Four hundred people specified what they meant by this unflattering term.
- According to the results, the “biggest assholes” are middle-aged men.
- The average age of the participants was 32, and they were all English speakers.
- Responses were collected through questionnaires.
Everyone, or almost, has already used this word, but to mean what? This is the question posed by researchers at the University of Georgia in a study published in Collabra: Psychology. “Insults convey information about the speaker’s perception of the target’s personality., they say in the preamble. To find out what the average person means by “asshole” Where “assholein English, they interviewed nearly 400 people.
People we are not close to
Researchers asked participants to describe the “biggest asshole” of their lives. Then they analyzed the responses to highlight common traits. They found that most of the insult targets were seen as manipulative, aggressive and believing they were allowed anything.”People didn’t really have much trouble figuring out who the “biggest asshole” in their lives was.“, says Brinkley Sharpe, lead author of the study. About half of “assholes“were former romantic partners of the participants, former bosses or distant family members.”In general, the participants did not consider themselves very close to these individuals, which makes sense because these people are described as having quite repulsive behaviors..” However, a third of “biggest assholes“were people present in the participants’ lives, such as co-workers, friends and even current romantic partners.
Rude and angry individuals
Second, respondents were asked to describe the top three behaviors that made this person a “asshole“. The researchers asked them different questions about their perception of this individual: Do you think this person knows that their behavior is bothering others? Do you think this person cares that their behavior is bothering others? And do you think Do you think this person could change their behavior if they really wanted to? For most respondents, these people are aware that their behavior was bothering people, but don’t care enough to change.”When talking about personality, the asshole has been described as someone who is not pleasant and who is angry”, adds Brinkley Sharpe. In some cases, the people portrayed were irresponsible or had bigoted views. “Some of the responses were quite violentunderlines the main author. We had a couple where the individual had done something that was downright criminal“With her team, she finds that the word is used in very diverse situations.”I think the implication of the study is that insults matter, she continues. We mean certain things when we use them or associate them with certain characteristics.”
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