Boaz Keysar
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 2369748 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Boaz Keysar |
| NOMBRES | Boaz |
| APELLIDO | Keysar |
| FIRMA | KEYSAR B |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Chicago |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0461-0618 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 26 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 355 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 26 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1990 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 8 |
Embarrassment guides language choice
The impact of language on decision-making
Lingua Franca as a Hidden Barrier to Conflict Resolution
Longstanding intergroup conflict is one of the most perilous issues on the global stage, leading to violence, displacement, and loss of life. Finding strategies to bring parties to the negotiation table is therefore of utmost importance for conflict resolution. Here we address a common problem in intergroup conflict - the lack of a shared, native tongue - which is typically solved by using a lingua franca. Three experimental studies revealed that…
Escalation of negative social exchange
Thinking More or Feeling Less? Explaining the Foreign-Language Effect on Moral Judgment
Would you kill one person to save five? People are more willing to accept such utilitarian action when using a foreign language than when using their native language. In six experiments, we investigated why foreign-language use affects moral choice in this way. On the one hand, the difficulty of using a foreign language might slow people down and increase deliberation, amplifying utilitarian considerations of maximizing welfare. On the other hand…
The Exposure Advantage
Early language exposure is essential to developing a formal language system, but may not be sufficient for communicating effectively. To understand a speaker’s intention, one must take the speaker’s perspective. Multilingual exposure may promote effective communication by enhancing perspective taking. We tested children on a task that required perspective taking to interpret a speaker’s intended meaning. Monolingual children failed to interpret t…
Your Morals Depend on Language
Should you sacrifice one man to save five? Whatever your answer, it should not depend on whether you were asked the question in your native language or a foreign tongue so long as you understood the problem. And yet here we report evidence that people using a foreign language make substantially more utilitarian decisions when faced with such moral dilemmas. We argue that this stems from the reduced emotional response elicited by the foreign langu…
The Foreign-Language Effect
Would you make the same decisions in a foreign language as you would in your native tongue? It may be intuitive that people would make the same choices regardless of the language they are using, or that the difficulty of using a foreign language would make decisions less systematic. We discovered, however, that the opposite is true: Using a foreign language reduces decision-making biases. Four experiments show that the framing effect disappears w…
Less-Detailed Representation of Non-Native Language
The language of non-native speakers is less reliable than the language of native speakers in conveying the speaker's intentions. We propose that listeners expect such reduced reliability and that this leads them to adjust the manner in which they process and represent non-native language by representing non-native language in less detail. Experiment 1 shows that when people listen to a story, they are less able to detect a word change with a non-…
Reflexively mindblind
Why don't we believe non-native speakers? The influence of accent on credibility
The closeness-communication bias
Keeping Track of Speaker's Perspective
A long and narrow piece of wood is “a bat,” “a stick,” “a club,” or “firewood.” In fact, anything can be described from multiple perspectives, each suggesting a different conceptualization. People keep track of how speakers conceptualize things and expect them to describe them similarly in the future. This article demonstrates that these expectations are partly based on the speaker's social identity. Participants watched speakers describe objects…
In the mood to get over yourself
Understanding others' behavior often involves attributing mental states to them by using one's "theory of mind." We argue that using theory of mind to recognize differences between one's own perspective and another's perspective is a deliberate process of inference that may be influenced by incidental mood. Because sadness is associated with more systematic and deliberate processing whereas happiness is associated with more heuristic processing, …
The Effect of Culture on Perspective Taking
People consider the mental states of other people to understand their actions. We evaluated whether such perspective taking is culture dependent. People in collectivistic cultures (e.g., China) are said to have interdependent selves, whereas people in individualistic cultures (e.g., the United States) are said to have independent selves. To evaluate the effect of culture, we asked Chinese and American pairs to play a communication game that requi…
