-facilitating.
Hauser, David J. and Schwarz, Norbert (2016). Semantic
prosody and judgment.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, May 30. No
Pagination Specified. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000178.
Loftus, E. F., & Palmer, J. C.
(1974). Reconstruction of auto-mobile destruction: An example of the
interaction between language and memory. Journal of Verbal Learning
and Verbal Behavior, 13, 585-589.
Osgood, C. E., P. H. Tannenbaum, and G. J. Suci.
(1957). The Measurement of Meaning. Urbana: University of
Illinois Press.
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