Running head: CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 1
Beauty and truth, truth and beauty: Chiastic structure increases the subjective accuracy of
statements
Mane Kara-Yakoubian*1, Alexander C. Walker2, Konstantyn Sharpinskyi2, Garni Assadourian3,
Jonathan A. Fugelsang2, Randy A. Harris4
Ryerson University
University of Waterloo
McGill University
Author Note
1 Department of Psychology, Ryerson University, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5B 2K3 2 Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1 3 School of Information Studies, McGill University, 845 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 0G4 4 Department of English Language and Literature, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
*Corresponding Author: Department of Psychology, Ryerson University, 350 Victoria Street,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5B 2K3 e-mail: [email protected] CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 2
Abstract
The Keats heuristic suggests that people find aesthetically pleasing expressions more accurate and credible than mundane expressions. We test this notion with chiastic statements.
Chiasmus is a stylistic phenomenon in which at least two linguistic constituents are repeated in reverse order, conventionally represented by the formula A-B-B-A. Our study focuses on the specific form of chiasmus known as antimetabole, in which the reverse-repeated constituents are words (e.g., “All for one and one for all;” A = all, B = one). In 3 out of 4 experiments (N = 797), we find evidence that people judge antimetabolic statements (e.g., “Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.”) as more accurate than semantically equivalent non- antimetabolic statements (e.g., “Success is getting what you wish. Happiness is wanting what you receive.”). Furthermore, we evaluate fluency as a potential mechanism explaining the observed accuracy benefit afforded to antimetabolic statements, finding that the increased speed (i.e., fluency) with which antimetabolic statements were processed predicted judgements of accuracy, and consider the contributions of iconicity to the meaningfulness of antimetabolic expressions.
Overall, the current work demonstrates that stylistic factors can bias assessments of truth, with information communicated using antimetabolic structure being judged as more accurate.
Keywords: keats heuristic, aesthetics, antimetabole, chiasmus, accuracy judgments, fluency
CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 3
Introduction
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. — John Keats (1819)
Two centuries ago, in his acclaimed 1819 poem “Ode on Grecian Urn,” romantic poet
John Keats equated beauty and truth. We would not want to make any claims about truth per se, but it is increasingly clear that Keats had it right for judgements of truth. Today, there is little room to doubt the relation between aesthetics and perceptions of truth, a phenomenon perhaps best known in the phrase “the rhyme as reason effect” (Filkuková & Klempe, 2013). Since this effect is not confined to rhyme, “the Keats heuristic” (McGlone and Tofighbakhsh 1999) is a better descriptor, honouring the poet who formulated this very concise (and aesthetically appealing and seemingly accurate) encapsulation of the heuristic. Over the last two decades, empirical work has confirmed associations between aesthetics and credibility (Robins & Holmes,
2007; Tuch et al., 2012), perceptions of accuracy (McGlone & Tofighbakhsh, 1999; McGlone &
Tofighbakhsh, 2000), and a general sense of moral goodness (Dion et al., 1972). Why might objective judgments of morality and truth be biased by the seemingly irrelevant factor of aesthetics?
Past work has demonstrated that peoples’ judgments are biased by the degree to which a stimulus is processed fluently (e.g., quickly or with cognitive ease; Reber & Schwarz, 1999;
Rubin et al., 2010; Thompson et al., 2013). For example, manipulations of processing fluency have been shown to influence judgments of truth (Reber & Unkelbach, 2010; Unkelbach, 2007), familiarity (Arkes et al., 1989; Bacon, 1979; Begg et al., 1992; Dechêne et al., 2010), and aesthetic pleasure (Anglada-Tort et al., 2019; Babel & McGuire, 2015; Reber et al., 2004;
Winkielman et al., 2006), with fluently processed stimuli being judged as more accurate, CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 4 familiar, and beautiful. Similarly, stylistic devices (e.g., rhyme) have been shown to both increase peoples’ comprehension of a text as well as their perception of its accuracy (McGlone &
Tofighbakhsh, 1999). For example, McGlone and Tofighbakhsh (2000) compared participants’ accuracy ratings of unfamiliar rhyming aphorisms (e.g., “Woes unite foes”) with semantically equivalent non-rhyming1 phrases (e.g., “Woes unite enemies”), finding that rhyming aphorisms were perceived as more accurate compared to their semantically equivalent non-rhyming counterparts. Even when people are cautioned against being swayed by a statement’s poetic qualities, they still demonstrate a rhyme-as-reason effect, though the effect is attenuated in comparison to cases in which no such warning is given. They attribute this effect to a fluency heuristic, in which the enhanced processing fluency of rhyming statements is misattributed as evidence of truthfulness.
The McGlone and Tofighbakhsh results makes sense evolutionarily—at the just-so level in any case—since rhetorical figures emerged long before the invention of writing to epitomize and codify the associations among ideas. They leverage perceptual sensitivities to phenomena such as repetition, similarity, and position, to formulate expressions that are more linguistically conspicuous, more learnable, memorable, and therefore more culturally prevalent. These individual and cultural effects of figuration are most apparent in vast pre-literate epics, like The
Iliad, a heavily figured narrative poem which was a staple of the Archaic Greek bards. Coming down to us in a written record that would take nine hours to perform, The Iliad is a storehouse of history, religion, social relations, geography, political arrangements, oratory, even material physics (Paipetis 2008). The storage and propagation features of rhetorical figures may be most
1 It is worth noting, that many of their paired stimuli differed in the presence of another aesthetic device co- occurring in the rhyming statements (for instance, isocolon, or prosodic parallelism), but not in the non-rhyming versions.
CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 5 apparent in such epics, but they are also widely visible in the quotidian workings of language all around us, in the twenty-first century (e.g., proverbs, slogans, headlines). Figures make linguistic constructions more salient, more memorable, more appealing, and they also seem to incline us to find expressions to be truer.