Communication and miscommunication
Communication is typically considered to be guided by principles of cooperation, requiring the consideration of the communication partner's mental states for its success. Miscommunication, in turn, is considered a product of noise and random error. I argue that communication proceeds in a relatively egocentric manner, with addressees routinely interpreting what speakers say from their own perspective, and speakers disambiguating their utterances …
Perspective Taking as Egocentric Anchoring and Adjustment
The authors propose that people adopt others' perspectives by serially adjusting from their own. As predicted, estimates of others' perceptions were consistent with one's own but differed in a manner consistent with serial adjustment (Study 1). Participants were slower to indicate that another's perception would be different from--rather than similar to--their own (Study 2). Egocentric biases increased under time pressure (Study 2) and decreased …
Limits on theory of mind use in adults
Taking Perspective in Conversation
When people interpret language, they can reduce the ambiguity of linguistic expressions by using information about perspective: the speaker's, their own, or a shared perspective. In order to investigate the mental processes that underlie such perspective taking, we tracked people's eye movements while they were following instructions to manipulate objects. The eye fixation data in two experiments demonstrate that people do not restrict the search…
The Illusory Transparency of Intention
Keysar (1994) reported a perplexing phenomenon: Readers treated communicative intentions as transparent. When a protagonist experienced a negative event and left a sarcastic message, readers thought the addressee would perceive sarcasm more than when the event was positive and the same message sincere. This occurred even when the addressee did not know the protagonist's attitude. Gerrig, Ohaeri, and Brennan (this issue) argue that this phenomenon…
Swimming against the current
Unconfounding common ground
I propose that research on the role of common ground in language use is often insensitive to considerations of parsimony. By ignoring parsimony, our experiments might fall short of addressing common ground and instead the resulting data support a simpler theory which is subsumed within the theory of common ground. In order to address this inherent conceptual confound, this paper proposes the subsuming theory criterion for experiments on common gr…
When do speakers take into account common ground?
Discourse context effects
Some sentences can have both a literal and a metaphorical meaning, but typically only one is appropriate. What contextual constraints lead readers to the appropriate interpretation? This article focuses on a particular kind of discourse‐driven constraint: A meaning may be selected not only because context strongly suggests it, but because the alternative meaning is eliminated by context. It is commonly believed that a metaphorical interpretation …
Metaphor and Communication
Why don't we believe non-native speakers? The influence of accent on credibility
Perspective Taking as Egocentric Anchoring and Adjustment
The authors propose that people adopt others' perspectives by serially adjusting from their own. As predicted, estimates of others' perceptions were consistent with one's own but differed in a manner consistent with serial adjustment (Study 1). Participants were slower to indicate that another's perception would be different from--rather than similar to--their own (Study 2). Egocentric biases increased under time pressure (Study 2) and decreased …
Understanding metaphorical comparisons
Traditionally, metaphors such as job is a jail have been treated as implicit similes (i.e., this metaphor would be treated as if it were a comparison statement, job is like a jail). Tversky's account of similarity is applied to such nonliteral similarity expressions, and is shown to apply as readily to nonliteral comparisons as to literal comparisons. But treating metaphors as comparison statements fails to account for certain important phenomena…
Reflexively mindblind
The closeness-communication bias
Communication and miscommunication
Communication is typically considered to be guided by principles of cooperation, requiring the consideration of the communication partner's mental states for its success. Miscommunication, in turn, is considered a product of noise and random error. I argue that communication proceeds in a relatively egocentric manner, with addressees routinely interpreting what speakers say from their own perspective, and speakers disambiguating their utterances …
Swimming against the current
Less-Detailed Representation of Non-Native Language
The language of non-native speakers is less reliable than the language of native speakers in conveying the speaker's intentions. We propose that listeners expect such reduced reliability and that this leads them to adjust the manner in which they process and represent non-native language by representing non-native language in less detail. Experiment 1 shows that when people listen to a story, they are less able to detect a word change with a non-…
Discourse context effects
