Michela Menegatti

Linguistic Bias in Personnel Selection

The present research examines how hiring committees strategically use language abstraction to collectively account for their decision to hire a job applicant over the others. In addition, the authors investigate how work interdependence between single members of hiring committees and applicants and common affiliation to the same work organization affect the language used to write individual reports on job candidates. Results of the first study show that selected applicants were described with positive terms at a higher level of abstraction and negative terms at a lower level of abstraction. The second study supports the selection linguistic bias in individually written reports and demonstrates that members of hiring committees describe interdependent applicants and those belonging to their group with negative terms at a lower level of abstraction than other applicants. The implications of the findings for the wider personnel selection context are discussed.

Convincing Similar and Dissimilar Others The Power of Language Abstraction in Political Communication

Three studies examined the production of political messages and their persuasive impact on recipients as a function of speaker–audience similarity. The first two studies found support for the hypothesis that political leaders (Study 1) and party activists (Study 2) formulate more abstract messages when the audience is politically similar to them than when the audience is dissimilar or heterogeneous. The third study examined the persuasive impact of message abstractness versus concreteness. We predicted and found that abstract messages are more effective in convincing an audience whose political positions are similar to the speaker’s and concrete messages are more effective in convincing an audience whose political positions differ from the speaker’s or are heterogeneous. Implications of these findings for the relation between language and social cognition are discussed.

Hindering Women’s Careers in Academia Gender Linguistic Bias in Personnel Selection

This article addresses the role of language abstraction as a means to discriminate female applicants in academic personnel selection. The level of abstraction of 814 judgments, which were drawn from publicly available archival material, was coded. Results reveal that judgments of female applicants were formulated using negative terms at a more abstract level and positive terms at a more concrete level than those of male applicants. Moreover, this gender linguistic discrimination was perpetrated only by male committee members. Further analysis of the use of linguistic category shows that this discrimination was mainly based on the use of negative adjectives. The implications of language abstraction as a subtle means through which women’s academic careers are hindered are discussed.

The Beneficial Role of Multiple Categorization and Intergroup Contact in Reducing Linguistic Out-Group Derogation

The present research addressed for the first time conditions under which linguistic out-group derogation can be hindered by increasing the qualitative and quantitative complexity of out-group members categorization. An analysis was made of the spontaneous language used to describe counterstereotypic versus stereotypic portrayals of Romanians (Study 1) and multiple versus single categorizations of immigrants (Study 2). Results showed that counterstereotypic and multiple categorization of highly discriminated targets decreased the level of abstraction of negative terms used, thus reducing out-group linguistic derogation. Furthermore, multiple versus single categorization effect on linguistic derogation toward immigrants was mediated by individuation of immigrants and moderated by intergroup contact. The implications of the sociocognitive interventions used and intergroup contact in hindering linguistic out-group derogation are discussed.

The strategic role of language abstraction in achieving symbolic and practical goals

This article addresses the role of linguistic abstraction in the achievement of symbolic and practical goals. Reviewing evidence from laboratory studies, we first elaborate on the power of language as a means of ingroup enhancement or outgroup derogation under different intergroup conditions. We then report several experimental and archival studies that showed how language serves the achievement of different practical goals such as initiating, maintaining, and ending romantic relations, accounting for individual and group decisions, maintaining or obtaining political and gender power, and persuading others. The analysis of open-ended language measures—which represents a methodological thread of the reviewed studies—shows how language is strategically moulded according to individual and group goals in laboratory as well as in real-life contexts. The implications of the interplay among language, cognition, and action are addressed.

Enjoying vs. smiling: Facial muscular activation in response to emotional language

The present study examined whether emotionally congruent facial muscular activation - a somatic index of emotional language embodiment can be elicited by reading subject-verb sentences composed of action verbs, that refer directly to facial expressions (e.g., Mario smiles), but also by reading more abstract state verbs, which provide more direct access to the emotions felt by the agent (e.g., Mario enjoys). To address this issue, we measured facial electromyography (EMG) while participants evaluated state and action verb sentences. We found emotional sentences including both verb categories to have valence-congruent effects on emotional ratings and corresponding facial muscle activations. As expected, state verb-sentences were judged with higher valence ratings than action verb-sentences. Moreover, despite emotional congruent facial activations were similar for the two linguistic categories, in a late temporal window we found a tendency for greater EMG modulation when reading action relative to state verb sentences. These results support embodied theories of language comprehension and suggest that understanding emotional action and state verb sentences relies on partially dissociable motor and emotional processes.

Do Gender and Ethnicity Make the Difference? Linguistic Evaluation Bias in Primary School

In two studies, we examined how primary school teachers use the subtle structural properties of language to communicate different evaluations of students who achieve higher versus lower marks, boys versus girls, and students with immigrant versus nonimmigrant origins. Written judgments of final evaluation records were coded for language abstraction. Results showed that students with higher marks are described with more abstract positive and more concrete negative terms than those receiving lower marks. By varying language abstraction teachers also communicate more favorable evaluations of girls than boys and of students with nonimmigrant than immigrant origins. These findings uncovered a linguistic evaluation bias that implicitly enhances girls’ qualities and performance, but hinder improvements of boys and students of immigrant families by focusing on their stable negative characteristics.