While it is becoming increasingly clear that subtle linguistic changes can bias a wide array of judgments, including but not limited to judgments of truth (McGlone & Tofighbakhsh,
1999, 2000), morality (Fausey & Boroditsky, 2010; Walker et al., 2021), and aesthetics (Belke et al., 2010), the influence of many stylistic devices remains unexamined, particularly beyond the phonological level. An especially interesting example of a rhetorical figure is that of chiasmus, in which at least (and most often only) two linguistic constituents are repeated in reverse order in proximal clauses or phrases (Baldrick, 2008), following an A-B-B-A pattern. These constituents range from phonemes to syntactic structures (Ljungberg, 2020, p. 199) and even to narrative units (Douglas, 2007). John Keats’ famous expression, we note, is chiastic. Rhetoricians and literary scholars have made extravagant claims for the power and ubiquity of chiasmus, often associating it through embodied cognition with the bilateral symmetry of the human body, and frequently aligning with empirical studies that show people demonstrate a preference for symmetry (Humphrey, 1997; Rhodes et al., 1998; Little et al., 2011). The very name derives from the Greek letter chi, 훘, with the A- and B-constituents being said to “cross” in chiastic expressions, like an upright person with their legs and arms extended (see Pelkey, 2017). These are fascinating suggestions, but they are tied to the specifics of the form, raising two difficulties.
First, symmetry is a spatial phenomenon, so it relies on vision and proprioception for its perceptual effects. But language is temporal. Chiastic expressions happen in time, not in space, even when they are written out. So, the form-to-form mapping of symmetry to chiasmus is less CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 6 robust than these theorists seem to recognize (Harris, 2021b). But secondly, however distinctive the chiastic form is, it shares properties with other stylistic patterns (repetition, position), so it is more productive to search for a general answer rather than something unique to its patterning.
In short, we believe that at least part of the explanation for the cross-linguistic, cross- genre, and cross-register pervasiveness of chiastic patterning is connected with the Keats heuristic and processing fluency. But another aspect of the rhetoricians’ and literary critics’ approach is both rich and suggestive with respect to contemporary theories of linguistics, namely diagrammatic iconicity. Diagrammatic iconicity refers to when the structure of the form signals a structure of meaning (e.g., Van Langendonck, 2010). For instance, even though conjunctions do not covey order or rank, both 1 and 2 convey order.
1. Stop, drop, and roll.
2. Don't drink and drive.
No more than “shoes, boots, and sandals” does the syntax of 1 convey that first stopping, then dropping, then rolling is the prescribed order; however, we understand that particular sequencing implicitly because the temporal order of the words suggests a temporal for order of actions.
Similarly, 2 is logically indifferent to whether you drive home and have a drink when you arrive
(metonymically, a drink of alcohol), or you have a drink before you drive home, or even if you do both of them simultaneously. But the natural and automatic interpretation of the proscription is to not drink and then drive. In combination with lexicosemantic factors, chiasmus conveys iconicities of sequence or rank, subclassification (or “containment”) patterns, and reciprocality.
The most frequently curated and celebrated subtype of chiasmus—in fact, the one manifest in Keats’ famous expression— is known as antimetabole, in which the reverse- CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 7 repeating constituents are words. Antimetabole has been used extensively in both written and spoken forms, from literary classics (“All for one, one for all”) to presidential addresses (“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”) and is widely lauded for its aesthetic, communicative, and persuasive effects (e.g., Fahnestock, 1999; Nänny,
1987; Pelkey 2017). As such, we might reasonably expect statements utilizing antimetabole to conform with the findings of other pervasive stylistic patterns: to be processed more fluently and, as a result, be perceived as more accurate, compared to non-antimetabolic statements.
The Present Study
The present work extends research exploring the Keats heuristic by investigating the influence of a previously unexamined stylistic device (i.e., antimetabole) on peoples’ judgments of accuracy. We hypothesized that participants would judge statements following an antimetabolic pattern as more accurate than semantically equivalent non-antimetabolic statements. Furthermore, we predicted that the increased processing fluency associated with antimetabolic statements would explain why antimetabolic statements would be afforded an accuracy benefit. Study 1 begins to assess these hypotheses.
Study 1
Method
Participants
A sample of 200 participants was recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk).
The demographic characteristics of our samples for all studies can be viewed in the
Supplementary Materials. Participants received $2.00 for their completion of a 15-minute online study. Eligible participants were residents of the United States and maintained a MTurk HIT CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 8 approval rate of 95% or greater. We collected our full sample prior to data analyses and report all data exclusions, all manipulations, and all measures used.
Materials
Antimetabolic statements were collected from a variety of sources, including speeches, books, films, and a corpus of chiastic statements2. For every antimetabolic statement (e.g., “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice”) a non-antimetabolic statement was generated by replacing content words with synonyms that would break the A-B-B-A lexical repetition pattern (e.g., “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more critical to be kind”)3. All non- antimetabolic statements were kept within two syllables of the original statement to keep the duration stable and mitigate length effects and were generated with the goal of maintaining close semantic equivalence with the original statement. A pilot study was conducted to establish that
1) selected antimetabolic statements were unfamiliar to participants (median rating 2 out of 5) and 2) that statement pairs (antimetabolic and non-antimetabolic) were judged as sufficiently synonymous in meaning (median rating 4 out of 5). Thirty-six statement pairs were piloted, and 18 met the criteria to be included in Study 1. Examples of statement pairs can be viewed in
Table 1 and a full statement list can be found in the Supplementary Materials. All data and materials are made available on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/52fdh/).
