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What Can We Conclude From Speakers Behaving Badly?

2000; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 29; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1207/s15326950dp2902_5

1532-6950

Richard J. Gerrig, Susan E. Brennan, Justina O. Ohaeri,

Social and Intergroup Psychology

In Gerrig, Ohaeri, and Brennan (this issue) we called into question whether "illusory transparency" (Keysar, 1994) is actually an interesting and perplexing phenomenon, or whether readers are simply perplexed when protagonists in stories behave uncooperatively or irrationally. In this commentary, we highlight data from our original experiments that were not addressed by Keysar (this issue). We suggest that serious demand characteristics, rather than illusory transparency, explain participants' greatly varying judgments across experiments. We also reiterate our concern that, with respect to expectations of cooperative and rational behavior, the speakers in Keysar's scenarios are behaving quite badly. It is questionable whether important theoretical generalizations can or should be drawn from this paradigm.