God is in the Details: The Effect of Directional Verbs in Process Explanations on Text Coherence

Abstract

This research focuses on the verbs in causal explanations, and shows how they convey previous causal knowledge to produce coherent texts. In three studies, we manipulated the degree of text coherence by changing the verbs’ direction of influence to be consistent with previous knowledge (e.g., a food additive that claims to produce weight loss by reducing appetite), inconsistent with previous knowledge (e.g., by inducing appetite), or unspecified (e.g., by affecting appetite). We demonstrate that for short chains (one mediator), because people tend to complete the direction spontaneously, the unspecified and the coherent conditions did not differ when both yielded better understanding and higher persuasiveness and reading fluency than the incoherent condition. For longer chains, because spontaneously completing the direction of influence is almost impossible, the unspecified condition was as bad as the incoherent condition when the coherent condition yielded better understanding and higher persuasiveness and reading fluency than both. Process analysis demonstrates people are sensitive to directional verbs because they convey previous causal knowledge that facilitates the accommodation of the novel information to previous beliefs.