The polarity effect of evaluative language
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Date
2022
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Abstract
Recent research on thick terms like “rude” and “friendly” has
revealed a polarity effect, according to which the evaluative
content of positive thick terms like “friendly” and “coura geous” can be more easily canceled than the evaluative
content of negative terms like “rude” and “selfish”. In this
paper, we study the polarity effect in greater detail. We first
demonstrate that the polarity effect is insensitive to manip ulations of embeddings (Study 1). Second, we show that the
effect occurs not only for thick terms but also for thin terms
such as “good” or “bad” (Study 2). We conclude that the
polarity effect indicates a pervasive asymmetry between
positive and negative evaluative terms.
Description
Keywords
Polarity effect; thick terms; thin terms; evaluative language; moral judgments; praise & blame