The Hidden Meaning Behind Headlines

It’s not just about the opinions that are being expressed. It’s about the words being used to convey those opinions.

By Alikay Wood

A few weeks ago, I was casually avoiding human interaction by surfing the internet. As usual, there was a controversy and, also as usual, I couldn’t stay away. Here were some of the headlines:

“Georgia Lawmakers Pass Anti-Gay ‘Religious Liberty’ Bill” Huffington Post

“Bigotry is bad for business: Georgia’s anti-LGBT ‘religious freedom’ bill met its match in Hollywood’s bottom line” Salon

“Hollywood heavyweights threaten Georgia boycott over religious liberty bill” Fox News

Things that are clear from what is written above: There is a bill in Georgia that people have thoughts about. Things that are unclear: the contents of the bill — because everyone has a different perception of what the terms in these headlines mean (i.e., anti-gay, religious liberty, etc.).

The Freedom Exercise Protection Act was vetoed by Georgia’s governor after it was passed by state lawmakers on March 16. Legislators in favor of the bill said it would protect faith-based groups from providing services that violate their beliefs. Critics said it would cause anti-gay discrimination. The debate has stayed in the news because of similar laws in states like North Carolina and Mississippi.

When I read that there was a “religious liberty” bill on Georgia’s docket, my understanding of the headline was less about the bill and more about my own thoughts regarding “religion” and “liberty.” Headline writers rely on the assumption that the reader has the same definitions of words as those used by editors at the publication. This assumption — that by naming something we can then communicate about it — is the fundamental principle of language. But do we believe in the ideas behind words or do the words themselves shape our beliefs?

LGBT rights protestors march against H.B.2 in North Carolina/ Photography by Whitney Keller, The Herald-Sun via AP

Researchers have found that when we come into contact with a recognizable label, our brain doesn’t have to work as hard to process it, and we feel greater mental satisfaction as a result. We accept labels because we recognize them, not because they are accurate.

Robin Jeshion, a professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California, researches the causes and effects of derogatory language. “If you already have a set of beliefs that run in conflict with what the headline says, you’re much more likely to resist it,” Jeshion says. She believes our perception of labels is “highly contextualized based on what you already know and what your beliefs are.”

This assumption — that by naming something we can then communicate about it — is the fundamental principle of language. But do we believe in the ideas behind words or do the words themselves shape our beliefs?

One of the most obvious examples of the relationship between language and ideology is seen in public conversations surrounding abortion. In February of this year, Google Chrome introduced a feature consumers can download which automatically changes the term “pro-life” to “anti-choice” in all the articles they read online, a move that raises questions about the role internet news is playing in our ability to filter out content that disagrees with our biases. But it’s not just about going to news sources that are aligned with our ideologies, an inherent and well-known inclination. Google’s new feature illuminates how one word can shift the perception of an article that otherwise remains the same.

Jeshion has experienced this firsthand when facilitating a conversation about abortion in her General Ethics class. “I start off the discussion by pointing out how the groups label themselves, and people on both sides get incredibly uncomfortable by my drawing attention to that,” Jeshion says. “It’s very interesting seeing how threatened people can feel if the labels that they identify with come under pressure.”

Gary Lupyan, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, says that, traditionally, psychologists and linguists believed language merely described the world. In 2007, Lupyan introduced a neurological perspective on categories called the label-feedback hypothesis. He argued that words don’t just “pick out things in the world,” they shape the ideas they describe.

Newspaper stands in NYC/ Courtesy of HoneyCo NYC via Flickr

For example, he says, English speakers only organize the world according to a wide range of colors because our language has words for them. “In a language that lacks color words, it’s not that people can’t distinguish colors,” Lupyan says. “It wouldn’t occur to you, for instance, to sort something by color. In learning those categories, they become more psychologically real. This provides a very active role for language in shaping what people attend to, what they remember, and what is salient to them.”

In his research, Lupyan has found that participants are able to move past arbitrary categories when the situation calls for it. But often they don’t. Categories are so embedded in the way people perceive that they generally don’t have an incentive to question and move beyond them.

“Because categories are a useful description, what we sometimes find is that the categories [people] settle into are the familiar categories,” Lupyan says. “You can see differences between people just fine if you really need to, but at a quick glance you might categorize people into accessible categories that are easy to talk about. They have short names. They have simple descriptions.”

Researchers from the University of Western Australia found that claims made in headlines are particularly difficult to reframe. Their studies showed that a misleading headline skewed the participant’s entire reading of a news story, even if the story itself contradicted the title.

“[C]orrecting the misinformation conveyed by a misleading headline is a difficult task,” the authors wrote. “Particularly in cases of nonobvious misdirection, readers may not be aware of an inconsistency, and may thus not initiate any corrective updating.”

News organizations can avoid intentional sensationalism, but when nearly every word represents a concept of words, there are limitations to what can be explained in a headline. Thus, it’s up to the reader to be discerning not only about the ideas that are being conveyed but the words that are being used to convey those ideas.

Alikay Wood is a freelance writer based in New York. Follow her on Twitter to keep up on her latest musings.