Some sentences can have both a literal and a metaphorical meaning, but typically only one is appropriate. What contextual constraints lead readers to the appropriate interpretation? This article focuses on a particular kind of discourse‐driven constraint: A meaning may be selected not only because context strongly suggests it, but because the alternative meaning is eliminated by context. It is commonly believed that a metaphorical interpretation …
Metaphor and Communication
Escalation of negative social exchange
The Illusory Transparency of Intention
Keysar (1994) reported a perplexing phenomenon: Readers treated communicative intentions as transparent. When a protagonist experienced a negative event and left a sarcastic message, readers thought the addressee would perceive sarcasm more than when the event was positive and the same message sincere. This occurred even when the addressee did not know the protagonist's attitude. Gerrig, Ohaeri, and Brennan (this issue) argue that this phenomenon…
Unconfounding common ground
I propose that research on the role of common ground in language use is often insensitive to considerations of parsimony. By ignoring parsimony, our experiments might fall short of addressing common ground and instead the resulting data support a simpler theory which is subsumed within the theory of common ground. In order to address this inherent conceptual confound, this paper proposes the subsuming theory criterion for experiments on common gr…
Lingua Franca as a Hidden Barrier to Conflict Resolution
Longstanding intergroup conflict is one of the most perilous issues on the global stage, leading to violence, displacement, and loss of life. Finding strategies to bring parties to the negotiation table is therefore of utmost importance for conflict resolution. Here we address a common problem in intergroup conflict - the lack of a shared, native tongue - which is typically solved by using a lingua franca. Three experimental studies revealed that…
Understanding metaphorical comparisons
Traditionally, metaphors such as job is a jail have been treated as implicit similes (i.e., this metaphor would be treated as if it were a comparison statement, job is like a jail). Tversky's account of similarity is applied to such nonliteral similarity expressions, and is shown to apply as readily to nonliteral comparisons as to literal comparisons. But treating metaphors as comparison statements fails to account for certain important phenomena…
Metaphor and Communication
Discourse context effects
Some sentences can have both a literal and a metaphorical meaning, but typically only one is appropriate. What contextual constraints lead readers to the appropriate interpretation? This article focuses on a particular kind of discourse‐driven constraint: A meaning may be selected not only because context strongly suggests it, but because the alternative meaning is eliminated by context. It is commonly believed that a metaphorical interpretation …
When do speakers take into account common ground?
Unconfounding common ground
I propose that research on the role of common ground in language use is often insensitive to considerations of parsimony. By ignoring parsimony, our experiments might fall short of addressing common ground and instead the resulting data support a simpler theory which is subsumed within the theory of common ground. In order to address this inherent conceptual confound, this paper proposes the subsuming theory criterion for experiments on common gr…
Swimming against the current
Taking Perspective in Conversation
When people interpret language, they can reduce the ambiguity of linguistic expressions by using information about perspective: the speaker's, their own, or a shared perspective. In order to investigate the mental processes that underlie such perspective taking, we tracked people's eye movements while they were following instructions to manipulate objects. The eye fixation data in two experiments demonstrate that people do not restrict the search…
The Illusory Transparency of Intention
Keysar (1994) reported a perplexing phenomenon: Readers treated communicative intentions as transparent. When a protagonist experienced a negative event and left a sarcastic message, readers thought the addressee would perceive sarcasm more than when the event was positive and the same message sincere. This occurred even when the addressee did not know the protagonist's attitude. Gerrig, Ohaeri, and Brennan (this issue) argue that this phenomenon…
Limits on theory of mind use in adults
Perspective Taking as Egocentric Anchoring and Adjustment
The authors propose that people adopt others' perspectives by serially adjusting from their own. As predicted, estimates of others' perceptions were consistent with one's own but differed in a manner consistent with serial adjustment (Study 1). Participants were slower to indicate that another's perception would be different from--rather than similar to--their own (Study 2). Egocentric biases increased under time pressure (Study 2) and decreased …
The Effect of Culture on Perspective Taking
