Relationship Status as a Mediator

for Sarcastic Interpretation

Danielle Williams

Joslyn Mesing

Penn State Behrend

What is Sarcasm?

Sarcasm is an indirect form of speech intentionally used to convey a criticism.

Sarcasm is very ambiguous

Interpretation can be indefinite

Example of Scenario

Taylor was at a high school football game. She wanted to go to the concession stand for a drink but didn't want to lose her front row seats. She asked Keith, the man next to her, to save her seat. Keith said it wouldn't be a problem. Whenever Taylor returned her seat was gone. She said to Keith, “Thanks for saving my seat”

Why Do People Use Sarcasm?

Allusional Pretense Theory (Kumon-Nakamura, Glucksberg, & Brown, 1995)

Irony allows the speaker to allude to an underlying intent, opinion, or belief

Tinge Hypothesis (Dews and Winner, 1995)

Irony mutes (tinges) the intended meaning behind an indirect remark.

Ironic criticism less critical

Ironic compliment less complimentary

Processing Non-Literal Language

Searle (1979)

Katz, Blasko & Kazmerski (2004)

Does the Relationship Matter?

Jorgensen (1996)

Familiarity and closeness between speaker and listener influences ratings of appropriateness of sarcastic remarks

Current Study

The Big Five Personality traits

Empathy Quotient

Demographics

Independent Variables

Relationship Status (romantic, friend, stranger)

Remark Status (sarcastic, literal)

Dependent Variables

Ratings (humor, insult, sarcasm)

Reading Times

Research Questions

(1) Will relationship status affect insult, sarcasm, and humor rating’s

(2) Will sarcastic comments take longer to read than literal comments?

(3) Does personality effect how people rate sarcastic messages?

Methods

Participants

N = 101

Males = 46

Females = 55

Age Range = 18-53

Average = 20.94

Recruited through SONA

Followed APA Ethical guidelines

Received IRB approval

Materials

E-Prime 2.0

Scenarios

Randomly assigned

12 Lists

48 Scenarios

Varied across relationship and remark status

Demographics

Gender, age, relationship status questions

Surveys

Empathy Quotient Questionnaire

Mini-Marker

Example of Scenario

Taylor was at a high school football game. She wanted to go to the concession stand for a drink but didn't want to lose her front row seats. She asked Keith, the man next to her, to save her seat. Keith said it wouldn't be a problem. Whenever Taylor returned her seat was gone. She said to Keith, “Thanks for saving my seat”

How Insulting?

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Romantic Friend Stranger

7 =

Ve

ry In

sult

ing

1 =

No

t at

all

Insu

ltin

g

Relationship Status

Mean Ratings of Insult

Sarcastic

Literal

F (1,101) = 1179.602, p = 0.00

How Humorous?

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Romantic Friend Stranger

7 =

Ext

rem

ely

Hu

mo

rou

s1

= N

ot

at a

ll H

um

oro

us

Relationship Status

Mean Ratings of Humor

Sarcastic

Literal

F (1,101) =358.677, p = 0.00

How Long Did It Take?

500

700

900

1100

1300

1500

1700

1900

2100

2300

2500

Romantic Friend Stranger

Re

spo

nse

Tim

e in

ms.

Relationship Status

Means of Reading Times for Ratings

Sarcastic

Literal

F (1,101) = 4.336, p = .040

Individual Differences & Personality

N = 101 Agreeableness Conscientiousness OpennessEmotional Stability

Empathy .54** .36** .45** .22*

Relationship Length

----- ----- -.46** -----

Relationship Status

----- ----- ----- .23*

Note. **Indicates that the correlation is significant at the 0.01 level.* Indicates significance at the 0.05 level.

Humor Rating Correlations

N = 101 Agreeableness Conscientiousness Openness EmotionalStability

Friend Relationship

-.25* ----- -.22* -----

Stranger Relationship

-.20*

Note. **Indicates that the correlation is significant at the 0.01 level.* Indicates significance at the 0.05 level.

What Does This All Mean?

Individual differences affect perceptions of sarcasm

Different personality styles perceive sarcasm differently

Personality is correlated with empathy

Future research should further investigate these individual differences and their influence on familiarity

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr. Dawn Blasko for all her time, effort, and valuable input throughout our project. We would also like to thank Dr. Robert W. Light, Associate Dean for research, for his contributions to undergraduate research through the grant program at Penn State Erie, the Behrend College.

Questions?

References

Austin, J. L., (1962). How to do things with words. London: Oxford University Press.

Baron-Cohen, S., & Wheelwright, S. (2004). The Empathy Quotient: An Investigation of Adults. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 34(2).

Bartholomew, K., & Shaver, P. R. (1998). Methods of Assessing Adult Attachment: Do they Converge? Attachment theory and close relationships, 22-45.

Clark, H. H. & Gerrig, J. R., (1984). On the pretense of irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology, General, 113(1), 121-123

Dews, S., & Winner, E. (1995). Muting the meaning: A social function of irony. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 10(1), 3-19.

Goldberg, L. R., (1992). Development of markers for the big-five factor structure. Psychological Assessment, 4(1), 26-42.

Gibbs, R. W., (2000). Irony in talk among friends. Metaphor and Symbol, 15(1&2), 5-27.

Grice H.P., (1957). Meaning Philosophical Review 66, pp. 377-388.

Grice, H. P., (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics, Volume 3: Speech acts (pp.41-58). New York: Academic Press.

Ivanko, s. L., Pexman, P. M., & Olineck, K. M. (2004). How Sarcastic are You? : Individual Differences and Verbal Irony. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 23.

Jorgensen, J., (1996). The functions of sarcastic irony in speech. Journal of Pragmatics, 26, 613-634.

References Cont.

Katz, A. N., Blasko, D. G., & Kazmerski, V. A. (2004). Saying what you don’t mean. Current directions in psychological science, 13(5), 186-189

Kreuz, R. J., & Glucksberg, S., (1989). How to be sarcastic: The echoic reminder theory of verbal irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 118(4), 374-386.

Kuman-Nakamura, S., Glucksberg, S., & Brown, M., (1995). How about another piece of pie: The allusional pretense theory of discourse irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 124(1), 3-21.

Link, E. K., & Kruez, J. R., (2004). Do men and women differ in their use of nonliteral language when they talk about emotions? In H. Colston, & A. Katz (Eds.) Figurative language comprehension: Social and cultural influences (pp. 153-180). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Pexman, P. M., (2004). Social factors in the interpretation of verbal irony: The roles of speaker and listener characteristics. In H. Colston, & A. Katz (Eds.) Figurative language comprehension: Social and cultural influences (pp. 209-232). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Schneider, W., Eschmann, A., & Zuccolotto, A. (2002). E- Prime user’s guide. Pittsburgh, PA: Psychology Software Tools, Inc.

Searle, J. R., (1969). Speech acts. Cambridge, England: Cambridge

University Press.

Thompson, E. R. (2008). Development and Validation of an International English Big-Five Mini-Markers. Personality and Individual Differences, 45(6), 542-548.