2 The corpus is archived at https://cl.lingfil.uu.se/~marie/chiasme.htm, as cited in Dubremetz and Nivre, 2015. 3 By maintaining the reversals we are maintaining the chiastic structure, just not the antimetabolic structure. In particular, our non-antimetabolic statements realize a chiastic device known as antimetalepsis, where the sense or reference repeats without one-to-one lexical repetition, as in “Old King Cole was a merry old soul and a merry old soul was he,” where Old King Cole and he realize a referential repetition but not a lexical repetition, in reverse with the repetition of merry old soul. CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 9
Table 1. Examples of statement pairs
Original (antimetabolic) Modified (non-antimetabolic) The brain was made for innovation and The mind was made for innovation and innovation was made for the brain. invention was made for the brain.
It is not happy people who are thankful; it is It is not cheerful people who are thankful; it is thankful people who are happy. grateful people who are happy.
When you look into the abyss, the abyss also When you look into the void, the abyss also looks into you. stares into you. Note. For each antimetabolic statement, a non-antimetabolic version was created where content words were replaced with synonyms (e.g., “thankful” was replaced with “grateful”).
As our examples in Table 1 reveal, the semantically equivalent pairs are not semantically identical pairs. Innovation is not isomorphic with invention; looking and staring are not the same thing. Language has many redundancies, but perfect synonymy is rare. We simply endeavoured to keep the propositional content as stable as possible between the members of the pairs and assume that if there is something that seems truer to participants about the content of one member of the pair, independent of the form, it would come out in the wash, sometimes being the content of the antimetabolic expression, sometimes of the non-antimetabolic expression.
Design and Procedure
We used a within-subjects design in which participants were presented with thirty-six statements within two randomized blocks, with each block exclusively featuring either an antimetabolic or non-antimetabolic version of each pair. The order of presentation for each block
(antimetabolic vs. non-antimetabolic) was counterbalanced. Within each block, participants were instructed to judge how accurately each statement described human behaviour using a 9-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 9 (very much). Following all accuracy judgments, participants were asked a question assessing whether statements that use parallel language describe human CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 10 behavior more accurately than those that do not (yes/no). (Note that our stimuli are all syntactically parallel and mostly but not entirely prosodically parallel.) Lastly, participants concluded the study by answering a few demographic questions (age, sex, and ethnicity).
Data Preparation
Due to a technical error in the survey, for one statement pair two non-antimetabolic versions were presented, as opposed to one antimetabolic and one non-antimetabolic. Another pair which did not meet the inclusion criteria from pilot testing was mistakenly included in Study
1. Thus, we excluded these two pairs from the reported analyses. Note that the interpretation of all significance tests remains the same when maintaining all statements.
Results and Discussion
We fit a generalized mixed effects regression model using lme4 package in R (Bates et al., 2015) with Statement Type (dummy coded as 0 – Non-Antimetabolic and 1 – Antimetabolic) as a level 1 predictor and responses nested within participants. There was a significant effect of
Statement Type, B = 0.20, β = 0.09, SE = 0.05, t = 4.03, p < .001, Marginal R2 = .002. As predicted, antimetabolic statements were judged as more accurate (M = 6.28, SD = 2.21) compared to their non-antimetabolic semantic equivalents (M = 6.08, SD = 2.21). Thus, statements constructed to fit the reverse-repetitive structure of antimetabole were afforded an accuracy benefit. Descriptive statistics for all studies are reported in Table 2. To see whether participants explicitly agreed that antimetabolic statements are more accurate, we also examined the frequency with which participants endorsed the claim that statements featuring parallel language more accurately described human behavior, finding that 65% of participants endorsed this statement. CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 11
Table 2. Descriptive statistics Study 1 Study 2 Study 3 Study 4 Accuracy judgment Antimetabolic mean (SD) 6.28 (2.21) 5.04 (1.66) 4.76 (1.65) 4.85 (1.83) Non-antimetabolic mean (SD) 6.08 (2.21) 5.00 (1.63) 4.69 (1.65) 4.71 (1.82) Response time (log10) Antimetabolic mean (SD) – – – 0.75 (0.29) Non-antimetabolic mean (SD) – – – 0.80 (0.28) Note. Descriptive statistics for all measures presented in Studies 1-4. Accuracy judgments were elicited on a 9-point scale in Study 1 and a 7-point scale for Studies 2-4. SD: standard deviation.
Study 2
Study 1 demonstrated that statements utilizing the antimetabolic A-B-B-A structure are perceived as more accurate compared to a set of semantically equivalent non-antimetabolic statements. As this is the first work (to our knowledge) investigating the accuracy benefit afforded to antimetabolic statements (or chiastic statements of any kind), we sought to replicate this finding in a second study while using a greater number of antimetabolic and non- antimetabolic statements.
Method
Participants
A sample of 206 participants was recruited from MTurk to complete a 20-minute online study using the same recruitment criteria as Study 1. Participants were compensated $2.00 upon completion of the survey. Those who participated in Study 1 were restricted from participating in
Study 2.
CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 12
Materials
Study 2 used the same statement generation procedure as Study 1. Seventy-two statement pairs (antimetabolic and non-antimetabolic) were pilot tested in order to ensure that a) antimetabolic statements were unfamiliar to participants (median rating 2 out of 5), and b) that statement pairs were judged as sufficiently synonymous in meaning (median rating 4 out of 5).
Thirty-five statement pairs met these criteria and were included in Study 2. A full list of all statements presented in Study 2 can be viewed in the Supplementary Materials.
Design and Procedure
Similar to Study 1, we used a within-subjects design in which participants were presented with seventy statements across two randomized blocks, with each block exclusively featuring either antimetabolic or non-antimetabolic statements. The order of presentation for each block was once again counterbalanced. Participants’ task was to judge the accuracy of each presented statement on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (very inaccurate) to 7 (very accurate). They concluded the study by providing a “Yes” or “No” response to a question assessing whether statements that use poetic language are more accurate than those that do not4.
