‘‘I am not guilty’’ vs ‘‘I am innocent’’: Successful negation may depend on the schema used for its encoding q Ruth Mayo, a, * Yaacov Schul, a and Eugene Burnstein b a Department of Psychology, Hebrew University, Mount Scopus 91905, Jerusalem, Israel b University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA Received 30 March 2002; revised 16 July 2003 Available online 28 October 2003 Abstract Negations (e.g., ‘‘Jim is not guilty’’) are part of our daily language and communication. Linguistic and non-linguistic negations can occur when receivers counter-argue what communicators are saying, when hypotheses are disconfirmed, or through negative cognitive responses and many other social interactive processes. Our study explores how negations are encoded by considering the predictions of two theoretical models. According to the fusion model, the core of a negated message and the negation marker are integrated into one meaningful unit. Thus, Jim in the example might be encoded within the schema ‘‘innocence.’’ According to the schema-plus-tag model, a negated message is represented as a core supposition and a negation tag, allowing for dissociation of the two at a later point in time. We compare the two models by examining the nature of inferences that are facilitated by negations. Our results show that the existence of a schema that accommodates the meaning of the original negation is critical in determining how a negation will be encoded. When such a schema is not readily available, processing a negated message facilitates negation–incon- gruent associations, in line with predictions of the schema-plus-tag model. This model is also supported by analyses of respondentsÕ memory. We discuss implications of these findings for the communication of negated information, for discounting theories, and for the assessment of the truth of incoming information. Ó 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Introduction ‘‘John is simply not a romantic person,’’ Mary mut- tered. Before you continue, please try to think of at least two examples of JohnÕs behaviors that may have led Mary to this conclusion. Were your examples similar to ‘‘He forgets her birthday/wedding anniversary,’’ ‘‘He never brings her flowers,’’ ‘‘He does not express his love in poetry/love letters/surprises/gifts’’? All of these be- haviors are actually negated romantic behaviors. In other words, stating that John is not romantic can make one think of romantic behaviors and then negate them. Is this a general effect? What are the boundary condi- tions? What are its implications? There is no doubt that negation is part of our daily language and communication. It also comes as no sur- prise that readers have no difficulty understanding the previous sentence, which contains a negation, as well as this one (which contains two negations). In spite of the greater complexity attributed to the comprehension of negations (Carpenter & Just, 1975; Clark & Chase, 1972; Wason, 1963), people usually succeed in understanding the intended meaning of negations. Yet, we believe that a message which is phrased as a negation can under certain conditions activate associations that are incon- gruent with the message meaning, and might thus in- troduce communication errors that may actually lead to inferences opposite to the messageÕs intended meaning. This paper explores whether and how this can happen. The presence and function of negation in social in- teractions have puzzled philosophers, linguists, and psychologists throughout the centuries (Jordan, 1998). q The research reported here was supported by grants from the US–Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF) and the Israeli Foundation Trustees. We would like to thank Liran Rasinski, Yasmin Folder, and Orly Carmi for their help in conducting the experiments and Rachel Giora for comments on an earlier version of this paper. * Corresponding author. E-mail address: msmayo@mscc.huji.ac.il (R. Mayo). 0022-1031/$ - see front matter Ó 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2003.07.008 Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 40 (2004) 433–449 www.elsevier.com/locate/jesp Journal of Experimental Social Psychology