Patrizia Catellani

The strategic use of counterfactual communication in politics.

While counterfactual thinking has been widely investigated, we know much less about how counterfactual (“If . . . then”) statements are employed in political communication. We analysed statements made by politicians during pre-electoral televised broadcasts, to assess whether politicians employ counterfactuals in facework. Counterfactuals were coded according to their direction, controllability, and structure. Log-linear analysis revealed that upward, controllable, and additive counterfactuals were more frequent than downward, uncontrollable, and subtractive counterfactuals, respectively. A significant three-way interaction between target, direction, and controllability also emerged. While politicians more often employed upward controllable counterfactuals when speaking about targets other than themselves, they more often used downward controllable and upward uncontrollable counterfactuals when referring to themselves. These findings advance our knowledge of how counterfactuals are employed by politicians to promote their positive face and aggravate the face of adversaries.

Children's recall of script-based event sequences : the effect of sequencing

Abstract Preschool and first-grade childrens recall of script-based event sequences was studied in relation to four different instruction conditions. In the first condition children were asked to put in the correct order and then to describe two picture sequences presented in a jumbled order; in the second condition children were asked to describe the same sequences presented in a correct order. The third condition was similar to the second, except that children were given a second trial to describe the sequences. In the fourth condition the sequences were presented in a jumbled order and children were only asked to describe them. After a week all children were asked to recall the sequences. Differences in sequencing ability were observed in relation to age and sequence. The worst recall was observed in children who described the misordered sequence. Sequencing led to more acts recalled and to fewer intrusions than the other three conditions. When sequencing level was also included in the analysis of recall, children with low level sequencing still showed comparable recall to that of children who described the ordered sequences. These findings indicate that at both ages the effort involved in sequencing aids semantic processing of the material, enhancing recall, and offsetting the initial drawback of being presented with a misordered sequence. Findings are discussed in relation to the childrens ability to use script knowledge strategically as well as automatically.

Political communication, social cognitive processes, and voters’ judgments

Language is the essence of interpersonal behavior and social relationships, and it is social cognitive processes that determine how we produce and understand language. However, there has been surprisingly little interest in the past linking social cognition and communication. This book presents the latest cutting-edge research from a select group of leading international scholars investigating the how language shapes our thinking, and how social cognitive processes in turn influence language production and communication. The chapters represent diverse perspectives of investigating the links between language and communication, including evolutionary, linguistic, cognitive and affective approaches as well as the empirical analysis of written and spoken narratives. New methodologies are presented including the latest techniques of text analysis to illuminate the psychology of individual language users, and entire cultures and societies. The chapters address such questions as how are cognitive and identity processes reflected in language? How do affective states influence language production? Are political correctness norms in language use effective? How do partners manage to accommodate to each others communicative expectations? What is the role of language as a medium of interpersonal and intergroup influence? How are individual and cultural identities reflected in, and shaped by narratives in literature, school texts and the media? The book is aimed at all students, researchers and laypersons interested in the interplay between thinking and communication, and should be required reading for all professionals who use language in their everyday work to interact with people.It appears that there are two universal dimensions of social cognition, capturing a person’s intention to be good or to do good things (i.e., morality) and his or her capacity to carry out his or her intentions (i.e., competence, or Heider’s “can”). Perceivers are strongly biased towards the former dimension, as they are more likely to seek out and act upon information concerning a person’s morality than his or her competence. It has been suggested that this bias is an adaptive response to the fact that an individual’s morality (but not competence) has implications for the wellbeing of others. If morality information is particularly important for success in the social world, then the human propensity for sharing information about each other’s actions and attributes (i.e., gossiping) should be highly functional when this gossip concerns a target’s morality. Indeed, as the result of its ability to affect the wellbeing of the audience, gossiping should itself be perceived as an intrinsically moral action, and gossipers who share information that benefits the audience (i.e., diagnostic morality information) should be perceived to be particularly moral. We tested this functionalist account of gossiping in three experiments and as expected found that gossipers who shared diagnostic information about the morality of a target were judged to be more moral themselves. At the group level, this meant that single items of gossip affected perceptions of ingroup morality and participants’ attachment to the ingroup both directly (by affecting target perceptions) and indirectly (by affecting gossiper perceptions). This suggests that gossip has a richer ability to regulate group life than has hitherto been anticipated.

Counterfactual Communication in Politics: Features and Effects on Voters

During debates and interviews, political leaders often have to defend themselves from adversaries and journalists questioning their performance. To fight against these threats, politicians resort to various defensive strategies, either direct or indirect, to draw attention away from their responsibilities or shed a more positive light upon their work. Counterfactual defences i.e., comparing past actual events with other hypothetical events may be included among indirect defensive strategies. We first analyzed counterfactuals evoked by politicians during pre-electoral televised broadcasts. Results showed that politicians defended themselves by using: a other-focused upward counterfactuals; b self-focused downward counterfactuals. We then analyzed the effects of defensive counterfactuals on recipients. Participants were presented with different versions of a fictitious political interview, varying for the use of factual versus counterfactual defences and for counterfactual target and direction. Results showed that counterfactual communication is an effective defensive strategy in political debates.

The Effects of Counterfactual Attacks on the Morality and Leadership of Different Professionals

Past research has offered contrasting results regarding the effects of attacks on social judgments. In three experiments, we investigated the effects of counterfactual (“If only…”) and non-counterfactual attacks on the morality versus leadership of politicians versus entrepreneurs. First, participants rated morality as the most desirable, but least typical dimension of politicians, and leadership as the most desirable and most typical dimension of entrepreneurs (Study 1). Then, counterfactual attacks led to poorer evaluation of the attacked target and better evaluation of the attacking source as compared to non-counterfactual attacks, especially when counterfactuals were focused on the most desirable dimension for the professional category of the attacked target (Study 2). Similar results emerged when the typicality of the attacked dimension was manipulated (Study 3). Discussion focuses on the higher success of attacks on desirable personality dimensions and of counterfactual attacks as compared to other attacks.