Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
PLoS One. 2022 Jul 21;17(7):e0271206. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0271206. eCollection 2022.
Disgust is an aversive reaction protecting an organism from disease. People differ in how prone they are to experiencing it, and this fluctuates depending on how safe the environment is. Previous research has shown that the recognition and processing of disgusting words depends not on the word's disgust per se but rather on individual sensitivity to disgust. However, the influence of dynamically changing disgust on language comprehension has not yet been researched. In a series of studies, we investigated whether the media's portrayal of COVID-19 will affect subsequent language processing via changes in disgust. The participants were exposed to news headlines either depicting COVID-19 as a threat or downplaying it, and then rated single words for disgust and valence (Experiment 1; N = 83) or made a lexical decision (Experiment 2; N = 86). The headline type affected only word ratings and not lexical decisions, but political ideology and disgust proneness affected both. More liberal participants assigned higher disgust ratings after the headlines discounted the threat of COVID-19, whereas more conservative participants did so after the headlines emphasized it. We explain the results through the politicization and polarization of the pandemic. Further, political ideology was more predictive of reaction times in Experiment 2 than disgust proneness. High conservatism correlated with longer reaction times for disgusting and negative words, and the opposite was true for low conservatism. The results suggest that disgust proneness and political ideology dynamically interact with perceived environmental safety and have a measurable effect on language processing. Importantly, they also suggest that the media's stance on the pandemic and the political framing of the issue may affect the public response by increasing or decreasing our disgust.
厌恶是一种保护生物体免受疾病侵害的厌恶反应。人们在体验厌恶的倾向方面存在差异，这种差异取决于环境的安全性。先前的研究表明，令人厌恶的词的识别和处理不取决于词本身的厌恶程度，而取决于个体对厌恶的敏感程度。然而，动态变化的厌恶感对语言理解的影响尚未得到研究。在一系列研究中，我们通过厌恶感的变化，研究了媒体对 COVID-19 的描述是否会影响后续的语言处理。参与者接触到的新闻标题要么将 COVID-19 描述为一种威胁，要么淡化其威胁，然后对单个单词进行厌恶感和情感价值（实验 1；N=83）或进行词汇决策（实验 2；N=86）评估。标题类型仅影响单词评分，而不影响词汇决策，但政治意识形态和厌恶感倾向两者都有影响。更自由的参与者在标题淡化 COVID-19 的威胁后，会对单词赋予更高的厌恶评分，而更保守的参与者则在标题强调 COVID-19 的威胁后会这样做。我们通过大流行的政治化和两极化来解释这些结果。此外，在实验 2 中，政治意识形态比厌恶感倾向更能预测反应时间。高保守主义与令人厌恶和负面单词的反应时间较长相关，而低保守主义则相反。研究结果表明，厌恶感倾向和政治意识形态与感知到的环境安全动态相互作用，对语言处理有可衡量的影响。重要的是，它们还表明，媒体对大流行的立场和问题的政治框架可能会通过增加或减少我们的厌恶感来影响公众的反应。