Data Preparation
In order to ensure that all participants attended to study materials, we included two attention check items (one in each block) instructing participants to select a specific response on a 7-point scale. We excluded participants (n = 10) who failed to respond correctly to one or both attention check items. Note that the interpretation of all significance tests remains the same when analyzing our full sample.
4 We modified the wording from “parallel language” to the more general “poetic language” to signal general stylistic properties. We felt that “parallel language” may have been misleadingly precise or technical, since participants may have regarded our stimuli as non-parallel because of the change in lexical sequence. CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 13
Results and Discussion
As in Study 1 we fit a generalized mixed effects regression model with Statement Type
(dummy coded as 0 – Non-Antimetabolic and 1 – Antimetabolic) as a level 1 predictor and responses nested within participants. The effect of Statement Type was not significant, B = .04, β
= .02, SE =.03, t = 1.54, p = .122, Marginal R2 = .0001. Antimetabolic statements were judged as similarly accurate (M = 5.04, SD = 1.66) to their non-antimetabolic semantic equivalents (M =
5.00, SD = 1.63). Lastly, we examined the frequency with which participants endorsed the claim that statements featuring poetic language are more accurate compared to those that do not, finding that 34% of participants endorsed this statement.
Study 3
Across Studies 1 and 2 we find mixed evidence concerning the degree to which antimetabolic statements are judged as more accurate compared to semantically equivalent non- antimetabolic statements. Examination of the effect sizes reveals that the accuracy benefit is small, perhaps not surprising given the subtle differences distinguishing paired antimetabolic and non-antimetabolic statements. In Study 3, we increased the incongruity between antimetabolic and non-antimetabolic statements, maintaining similarities in meaning while further disrupting the reverse-repetitive structure of antimetabolic statements in creating their non-antimetabolic pair.
Method
Participants
A sample of 205 participants was recruited from MTurk using the same recruitment criteria as Studies 1 and 2. Participants were administered a 20-minute online study and were CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 14 compensated $2.00 upon its completion. Those who participated in Studies 1 and 2 were restricted from participating in Study 3.
Materials
In Study 3 we modified antimetabolic statements in a way that further disrupted their reverse-repetitive structure. Stylistic devices (that is, rhetorical figures) often work together in mutually reinforcing ways to make expressions more appealing, and our antimetabolic statements are no exception. When we only replace repeating words in non-antimetabolic statements, these other features remain. Thus, instead of replacing content words with synonyms to break the antimetabolic structure (Studies 1 and 2), we now modified either the entire first or second half of each antimetabolic statement. For example, the expression “It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it,” has many other aesthetic features than the reverse-repetition of antimetabole5. We paired it with the expression
“It is better to discuss something even if you don’t reach a conclusion than to settle a question without debating it,” which reduces stylistic features significantly.6 As in Studies 1 and 2, we pilot tested statement pairs to ensure that they were judged as sufficiently unfamiliar (median rating 2 out of 5), and synonymous in meaning (median rating 4 out of 5). Sixty-nine statement pairs were pilot tested for Study 3 and 30 met the criteria for inclusion. Examples of
5 The expression is full of constituent repetitions and structural repetitions (that is, “parallelisms”). In terms of the figurative labels that rhetoricians give these features, this example manifests homoioptoton (a repetition of affixes: “settling … debating”), mesodiplosis (lexical repetition between phrases or clauses: “without”), epiphora (clause- final lexical repetition, “it”), parison (the repetition of syntactic structure, both infinitival clauses having the exact same sequential and hierarchical arrangement of constituents: [to-Verb + [Determiner + Noun + [Preposition + [Verb + Pronoun]VP]PP]NP]VP), and isocolon (the repetition of prosodic structure, both infinitival clauses having the exact same intonation contours). 6 The non-antimetabolic statement includes some minor parallelism, in the verb structure and the object Noun Phrases, as well the semantic repetition of negation and even an inadvertent rhyme (something, debating). The interpenetration of grammar and rhetoric as well as basic constraints of language make total elimination of these features vanishingly rare. CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 15 statements used in Study 3 can be viewed in Table 3 and a full list of all statements can be viewed in the Supplementary Materials.
Table 3. Examples of statement pairs
Original (antimetabolic) Modified (non-antimetabolic) Greater self-esteem produces greater success, Greater self-esteem produces greater success, and greater success produces higher self- and every accomplishment makes you feel esteem. better about yourself.
Little things make perfection, but perfection is Small details make flawless results, but no little thing. perfection is no little thing.
Authority doesn’t pervert people, people Power doesn’t corrupt us, people pervert pervert authority. authority. Note. For each antimetabolic statement, a non-antimetabolic version was created where one half of the statement was modified (e.g., “little things make perfection” was modified to “small details make flawless results”).
Design and Procedure
The design and procedure of Study 3 was identical to that of Study 2.
Data Preparation
As in Study 2, we excluded participants (n = 5) who failed to respond correctly to one or both attention check items. Due to a technical error in the survey, for one statement pair the incorrect antimetabolic version was presented. Additionally, two statement pairs which did not meet the inclusion criteria were mistakenly admitted into the final study. Thus, we excluded these three pairs from the reported analyses. The interpretation of all significance tests remains the same when analyzing our full sample and maintaining all statements.
Results and Discussion
As in Studies 1 and 2, we fit a generalized mixed effects regression model with Statement
Type (dummy coded as 0 – Non-Antimetabolic and 1 – Antimetabolic) as a level 1 predictor and responses nested within participants. There was as significant effect of Statement Type, B = 0.07, CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 16
β = 0.04, SE = 0.03, t = 2.65, p = .008, Marginal R2 = .0005. Consistent with Study 1, antimetabolic statements were judged as more accurate (M = 4.76, SD = 1.65) compared to their non-antimetabolic semantic equivalents (M = 4.69, SD = 1.65). Thus, we again observed a small, yet reliable, accuracy benefit afforded to antimetabolic statements. Lastly, we examined the proportion of participants endorsing the claim that statements featuring poetic language are more accurate compared to those that do not, finding that 33% of participants endorsed this statement.
