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Doublespeak, or the use of euphemisms to sway opinion, lets leaders avoid the reputational costs of lying while still bringing people around to their way of thinking, a new study has found.
Researchers at the University of Waterloo found that the use of agreeable euphemistic terms biases people s evaluations of actions to be more favourable. For example, replacing a disagreeable term, torture, with something more innocuous and semantically agreeable, like enhanced interrogation. Like the much-studied phenomenon of fake news, manipulative language can serve as a tool for misleading the public, doing so not with falsehoods but rather with the strategic use of euphemistic language, said Alexander Walker, lead author of the study and a PhD candidate in cognitive psychology at Waterloo. The avoidance of objectively false claims may provide the strategic user of language with plausible deniability of dishonesty, thus protecting them from the reputational cost associate
In this week’s news recap, one EMU Board of Regents member resigns due to being charged in an investigation of the Flint water crisis, concerns rise over COVID-19 vaccine distribution in Washtenaw County, and the Honors College introduces a creative scholarship opportunity.
The 3
rd ranked Tigers came out sharp on Friday only turning the ball over once in the 1
st half as they built a 31-4 at the end of the 1
st quarter. The Tigers were able to create turnovers in the half-court defense and turned those into easy layups on the other end for Kaleb Booth, Nicke Macke, Tory Feldman, Colby Christensen and Treyton Goins. Carroll only made 5-3’s on the night but didn’t need to take many. Kaleb Booth hit a two of the 3’s and had 12 points at half while Nick Macke was able to get the baseline and attack the rim scoring a team high 17 points in the 1