Cui Jing, Dandan Yu R, Jiang Guiying
College of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China.
SCALab-Sciences Cognitives et Sciences Affectives, CNRS, UMR 9193, University of Lille, Lille, France.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2023 Apr;234:103870. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2023.103870. Epub 2023 Feb 18.
The smiling emoji has been claimed to be a marker of sarcastic intention among young Chinese users in computer-mediated communication. However, it is not well understood whether people interpret the emoji differently based on the characteristics or traits of the sender, as conveyed by occupation stereotypes. We investigated the effect of sender occupation on emoji-based sarcasm interpretation in both unambiguous (Experiment 1) and ambiguous (Experiment 2) contexts. The results showed that contextual incongruity was privileged over sender occupation in cueing sarcastic intention. In unambiguous contexts, sender occupation exerted no significant influence on the interpretation of emoji-based sarcastic statements. In contrast, sender occupation played an important role in the interpretation of emoji-based statements in ambiguous contexts. Specifically, emoji-based ambiguous statements delivered by senders in high‑irony occupations were more likely to be perceived as sarcastic than by those in low-irony occupations. However, sender occupation did not affect the interpretation of the emoji; instead, it biased the judgment of emoji in sarcasm interpretation. In a follow-up experiment (Experiment 3), we investigated the perceived characteristics of both high- and low-irony occupations. The results demonstrated that individuals in high-irony occupations were stereotyped with characteristics, including being humorous, insincere, easy to setting up close relationships, and of a lower social status. Taken together, our study suggests that stereotypical information about the sender could drive the interpretation of potentially sarcastic statements, and the contextual information modulates the effect of sender occupation on sarcasm interpretation.
在计算机介导的交流中，微笑表情符号被认为是中国年轻用户讽刺意图的一个标志。然而，人们是否会根据职业刻板印象所传达的发送者的特征或特质来对表情符号进行不同的解读，目前还不太清楚。我们在明确（实验1）和模糊（实验2）两种情境下，研究了发送者职业对基于表情符号的讽刺解读的影响。结果表明，在提示讽刺意图方面，情境不一致性比发送者职业更具优势。在明确情境中，发送者职业对基于表情符号的讽刺语句的解读没有显著影响。相比之下，发送者职业在模糊情境中对基于表情符号的语句的解读中发挥了重要作用。具体而言，由具有高度讽刺性职业的发送者发出的基于表情符号的模糊语句，比由具有低度讽刺性职业的发送者发出的更有可能被视为具有讽刺意味。然而，发送者职业并没有影响对表情符号的解读；相反，它在讽刺解读中影响了对表情符号的判断。在后续实验（实验3）中，我们研究了高度和低度讽刺性职业的感知特征。结果表明，具有高度讽刺性职业的人被刻板地认为具有包括幽默、不真诚、容易建立亲密关系和社会地位较低等特征。综上所述，我们的研究表明，关于发送者的刻板信息可能会推动对潜在讽刺语句的解读转变，而情境信息则调节了发送者职业对讽刺解读的影响。