Study 4
While Studies 1 and 3 identified a significant accuracy benefit for antimetabolic statements, Study 4 sought to explain this phenomenon. Past work investigating the accuracy benefit attributed to rhyming statements has explained this effect with reference to a fluency heuristic (McGlone & Tofighbakhsh, 2000). That is, the fluent processing associated with rhyming statements is hypothesized to enhance their perceived truth value. A similar mechanism may explain the accuracy benefit afforded to antimetabolic statements. That is, due to their reverse-repetitive structure, antimetabolic statements may be processed more fluently compared to their non-antimetabolic counterparts. In Study 4 we measured participants’ response times to both antimetabolic and non-antimetabolic statements as a proxy for processing fluency (Reber et al., 2004; Unkelbach, 2004). Based on a fluency account, we predict that antimetabolic statements will be evaluated more quickly than non-antimetabolic statements, and that response times will relate negatively to accuracy judgments (i.e., fast responses will be associated with higher accuracy judgments). Due to our focus on measuring response times, we conducted Study
4 in a laboratory setting as opposed to online.
CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 17
Method
Participants
A sample of 186 undergraduate students were recruited from the University of Waterloo psychological research participant pool to take part in a 20-minute study in exchange for course credit.
Materials
Study 4 used statements from Studies 1 and 2 (37 statement pairs; see Supplementary
Materials for a full statement list).
Design and Procedure
Study 4 featured a similar design and procedure to that of Studies 1 to 3. Participants were once again presented with two blocks, with each block exclusively featuring either 37 antimetabolic or non-antimetabolic statements. For each statement, participants were instructed to provide an accuracy judgment on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 7 (extremely).
Ratings were provided on a keyboard, and response times were calculated for each statement by measuring the amount of time from the presentation of a statement to when a participant responded to it with a number key click. Following this task, participants were presented with statement pairs consisting of an antimetabolic statement and its modified non-antimetabolic counterpart, and were asked to indicate which statement they found more aesthetically pleasing on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (preference for Statement A) to 7 (preference for Statement B).
The positioning of antimetabolic and non-antimetabolic statements within this question was counterbalanced. Lastly, as in previous studies, participants concluded the study by responding to a question assessing their belief regarding whether statements that use poetic language are more accurate than those that do not. CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 18
Results and Discussion
As in Studies 1 to 3, we fit a generalized mixed effects regression model with Statement
Type (dummy coded as 0 – Non-Antimetabolic and 1 – Antimetabolic) as a level 1 predictor and responses nested within participants. There was a significant effect of Statement Type, B = 0.14,
β = 0.07, SE = 0.03, t = 4.72, p < .001, Marginal R2 = .001. Consistent with Studies 1 and 3, antimetabolic statements were judged as more accurate (M = 4.85, SD = 1.83) than non- antimetabolic statements (M = 4.71, SD = 1.82). Furthermore, we examined participants’ accuracy judgment response times for both antimetabolic and non-antimetabolic statements. To better approximate a normal distribution, all response times were log10 transformed. A generalized mixed effects regression model comparing participants’ response times for antimetabolic (M = 0.75, SD = 0.29) and non-antimetabolic statements (M = 0.80, SD = 0.28) with observations nested in participants revealed that antimetabolic statements elicited faster accuracy judgments, B = 0.05, β = 0.16, SE = 0.004, t = 11.20, p < .001, Marginal R2 = .01. We also tested for an association between accuracy judgments and response times using a generalized mixed effects regression model with accuracy as a level 1 predictor and observations nested in participants. The relationship was negative, B = -0.01, β = 0.09, SE = 0.001, t = 10.71, p < .001, Marginal R2 = .01, suggesting that the increased speed with which antimetabolic statements were judged explained some of the accuracy benefit they were afforded.
In addition, we tested for the indirect effect of statement type on statement accuracy through response time (a proxy for fluency). Following the classical Baron and Kenny (1986) approach we first fit three multilevel models (MLMs): first, statement type predicting accuracy; second, statement type predicting fluency; third, fluency predicting accuracy. In all three models, observations were nested within participants. Statement type was dummy coded (dummy coded CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 19 as 0 – Non-Antimetabolic and 1 – Antimetabolic) and fluency was group mean centered. As
Figure 1 shows, the total effect was significant. Similarly, the relation between statement type and fluency (path a), fluency and statement accuracy (while controlling for statement type; path b) were statistically significant. Finally, when controlling for the effect of the mediator, the main effect of statement type was still significant, however, it decreased in magnitude (path c). We then tested whether the overall indirect effect was statistically significant using bootstrapping (as recommended by Hayes, 2017). Specifically, we relied on the indirect MLM function (Page-
Gould, 2016) designed for multi-level data and the boot package in R. Unstandardized indirect effects were computed for each of 1,000 bootstrapped samples, and the 95% confidence interval
(CI) was calculated by determining indirect effects for the 2.5th and 97.5th percentiles. The indirect effect was .028 [.021, .036]. Fluency explained 20.59% of the variance in statement accuracy. This suggests that the indirect effect is statistically significant (as the confidence interval does not include zero and the proportion of variance mediated is substantial).
CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 20
Figure 1. Unstandardized fixed effect coefficients and 95% CIs showing the relationship between statement type and accuracy as mediated by fluency. Path ‘a’ represents the fixed effect coefficient of statement type predicting fluency. Path ‘b’ represents the fixed effect coefficient of fluency predicting accuracy while also controlling for statement type. Path ‘c’ represents the fixed effect coefficient of statement type predicting accuracy while controlling for fluency. Total effect is the overall main effect of statement type on accuracy (excluding response time). *p < .001.
