Data_Sheet_1_Do People Get Used to Insulting Language?.PDF

Verbal insults go against a universal moral imperative not to inflict harm on others, and they also pose a threat to one's face or reputation. As such, these “verbal slaps in the face” provide a unique opportunity to explore the interface between language and emotion. We used electroencephalography (EEG) and skin conductance (SC) recordings to compare the short-term impact of verbal insults such as “Linda is an idiot” or “Paula is horrible” to that of more positive evaluations (e.g., “Linda is an angel”, “Paula is impressive”) and neutral factual descriptions (e.g., “Linda is a student”), examining how responses to these various speech acts adapt as a function of massive repetition. By using either the participant's or somebody else's name, we also explored how statement impact depended on who was being evaluated. Multilevel ERP analysis with three predesignated latency ranges revealed an early insult effect in P2 amplitude that was highly robust over repetition and also did not depend on who the insult was about. This P2 effect points to a very rapid and stable capture of emotional attention, plausibly triggered by the retrieval of evaluative word meaning from long-term memory. Insults also elicited a larger late positive potential (LPP), again regardless of who the insult was about, but this later effect did not withstand repetition. Skin conductance responses showed that insults did not lead to more arousal than compliments did. In all, our findings suggest that in a standard psycholinguistic comprehension experiment without real interaction between speakers, insults deliver lexical “mini-slaps in the face,” such that the strongly negative evaluative words involved (e.g., “idiot”) automatically grab attention during lexical retrieval, regardless of how often that retrieval occurs.

言语冒犯违背了‘不施加伤害于他人’的普世道德准则，同时也会对个体的颜面或声誉构成威胁。正因此，这类‘当面的言语耳光’为探索语言与情绪的交互界面提供了独特契机。本研究采用脑电图（electroencephalography, EEG）与皮肤电导率（skin conductance, SC）记录技术，对比了"Linda is an idiot"、"Paula is horrible"这类言语冒犯，与"Linda is an angel"、"Paula is impressive"这类积极评价，以及"Linda is a student"这类中性事实描述的短期影响，并考察了面对海量重复时，个体对各类言语行为的反应如何随重复次数发生适应性变化。通过使用被试自身或他人的姓名作为表述对象，本研究还探究了陈述的影响如何随被评价对象的不同而变化。通过对三个预设潜伏期范围进行多层级事件相关电位（event-related potential, ERP）分析，研究发现P2波幅存在早期冒犯效应：该效应在重复过程中稳定性极强，且不受被冒犯对象的影响。该P2效应表明，个体能快速且稳定地捕捉到情绪性注意力，这一过程很可能源于从长时记忆中提取评价性词汇语义所触发。言语冒犯还会引发更大的晚正成分（late positive potential, LPP），同样不受被冒犯对象的影响，但这一晚期效应无法在重复刺激下维持。皮肤电导率反应结果显示，言语冒犯引发的唤醒水平并未高于恭维评价。综上，本研究结果表明：在无说话者间真实互动的标准心理语言学理解实验中，言语冒犯实则是词汇层面的‘微型当面耳光’——即涉及的强烈负性评价词汇（如‘白痴’）会在词汇提取过程中自动捕获注意力，无论该提取过程发生多少次。