Conversational linguistic features inform social-relational inference.

ABSTRACT: Whether it is the first day of school or a new job, individuals often find themselves in situations where they must learn the structure of existing social relationships. However, the mechanisms through which individuals evaluate the strength and nature of these existing relationships - social-relational inference - remain unclear. We posit that linguistic features of conversations may help individuals evaluate social relationships and may be associated with social-relational inference. Leveraging a naturalistic behavioral experiment (57 adults; 34,735 observations), participants watched a mid-season episode of a reality television show and evaluated the observed dyadic relationships between contestants. We employed novel person- and stimulus-focused approaches to: (1) investigate social-re

SUBMITTER: Schmidt H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12325574 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature