Can Italians Understand Spanish? Language Closeness Exacerbates The Illusion Of Understanding
Year: 2025
Type: preprint
Abstract: This research examines whether linguistic proximity worsens calibration in communication and exacerbates an illusion of understanding. Across two preregistered experiments, native Italian and Mandarin Chinese speakers listened to pragmatically ambiguous sentences in either a linguistically close or distant language and selected the speaker’s intended meaning. Although listeners were sometimes more accurate with the close language, they exhibited greater overestimation - defined as the gap between perceived and actual accuracy - when listening to a proximal language. This reduced calibration was mediated by increased confidence: linguistic overlap heightened subjective certainty, which in turn amplified overestimation. A pre-registered baseline study with Spanish native speakers further showed substantial overconfidence even among native listeners. Together, the findings demonstrate that language closeness induces overconfidence in understanding, increasing the illusion of understanding not despite linguistic similarity, but because of it.
Authors: Ren, Ziyu, Grant, Leigh Hamilton, Keysar, Boaz
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7086602155