Do People Get Used to Insulting Language?

Verbal insults go against a universal moral imperative not to inflict harm on others, and they also pose threat one's face or reputation. As such, these “verbal slaps in the face” provide unique opportunity explore interface between language emotion. We used electroencephalography (EEG) skin conductance (SC) recordings compare short-term impact of verbal such as “Linda is an idiot” “Paula horrible” that more positive evaluations (e.g., angel”, impressive”) neutral factual descriptions student”), examining how responses various speech acts adapt function massive repetition. By using either participant's somebody else's name, we explored statement depended who was being evaluated. Multilevel ERP analysis with three predesignated latency ranges revealed early insult effect P2 amplitude highly robust over repetition did depend about. This points very rapid stable capture emotional attention, plausibly triggered by retrieval evaluative word meaning from long-term memory. Insults elicited larger late potential (LPP), again regardless about, but this later withstand Skin showed lead arousal than compliments did. In all, our findings suggest standard psycholinguistic comprehension experiment without real interaction speakers, deliver lexical “mini-slaps face,” strongly negative words involved “idiot”) automatically grab attention during retrieval, often occurs.