Chapter 9. Language and Thought

Topic: How do subtle language changes influence decisions when judging guilt or innocence?

Introduction:

The linguistic relativity hypothesis covered in your text presents the idea that “language shapes the nature of thought.” This hypothesis was applied to how we process color and the concept of time, but what about other topics? How might language impact our perception of blame and how much someone should be punished?

The data in this applet comes from research conducted by Fausey and Boroditsky (2009) exploring the impact of language on guilty verdicts, blame ratings, and liability estimates. More specifically, the researchers were primarily interested in testing agentive and nonagentive languaging. Agentive language refers to when a subject is responsible for an action, such as “he ripped”, “she killed”, and “he burned it”. This is in contrast to nonagentive language, which refers to when there is no subject responsible for the action, such as “it ripped”, “it died”, and “it burned”.

How might the wording of criminal trials or accident reports impact a person’s perception of whether the individual involved was guilty or not, how much blame they are responsible for, and the amount the person should be held liable? Let’s explore these questions further using the data from this study.