Does It Matter What Is Said and Who Said It? The Interpretation of Trump's and Harris' Statements Among Republican and Democrat Voters.

Abstract

The Gricean model of communication assumes that cooperation is a precondition for successful communication but humans often use language non-cooperatively. How do language users calibrate cooperation when deciphering communicated content? The current work probes how belief alignment shapes the interpretation of underinformative statements attributed to politicians (Donald Trump or Kamala Harris) presented to self-identified Republican and Democratic participants. The results show that communicated content is more likely to be derived when beliefs align between voter group and speaker. This suggests that we may arrive at different conclusions from the same statement, depending on who the speaker is and how much trust we grant them.