TY - JOUR TI - How Errors in Text Influence Impressions about the Author’s Wit and Intelligence T2 - Psychology. Journal of Higher School of Economics IS - Psychology. Journal of Higher School of Economics KW - impressions about intelligence KW - texts KW - spelling and punctuation errors KW - social perception AB - Nowadays, communication is often carried out exclusively through the exchange of text information, so research on how the reader forms an impression about an author seems relevant. Many studies explore the accuracy of impressions about various psychological characteristics of the author and text cues related to these impressions. Such works often use correlational designs and there are practically no attempts to check the influence of certain text features in experimental manipulations. This study explores the issue of how the reader's impression on the wit/intel­ligence of the author forms. In previous studies we found that respondents often indicate that the presence of errors in the text is important for forming an impression of the author's intelligence. We decided to check whether their presence indeed affects the perceived wit / intelligence. In two studies (N = 40 and N = 167) adult participants read texts written by real people with different levels of intelligence, the texts were presented either with or without spelling and punctuation errors, each category consisted of 4 texts. Respondents were asked to rate how smart the author of the text seems to be using the scale from 1 to 10, as well as a score they would get if they performed an intelligence test. In both studies, a significant albeit small main effect of the variable "spelling and punctuation errors" was found, meaning that errors in a text reduces perceived intelligence of the author, but other features of a text may play a more significant role in shaping the impression. AU - Tatiana Sysoeva AU - Svetlana Yaroshevskaya UR - https://psy-journal.hse.ru/en/2022-19-2/670762146.html PY - 2022 SP - 338-352 VL - 19