We also examined participants’ aesthetic preference for antimetabolic versus non- antimetabolic statements. As expected, a one sample t-test comparing judgments of aesthetic preference to the midpoint value (4; indicating no preference for either statement) revealed a preference for antimetabolic statements (M = 2.68, SD = 0.98), t(185) = 18.47, p < .001. Lastly, we examined the frequency with which participants endorsed the claim that statements featuring poetic language are more accurate compared to those that do not, finding that 40% of participants endorsed this statement.
Meta-Analysis
We found a significant effect of statement type on accuracy ratings for three out of the four studies. However, for one of them (Study 2), we failed to reject the null, leading to a mixed CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 21 set of results. Given three of the four studies yielded a significant result and only one did not, a likely explanation is that Study 2 produced a false negative. To explore this possibility further, we calculated total power: the probability that a given set of studies produces only statistically significant results (Schimmack, 2012). It is computed by multiplying either a-priori or post-hoc power estimates for each study together. Using simr package in R, the observed power7 for
Studies 1 to 4 was: 99%, 34%, 83% and 99% respectively. The total power in this case is only
28%. In other words, with repeated random sampling we would only expect all studies to generate significant findings less than a third of the time.
In general however, Null Hypothesis Testing (NHST) can lead to inaccurate conclusions when results of studies are contradictory (Coulson et al., 2010). This can be avoided by adopting estimation thinking: a shift of focus from p-values to effect sizes, confidence intervals (CIs) and meta-analytic thinking (Cumming, 2013). In line with this approach, we plotted standardized
MLM fixed effects coefficients for the four studies along with 95% CIs and computed a summary effect size via the metaviz package in R using the fixed effects model (see Figure 2). As can be seen from Figure 2, although the confidence interval for Study 2 does overlap with zero, the effect is in the predicted direction with most of the estimates falling above zero. Overall, the summary effect size across the four studies and the corresponding CIs around it indicates a small but theoretically and practically useful effect, β = 0.05 [0.03, 0.07]. A meta-analytic review of the processing fluency account of a repetition-induced truth effect reveals a medium effect size, while our findings demonstrate a small effect (see Dechêne et al., 2010).
7 Given we did not conduct an a-priori power analysis and instead collected as many participants as possible, post- hoc power was the only alternative. CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 22
Figure 2. Thick forest plot showing standardized MLM coefficients for each study in red. Whiskers indicate 95% CI. The width of the whiskers emphasizes its relative influence on the summary effect calculations. The summary effect was computed using a fixed effects approach. General Discussion
While associations of beauty and truth in science and philosophy go well back into history, they have often pointedly excluded the aesthetics of language, especially from the Early
Modern period forward. The Royal Society of London, for instance, was praised for ushering in a
“close, naked, natural way of speaking” (Sprat, 1667, p. 113) that rejected “specious Tropes and
Figures” (p. 112). Truth-is-beautiful arguments have been framed almost exclusively in mathematical and logical terms, using words like “elegance” and “simplicity” to describe the aesthetics of theoretical formulations. Among contemporary scientists, James Watson's account of the moment he realized DNA had a double-helical form is perhaps the most revealing. “[T]he structure was too pretty not to be true,” he recalled (1968/2012, p. 222). Notably, the double helix has a quasi-chiastic form (i.e., it has the reverse-repetition spatial symmetry many theorists associate with chiasmus).
The results of the present work support the intuitions of these philosophers and scientists, now clearly with respect to natural language. Specifically, in 3 of 4 studies, antimetabolic CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 23 statements evoked stronger feelings of accuracy than non-antimetabolic paraphrases.
Interestingly, despite the majority of participants indicating that statements featuring poetic language are no more accurate than statements that do not, they demonstrated behavior which suggests otherwise. This incongruity could be indicative of a bias blind spot (Pronin et al., 2002), whereby participants did not realize that their assessments of accuracy were influenced by the structure of statements, or perhaps the general suspicion of “flowery” language that has given rhetoric the bad reputation it holds widely with respect to notions of clarity, directness, and
“plain speaking.”
Antimetabole, Beauty, and Fluency
A potential mechanism underlying the accuracy benefit afforded to antimetabolic statements is that of processing fluency, whereby the ease of processing associated with antimetabolic statements facilitates elevated judgments of truth. We explored this mechanism by conducting a mediation analysis. It must be acknowledged that no statistical test in and of itself, is sufficient for establishing mediation. Our proposed mechanism was theoretically derived and hypothesized a-priori. This lowers the possibility that the finding is spurious. In addition, the variables in our study follow a temporal chain, necessary (but not sufficient) for mediation.
However, a note of caution must be made here. First, the relationship between the mediator
(fluency) and dependent variable (accuracy) is correlational. As such, no causal claims can be made about the nature of their relationship, and the order in which they unfold. This opens the possibility that accuracy is the true mediator and fluency the dependent measure. For example, we propose the amount of time spent deliberating how accurate a statement is (processing fluency – mediator) precedes the actual clicking of a numerical key (accuracy judgement – dependent variable). Nonetheless, while we would not grant it high likelihood, this situation does CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 24 not fully preclude the possibility that the choice was made first in a person’s mind, which in turn affected how much time it took them to make the selection. Measurement of variables in a certain sequential order does not imply that the processes initiating those variables unfold in that order (Tate, 2015).
Consistent with a fluency account of the present findings is a collection of studies observing an association between processing fluency and assessments of truth (Arkes et al.,
1989; Bacon, 1979; Begg et al., 1992; Dechêne et al., 2010, Kintsch 2012), whereby an enhancement of truth ratings coincides with an increase in fluency. To this end, we find that the ease of processing associated with antimetabolic statements partially explained the accuracy benefit that they were afforded. Processing fluency not only enhances convictions of truth, but also liking and appreciation of stimuli (Schwarz, 2018). This is supported across a multitude of studies which demonstrate a positive association between processing fluency and liking, such that, the more easily stimuli is processed, the more it is liked (see Reber et al., 1998 & Schwarz,
2018 for reviews; Reber et al., 2004). This effect extends beyond self-report measures of subjective experiences, and is observed via facial electromyography as well, demonstrating that easily processed stimuli increase activity in the zygomaticus major (i.e., the muscle associated with smiling). This suggests that even psychophysiologically, fluent processing facilitates positive affective responses (Winkielman & Cacioppo, 2001). Seemingly, as Reber et al (2004) and Schwarz (2018) note, beauty is not so much in the eye of the beholder, but rather, the processing experience of the perceiver.
