Reducing Negative Emotion with Verbal Irony: Insights from Behavior and Event-Related Potentials

Abstract

Verbal irony is when the literal meaning of a statement contrasts with the intended meaning. For example, when we arrive at a party, see a table loaded with desserts and exclaim: “I see I am the only one who brought dessert!’ while putting our pie-dish down. Verbal irony shares a special relationship with negative emotions, as it is often used to express them, or used in the context of negative events. However, it is unclear what irony does to negativity and which mechanism irony uses to impact emotion. In this thesis, I investigate if and how irony impacts negative emotion in speakers and listeners. In Chapter 1, I provide a brief introduction into the topic, followed by Chapters 2, 3, and 4, which each report experimental work with ratings and electrophysiology. In specific, Chapter 2 shows that speakers using irony, regardless of the amount of context negativity, are rated to be in a less negative and less aroused mental state compared to the same speaker using literal language. In Chapter 3, I show that listening to a statement produced by someone else leads to a more negative and more aroused mental state compared to producing the same utterance addressed to oneself. Lastly, in Chapter 4, I contrast irony and cognitive reappraisal, showing that irony can be an effective tool to reduce negativity, but cognitive reappraisal is not the only mechanism which allows irony to reduce negativity. Chapter 5 outlines broad conclusions for future research from the work described in this thesis.