Ideology Interpretation

We investigated differences between liberals and conservatives in the interpretation of conversation utterances with potential indirect meanings. Past research demonstrating cognitive differences between conservatives and liberals suggests liberals should be more likely than conservatives to engage in cognitive processes designed to uncover potential indirect meanings in conversation utterances. To test this, we created a conversation containing five types of utterances with potential indirect meanings (indirect request, indirect reply, scalar expression, negative gradable adjective, conditional offer) and asked liberals and conservatives to rate the likelihood of an indirect interpretation of each. In three replications (Total N = 664) liberals were significantly more likely to endorse indirect interpretations of these utterances than were conservatives. Several possible cognitive mediators (Empathy Quotient, Need for Cognition, Cognitive Flexibility) were examined but did not account for the effect. The results demonstrate an important interactional implication of the cognitive processing differences between liberals and conservatives.