Negative comments and name-calling cause emotional damage to the brain.
- Words have an important role to play in relationships between human beings, as they are tools used to understand interpersonal behavior.
- Unlike insults, compliments elicited a weaker P2 effect.
“Do people get used to insulting language?” This is the question raised by Dutch researchers. According to them, insults go against the idea of not harming others and also pose a threat to a person’s reputation. “As such, these ‘verbal slaps’ offer a unique opportunity to explore the interface between language and emotions,” the scientists said.
The impact of words
To examine this interface, they performed a study published in the journal Frontiers in Communication. In order to carry out the work, the authors recruited 79 people. They put electroencephalography (EEG) and skin conductance electrodes on them. Participants then read a series of insults (such as “Linda is an idiot” or “Paula is horrible”), positive comments (such as, “Linda is an angel” or “Paula is awesome”) and factual descriptions neutral (e.g. “Linda is a student”).
In order to analyze whether the impact of the words depended on the person evaluated, half of the three sets of statements indicated the name of the participant, and the other half that of another person. The experiment involved no real interaction between the volunteers and another human being. Participants were told that the statements were made by three different men.
An insult always reaches us
According to the results, insults can always reach us, regardless of the author, and continue to do so even after repetitions. Specifically, EEG recordings showed an early insult effect in P2 amplitude, an event-related component measured at the scalp. “This P2 effect indicates a very rapid and stable capture of emotional attention,” can we read in the study. According to the researchers, skin conductivity recordings showed that insults did not lead to greater arousal than compliments.
“Mini lexical slaps”
“Overall, our results suggest that insults provide lexical ‘mini slaps’, such that strongly negative words read by a participant automatically attract attention during lexical retrieval, regardless of the frequency of that retrieval. “, explained the scientists in a statement. Research has revealed an increased sensitivity of our brain to negative words compared to positive words. An insult immediately captures our brain’s attention, as the emotional meaning of insults is retrieved in long-term memory.
