The emotional impact of verbal irony: Eye-tracking evidence for a two-stage process

- On-line methods reveal the time course of expected emotional responses to irony.
- Ironic criticism is initially perceived as more hurtful than literal criticism.
- Ironic criticism is later rationalized as being less hurtful, and more amusing.
- Readers keep track of how characters' emotions may change over time.

In this paper we investigate the socio-emotional functions of verbal irony. Specifically, we use eye-tracking while reading to assess moment-to-moment processing of a character's emotional response to ironic versus literal criticism. In Experiment 1, participants read stories describing a character being upset following criticism from another character. Results showed that participants initially more easily integrated a hurt response following ironic criticism; but later found it easier to integrate a hurt response following literal criticism. In Experiment 2, characters were instead described as having an amused response, which participants ultimately integrated more easily following ironic criticism. From this we propose a two-stage process of emotional responding to irony: While readers may initially expect a character to be more hurt by ironic than literal criticism, they ultimately rationalize ironic criticism as being less hurtful, and more amusing.