ABSTRACT

How do we distinguish fact from opinion? We tested whether people’s ability to detect opinion-based content—as indicated by the use of subjective adjectives (e.g., amazing, frustrating)—depends on the linguistic position of the adjective. Our results show that simply changing the linguistic structure of a sentence influences our perception of the sentence’s subjectivity: The same basic information, packaged differently in linguistic terms, yields significantly different subjectivity ratings. Specifically, our results show that texts with subjective adjectives in syntactic positions associated with new information and “main news” are rated as more opinion-based than texts conveying the same core information with the same adjective presented in a position that presents the information as already-known information or as secondary information. We also show that this information-packaging effect is independent of whether the sentence provides grounds/evidence for the opinion. More generally, our results suggest that linguistic-packaging choices can be used to blur the distinction between fact and opinion or, at least, our ability to perceive opinion-based information as such.

摘要

我们如何区分事实和观点？我们测试了人们是否有能力检测基于意见的内容——如主观形容词的使用所表明的（例如，惊人的、令人沮丧的)——取决于形容词的语言位置。我们的结果表明，简单地改变句子的语言结构会影响我们对句子主观性的感知：相同的基本信息，用语言术语打包不同，会产生显着不同的主观性评级。具体来说，我们的结果表明，在与新信息和“主要新闻”相关的句法位置带有主观形容词的文本被评为比传达相同核心信息的文本更基于观点-已知信息或作为次要信息。我们还表明，这种信息包装效应与句子是否为意见提供依据/证据无关。更普遍，