Speaker's power to act on words influences listeners' brain response

(Press-News.org) A speaker's power to act on his words influences how a listener perceives the meaning of their message, according to research published July 24 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky from the University of Marburg, Germany, and colleagues from other institutions.

For example, listeners are more likely to believe a political figure is capable of acting on the words "Tear down this wall!" than when an ordinary citizen makes the same statement. In this study, researchers presented participants with videotaped statements about politics spoken by a top political decision-maker, a news anchor or an unknown person. In a second scenario, the same people uttered statements related to general world knowledge. Brain responses to implausible statements about current affairs differed when uttered by a political figure as opposed to the other speakers, but implausible general world knowledge statements led to a similar brain response across all three speakers.

The effects occur rapidly, within 150-450 milliseconds of hearing a statement, and demonstrate that a listener's response to a message is immediately influenced by the social status of the speaker, and whether he or she has the power to bring about the state of affairs described by their words. Bornkessel-Schlesewsky explains, "Every day, we hear statements that surprise us because they do not correspond to what we (think we) know about the world. Our study demonstrates that, in understanding such utterances, our brain rapidly takes into account who said them (e.g. a politician versus our neighbor) and whether he or she in fact has the power to act upon what was said."

### Citation: Bornkessel-Schlesewsky I, Krauspenhaar S, Schlesewsky M (2013) Yes, You Can? A Speaker's Potency to Act upon His Words Orchestrates Early Neural Responses to Message-Level Meaning. PLOS ONE 8(7): e69173. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0069173

Financial Disclosure: This work was supported by the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science,the Interdisciplinary Research Center for Neuroscience at the Johannes Gutenberg- University Mainz and by the LOEWE programme of the German state of Hesse. No additional external funding was received for this study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing Interest Statement: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

PLEASE LINK TO THE SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE IN ONLINE VERSIONS OF YOUR REPORT (URL goes live after the embargo ends): http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0069173

Disclaimer: This press release refers to upcoming articles in PLOS ONE. The releases have been provided by the article authors and/or journal staff. Any opinions expressed in these are the personal views of the contributors, and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of PLOS. PLOS expressly disclaims any and all warranties and liability in connection with the information found in the release and article and your use of such information. About PLOS ONE: PLOS ONE is the first journal of primary research from all areas of science to employ a combination of peer review and post-publication rating and commenting, to maximize the impact of every report it publishes. PLOS ONE is published by the Public Library of Science (PLOS), the open-access publisher whose goal is to make the world's scientific and medical literature a public resource.

All works published in PLOS ONE are Open Access. Everything is immediately available—to read, download, redistribute, include in databases and otherwise use—without cost to anyone, anywhere, subject only to the condition that the original authors and source are properly attributed. For more information about PLOS ONE relevant to journalists, bloggers and press officers, including details of our press release process and our embargo policy, see the everyONE blog at http://everyone.plos.org/media.