People consider the mental states of other people to understand their actions. We evaluated whether such perspective taking is culture dependent. People in collectivistic cultures (e.g., China) are said to have interdependent selves, whereas people in individualistic cultures (e.g., the United States) are said to have independent selves. To evaluate the effect of culture, we asked Chinese and American pairs to play a communication game that requi…
Communication and miscommunication
Communication is typically considered to be guided by principles of cooperation, requiring the consideration of the communication partner's mental states for its success. Miscommunication, in turn, is considered a product of noise and random error. I argue that communication proceeds in a relatively egocentric manner, with addressees routinely interpreting what speakers say from their own perspective, and speakers disambiguating their utterances …
In the mood to get over yourself
Understanding others' behavior often involves attributing mental states to them by using one's "theory of mind." We argue that using theory of mind to recognize differences between one's own perspective and another's perspective is a deliberate process of inference that may be influenced by incidental mood. Because sadness is associated with more systematic and deliberate processing whereas happiness is associated with more heuristic processing, …
Keeping Track of Speaker's Perspective
A long and narrow piece of wood is “a bat,” “a stick,” “a club,” or “firewood.” In fact, anything can be described from multiple perspectives, each suggesting a different conceptualization. People keep track of how speakers conceptualize things and expect them to describe them similarly in the future. This article demonstrates that these expectations are partly based on the speaker's social identity. Participants watched speakers describe objects…
Reflexively mindblind
Why don't we believe non-native speakers? The influence of accent on credibility
The closeness-communication bias
The Foreign-Language Effect
Would you make the same decisions in a foreign language as you would in your native tongue? It may be intuitive that people would make the same choices regardless of the language they are using, or that the difficulty of using a foreign language would make decisions less systematic. We discovered, however, that the opposite is true: Using a foreign language reduces decision-making biases. Four experiments show that the framing effect disappears w…
Less-Detailed Representation of Non-Native Language
The language of non-native speakers is less reliable than the language of native speakers in conveying the speaker's intentions. We propose that listeners expect such reduced reliability and that this leads them to adjust the manner in which they process and represent non-native language by representing non-native language in less detail. Experiment 1 shows that when people listen to a story, they are less able to detect a word change with a non-…
Your Morals Depend on Language
Should you sacrifice one man to save five? Whatever your answer, it should not depend on whether you were asked the question in your native language or a foreign tongue so long as you understood the problem. And yet here we report evidence that people using a foreign language make substantially more utilitarian decisions when faced with such moral dilemmas. We argue that this stems from the reduced emotional response elicited by the foreign langu…
The Exposure Advantage
Early language exposure is essential to developing a formal language system, but may not be sufficient for communicating effectively. To understand a speaker’s intention, one must take the speaker’s perspective. Multilingual exposure may promote effective communication by enhancing perspective taking. We tested children on a task that required perspective taking to interpret a speaker’s intended meaning. Monolingual children failed to interpret t…
Thinking More or Feeling Less? Explaining the Foreign-Language Effect on Moral Judgment
Would you kill one person to save five? People are more willing to accept such utilitarian action when using a foreign language than when using their native language. In six experiments, we investigated why foreign-language use affects moral choice in this way. On the one hand, the difficulty of using a foreign language might slow people down and increase deliberation, amplifying utilitarian considerations of maximizing welfare. On the other hand…
Escalation of negative social exchange
Lingua Franca as a Hidden Barrier to Conflict Resolution
Longstanding intergroup conflict is one of the most perilous issues on the global stage, leading to violence, displacement, and loss of life. Finding strategies to bring parties to the negotiation table is therefore of utmost importance for conflict resolution. Here we address a common problem in intergroup conflict - the lack of a shared, native tongue - which is typically solved by using a lingua franca. Three experimental studies revealed that…
The impact of language on decision-making
Psychology (22 obras) · Social Psychology (17 obras) · Linguistics (15 obras) · Cognitive psychology (12 obras) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (12 obras) · Computer Science (11 obras) · Social Psychology (10 obras) · Cultural Differences and Values (8 obras) · Epistemology (7 obras) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (7 obras)