Milanowicz Anna, Tarnowski Adam, Bokus Barbara
Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland.
Front Psychol. 2017 Dec 19;8:2215. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02215. eCollection 2017.
This article approaches the question of mocking compliments and ironic praise from an interactional gender perspective. A statement such as "You're a real genius!" could easily be interpreted as a literal compliment, as playful humor or as an offensive insult. We investigate this thin line in the use of irony among adult men and women. The research introduces an interactional approach to irony, through the lens of gender stereotype bias. The main question concerns the impact of individual differences and gender effect on the perception and production of ironic comments. Irony Processing Task (IPT), developed by Milanowicz (2016), was applied in order to study the production and perception of ironic criticism and ironic praise in adult males and females. It is a rare case of a study measuring the ability to create irony because, unlike most of known irony research, it is not a multiple choice test where participants are given the response options. The IPT was also used to assess the asymmetry of affect (humor vs. malice) and impact of gender effect in the perception of ironic comments. Results are analyzed in relation to the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) scores. The findings reveal the interactional relationship between gender and response to irony. Male responses were consistently more ironic than female's, across all experimental conditions, and female responses varied more. Both, men and women used more irony in response to male ironic criticism but female ironic praise. Anxiety proved to be a moderate predictor of irony comprehension and willingness to use irony. Data, collected in control and two gender stereotype activation conditions, also corroborates the assumption that the detection of compliments and the detection of criticism can be moderated by the attitude activation effect. The results are interpreted within the framework of linguistic intergroup bias (LIB) and natural selection strategies.
本文从互动性别视角探讨了嘲讽式赞美和讽刺性赞扬的问题。像“你真是个天才！”这样的表述很容易被理解为字面意义上的赞美、诙谐的幽默或冒犯性的侮辱。我们研究成年男性和女性在使用反讽时的这条细微界限。该研究通过性别刻板印象偏差的视角，引入了一种反讽的互动方法。主要问题涉及个体差异和性别效应对反讽评论的感知与产生的影响。为了研究成年男性和女性对讽刺性批评和讽刺性赞扬的产生与感知，应用了由米兰诺维茨（2016年）开发的反讽处理任务（IPT）。这是一项罕见的测量创造反讽能力的研究，因为与大多数已知的反讽研究不同，它不是一个为参与者提供回应选项的多项选择题测试。IPT还被用于评估情感的不对称性（幽默与恶意）以及性别效应在反讽评论感知中的影响。研究结果结合状态 - 特质焦虑量表（STAI）得分进行分析。研究结果揭示了性别与对反讽的反应之间的互动关系。在所有实验条件下，男性的反应始终比女性更具讽刺性，而女性的反应则更为多样。男性和女性在回应男性的讽刺性批评时比回应女性的讽刺性赞扬时使用了更多的反讽。焦虑被证明是反讽理解和使用反讽意愿的一个适度预测指标。在控制条件和两种性别刻板印象激活条件下收集的数据也证实了这样一种假设，即赞美和批评的察觉可以受到态度激活效应的调节。研究结果在语言群体间偏差（LIB）和自然选择策略的框架内进行解释。