Importantly, this link between beauty and truth, discussed extensively among psycholinguists, philosophers, and scientists, is not a mere coincidence. Their association lies in the fact that fluency is a heuristic input into both perceptions of beauty and of truth, such that, the CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 25 easier something is processed, the more beautiful and truer it seems (Schwarz, 2018). Relatedly, in the present work we find evidence of antimetabolic statements being judged as both more true and more beautiful (i.e., aesthetically pleasing, Study 4) compared to semantically equivalent non-antimetabolic statements. Thus, it may be the case the ease of processing associated with antimetabolic statements enhances both their perceived accuracy and aesthetic appeal.
Of note is that Studies 1 to 4 all featured a within-subjects design using a heterogenous set of stimuli that contrasted easily processed antimetabolic statements with less fluent non- antimetabolic statements. According to Schwarz (2018), people are more sensitive to changes in fluency compared to stable states, and these changes are more informative than steady signals.
This is highlighted in work demonstrating that salient discrepancies in fluency enhance judgements of truth for fluent stimuli (Dechêne et al., 2009; Hansen, et al., 2008). Because homogenous stimuli are also more homogenous with regards to fluency, experienced fluency is less likely to be used as a diagnostic cue in these cases (Dechêne et al., 2009).8 However, with a heterogenous stimuli list, whereby participants’ experienced fluency may deviate reliably between two or more types of stimuli (e.g., antimetabolic and non-antimetabolic statements), the fluency signal may become more salient and informative, and thereby influence judgements.
Rhetorical Figures, Antimetabole and Cognitive Linguistics
Over the last two decades, linguistics has turned increasingly cognitive, in the sense of incorporating independently supported and generalizable principles of cognitive psychology, rather than an encapsulated and autonomous grammatical modularity, arising most directly from
8 In a separate line of work (reported here: https://osf.io/arx6k/), we examined the memorability of antimetabolic statements, which also included accuracy judgments at encoding in a between-subjects design (as opposed to within- subjects like the current set of studies). This study failed to find an effect of statement type on accuracy. However, this null effect is likely due to fluency discrepancies not being salient in between-subject designs, as the contrast with less fluent stimuli may be needed for fluency to serve as an informative signal (Schwarz, 2018). CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 26 the work of Noam Chomsky that dominated the first forty years of linguistics in the ongoing cognitive revolution. In Jeanne Fahnestock's phrasing, there is “an area of overlapping concern for both rhetoricians and cognitive scientists, and that area is language” (2005, p. 160). A few scholars, however—notably including Fahnestock, a rhetorician, but also cognitive scientists
Mark Turner (1998, 2011) and Todd Oakely (2009, 2020)—have argued that this turn has not been wide enough. Responding to the arhetorical programme of Chomskyan modularity still prominent at the time, Fahnestock observes that a
rhetorical view of language … is likely to be a better resource for cognitive scientists. At
the same time, cognitivists, and especially the neuroscientists, would be right to insist
that elements of rhetorical stylistics correspond to what they already know with some
confidence about how language is processed in the brain. Their discoveries will either
reinforce or rebut the insights into language that are provided in rhetorical doctrine
(2005, p. 166-167)
Turner (1998), Fahnestock (2005), Oakley (2009, 2020), and Harris (2021a), among others, argue for a wider inclusion of rhetorical figures than the few tropes Cognitive Linguists incorporate, especially the category of figures known as schemes (more colloquially, “figures of speech”), like rhyme, alliteration, isocolon, and the one this study investigates, antimetabole.
Schemes are formal figures (tropes, like metaphor and metonymy, are conceptual figures): salient patterns of sounds, morphemes, words, and phrases. While they operate on a different linguistic plane, rhetorical schemes are equally fundamental to natural language use as tropes.
To the extent they have any reputation at all in such quarters, however, rhetorical schemes are treated in linguistics, psychology, and other cognitive sciences, as “merely” aesthetic flourishes, decorative little doodads found only in speciality discourses like poetry and CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 27 oratory. But this ignores their ubiquity in everyday language (Hall 2001), the distinctive communicative functions many figures serve (Fahnestock 1999), and the close similarities the tradition of rhetorical figures has with the mandate of Construction Grammar (Turner 1998,
Harris 2021a); namely, the pairing of form and meaning (e.g. Hoffmann & Trousdale 2013).
One rhetorical scheme that has been studied by cognitive psychologists is rhyme (e.g.,
Bebout & Belke, 2017; Bryant et al, 1990; Knoop et al., 2019; Narayan et al., 2017; Quinto et al.,
2020; Rapp & Samuel, 2002; Rubin, 1993, 1995), the salient repetition of word-final syllables best known for its appearance in genres such as nursery rhymes, neoclassical poetry, and pop music lyrics. Overwhelmingly, they have found significant memory and learning effects for rhyme; McGlone and Tofighbakhsh (1999, 2000) add to these findings that rhyme bolsters impressions of credibility and accuracy. Moreover, rhyme is pervasive in ordinary language
(Benczes 2019) from childhood terminology like itsy-bitsy and teeny-weeny to the organizational principles of scientific nomenclatures, such as identifying alcohol compounds (ethanol, butanol
…) or enzymes (diastase, lactase …). The use of rhyme in caregiver and infant speech and in scientific nomenclature may have the same motivations, memorability and conceptual association through phonological similarity. Benczes (2019) also stresses the importance of
“playful” and aesthetic aspects of language more generally for processes of word formation (p.
