TY - JOUR
T1 - When intents to educate can misinform
T2 - Inadvertent paltering through violations of communicative norms
AU - Powell, Derek
AU - Bian, Lin
AU - Markman, Ellen M.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Powell et al.
PY - 2020/5/1
Y1 - 2020/5/1
N2 - Paltering is a form of deception whereby true statements are used to mislead and is widely employed in negotiations, marketing, espionage, and ordinary communications where speakers hold ulterior motives. We argue that paltering is accomplished through strategic violations of communicative norms such as the Gricean cooperative principles of relevance, quantity, quality and manner. We further argue that, just as genuine paltering deceives by deliberately violating communicative norms, inadvertent violations of these norms may be just as misleading. In this work, we demonstrated that educational information presented prominently on the American Diabetes Association website violated the Gricean communicative principles and disrupted readers' performance on a test of diabetes knowledge. To establish the effects of these communicative violations, we revised the ADA's information to preserve the original content while better adhering to pragmatic principles. When these ADA explanations were judiciously revised to minimize pragmatic violations, they were transformed from misleading to educational.
AB - Paltering is a form of deception whereby true statements are used to mislead and is widely employed in negotiations, marketing, espionage, and ordinary communications where speakers hold ulterior motives. We argue that paltering is accomplished through strategic violations of communicative norms such as the Gricean cooperative principles of relevance, quantity, quality and manner. We further argue that, just as genuine paltering deceives by deliberately violating communicative norms, inadvertent violations of these norms may be just as misleading. In this work, we demonstrated that educational information presented prominently on the American Diabetes Association website violated the Gricean communicative principles and disrupted readers' performance on a test of diabetes knowledge. To establish the effects of these communicative violations, we revised the ADA's information to preserve the original content while better adhering to pragmatic principles. When these ADA explanations were judiciously revised to minimize pragmatic violations, they were transformed from misleading to educational.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0230360
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0230360
M3 - Article
C2 - 32469993
AN - SCOPUS:85085679104
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 15
JO - PloS one
JF - PloS one
IS - 5
M1 - e0230360
ER -