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Being What You Say: The Effect of Essentialist Linguistic Labels on Preferences

Three experiments examined the effects of essentialist linguistic labels on perceptions of preferences of others and of the self. In Experiment 1, participants evaluated the preferences of others described with noun labels (e.g., “Susan is a chocolate-eater”) as stronger, more stable, and more resilient than those described with descriptive action verbs (“Susan eats chocolate a lot”). Experiments 2 and 3 revealed the analogous effect for self-perception: participants evaluated their own preferences that they had described with nouns (rather than verbs) as stronger, more stable, and more resilient. These results indicate that the very manner in which attitudes are expressed can affect their status and evaluation. Linguistic forms that imply essentialist properties (e.g., nouns) can engender the inference that such attitudes are dispositional and therefore strong and stable. More generally, these results show that attitudes are plastic constructions shaped by subtle but pervasive cognitive and social input from the environment.