175), language acquisition (p. 42), phatic communion (p. 176), and, notably, establishing credibility (p. 179-180). She emphasizes the unfortunate neglect of these aspects in linguistics, particularly noting their absence in usage-based theories (p. 177).
But rhyme is only the prominent phonological tip of the stylistic repertoire of languages.
The focus of our study, antimetabole, reverse lexical repetition, takes the study of the features and effects of fluency-sponsored aesthetics in language beyond phonology. Antimetabole is CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 28 significant in pre-literate genres (Welch 1981, Douglas 2007) and in proverbs (e.g., A place for everything and everything in its place), two genres which implicate both memory and knowledge. It is also well represented in classic philosophical, poetic, marketing, and political maxims and even anchors the aesthetics aphorism that gives the Keats heuristic its name. In scholarship, it has received considerable attention in a variety of fields, including literary studies, semiotics, argumentation theory, and cultural anthropology.
Like rhyme, antimetabole leverages the semiotics of iconicity to achieve specific communicative functions (Harris 2021b, Ljungberg, 2020, Nänny, 1986, 1987). Rhyme manifests endophoric iconicity (Nöth 1999), in which two or more forms “mirror” each other.
Endophoric iconicity may contribute to the Keats-heuristic credibility effect that McGlone and
Tofighbakhsh (1999, 2000) demonstrated. Hearers may feel more strongly that the concepts “go together” if the forms do. Antimetabole manifests diagrammatic iconicity (Harris 2021b), in which the arrangement of formal constituents reflects relationships among the concepts those constituents evoke. The A-B-B-A pattern, in particular, reflects relationships of sequence, hierarchical containment, and reciprocality (Fahnestock 1999, p.122-155 ; Harris 2021b). These communicative functions include the irrelevance of sequence or rank, most obvious in standard expressions of the algebraic and logical principle of commutation (1); subclassification
(“containment”) patterns, as in the relation between compounds and molecules in chemistry (2); and reciprocality, as in Newton's expression of the third law of motion (3):
1. a. x + y = y + x ; xy = yx
b. p ∧ q q ∧ p; p ∨ q q ∨ p CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 29
2. All compounds are molecules (since compounds consist of two or more atoms), but
not all molecules are compounds (since some molecules contain only atoms of the
same element). [Volpe 1975]
3. If a horse draws a stone tied to a rope, the horse (if I may so say) will be equally drawn
back towards the stone: for the distended rope, by the same endeavour to relax or
unbend itself, will draw the horse as much towards the stone as it does the stone
towards the horse. (Newton, 1803 [1687]; the original Latin is antimetabolic as well)
These are not coincidental associations of form and meaning but iconically encoded meaning relationships that leverage repetition and relative position in combination with linguistic features such as conjunction, negation, and equational verbs such that the form “diagrammatizes” the meaning in clear ways.
It is important to realize that iconicity is not a minor property of a few scattered pieces of language, but a general and pervasive property with clear roles in language processing and perhaps language acquisition (Perniss et al., 2010). To take only the simplest example of our chiastic iconicities, the irrelevance of order or rank, languages (formal and natural) have many ways to avoid an antimetabolic expressions when encoding the meaning that sequence or rank should be discounted (e.g. for multiplication, it does not matter if x comes before y or if x comes after y, the result will be the same), but the most natural and immediate (and mnemonic) expression is just to put the two different orders side by side with an equal sign between them
(i.e., xy = yx).
Other rhetorical schemes work in similar ways, and these formal affinities for certain meanings may also contribute to the sense of “rightness” that many rhetorically encoded expressions have, in concert with the enhanced processing fluency afforded to at least some CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 30 rhetorical figures (i.e., rhyme and antimetabole). While diagrammatic iconicity has not been investigated empirically, there is clear evidence that language users “are sensitive to iconic form- meaning mappings” at the phonological level (Perniss et al., 2010). Our research supports a convergence of factors (iconicity, processing fluency), perhaps mutually reinforcing, with affective and epistemological effects (impressions of aesthetic appeal and accuracy), which the
Keats heuristic frames as mutually reinforcing.
Conclusion
A legendary example of antimetabole is in John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, where he famously said, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” (Kennedy [& Sorensen] 1961). Although he repeated this sentiment many times— roughly, that Americans should reject an ethos of entitlement and embrace an ethos of duty—this is the one that is best remembered, most widely reproduced, and has come to emblematize his brief presidency. Kennedy's aphorism is not alone in its popularity, chiastic forms populate our proverbs, jokes, music, literature, poetry, oratory, advertisements, religious texts—every genre and register one might name, going back as far as language has been recorded (e.g., Pelkey 2017,
Grothe, 2002). It is not only the A-B-B-A pattern that propagates these various expressions. The particular words and their context are critically important. Kennedy's aphorism epitomizes a perceived political turning point. Expressions like “A place for everything and everything in its place” epitomize moral or social viewpoints (i.e., the importance of order). Lyrics like Snoop
Dogg's (1993) “My mind on my money and my money on my mind” epitomize personal attitudes.
And so on. Nevertheless, there is little doubt that, as our findings support, the chiastic pattern is an important contributor to their ubiquity, that the Keats heuristic is affiliated with the perceived CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 31 accuracy or truthfulness of many such expressions, and that processing fluency is implicated in this heuristic.
Acknowledgements
We thank Danielle Bisnar Griffin for her assistance with creating the non-antimetabolic statements in Study 3, and Ghazal Al-Ghannam for her assistance with the data collection of
Study 4. This research was supported by grants from The Natural Sciences and Engineering
Research Council of Canada and the Network of Aging Catalyst Grant.
CHIASMUS AND THE KEATS HEURISTIC 32
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