Cover not available
Part of
Perspectives on Abstract Concepts: Cognition, language and communication
Edited by Marianna Bolognesi and Gerard J. Steen
[Human Cognitive Processing 65] 2019
► pp. 121–144

Chapter 6
Determinants of abstractness and concreteness and their persuasive effects

The writing guideline to avoid abstractness and to use concrete language instead has a long and well-deserved reputation. Nevertheless, it is not clear what constitutes concrete language. In this chapter we report two studies. The first investigates the determinants of concreteness and abstractness using a rating task. The results show that for all word classes sensory perceptibility is an important component and that the determinants specificity and drawability/filmability vary with word class. In the second study, we used the insights from study 1 to manipulate a text from the National Budgeting Institute (Nibud) that addresses adolescents from different educational levels. The results only show effects of educational level on comprehension and persuasive power; no effects of concreteness were found. The studies raise issues about the validity of the writing guideline to be concrete.

Keywords: abstractness, comprehension, concreteness, determinants, persuasion
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Study 1: Determinants of concreteness and abstractness
    • 2.1Method
      • 2.1.1Word list
      • 2.1.2Participants and procedure
      • 2.1.3Results
    • 2.2Conclusion and discussion
  • 3.Study 2: Effects of concreteness
    • 3.1Introduction
    • 3.2Method
      • 3.2.1Materials
        • Original version
        • Abstract version
        • Concrete version
        • Concrete version with detailed examples
      • 3.2.2Participants and design
      • 3.2.3Instruments
      • 3.2.4Procedure
      • 3.2.5Statistical analysis
    • 3.3Results
      • 3.3.1Text appreciation
      • 3.3.2Persuasive impact
      • 3.3.3Comprehensibility
      • 3.3.4Other measures
    • 3.4Conclusion and discussion
  • 4.General discussion
  • Acknowledgment
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 June 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.65.07hus
References (33)
Brysbaert, M., Stevens, M., De Deyne, S., Voorspoels, W., & Storms, G.
2014 Norms of age of acquisition and concreteness for 30,000 Dutch words. Acta Psychologica 150, 80–84. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coltheart, M.
1981 The MRC psycholinguistic database. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 33A, 497–505. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Connell, L., & Lynott, D.
2012 Strength of perceptual experience predicts word processing performance better than concreteness or imageability. Cognition 125(3), 452–465. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Douma, P.
1994 Wees zo concreet mogelijk. Schrijfadviseurs over concreet en abstract taalgebruik. Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing 16(1), 16–31.Google Scholar
Ernestus, M., & Cutler, A.
2015 BALDEY: A database of auditory lexical decisions. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 68, 8, 1469–1488. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Frey, K. P., & Eagly, A. H.
1993 Vividness can undermine the persuasiveness of messages. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65(1), 32–44. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gibson, R., & Zillmann, D.
1994 Exaggerated versus representative exemplification in news reports: Perception of issues and personal consequences. Communication Research 21(5), 603–624. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gowers, S. E.
1986 The complete plain words. Revised ed. by S. Greenbaum & J. Whitcut. London: Guild Publishing.Google Scholar
Graesser, A. C., McNamara, D. S., & Kulikowich, J. M.
2011 Coh-Metrix: Providing multilevel analyses of text characteristics. Educational Researcher 40(5), 223–234. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Guadagno, R. E., Rhoads, K. V. L., & Sagarin, B. J.
2011 Figural vividness and persuasion: Capturing the “elusive” vividness effect. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 37(5), 626–638. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hansen, J., & Wänke, M.
2010 Truth from language and truth from fit: The impact of linguistic concreteness and level of construal on subjective truth. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 36(11), 1576–1588. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hustinx, L., & de Wit, E.
2012 Kunnen levendige getuigenissen je achter de tralies doen belanden? Een experimenteel onderzoek naar het effect van levendig taalgebruik op oordelen over schuld bij leken en ‘experts’. Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing 34(3), 213–228. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Loon-Vervoorn, W. A.
1985 Voorstelbaarheidswaarden van Nederlandse woorden. Lisse: Swetz and Zeitlinger.Google Scholar
McMaster, K. L., Van den Broek, P., Espin, C. A., White, M. J., Rapp, D. N., Kendeou, P., Bohn-Gettler, C. M., & Carlson, S.
2012 Making the right connections: Differential effects of reading intervention for subgroups of comprehenders. Learning and Individual Differences 22(1), 100–111. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McNamara, D. S., Graesser, A. C., McCarthy, P. M., & Cai, Z.
2014 Automated evaluation of text and discourse with Coh-Metrix. New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oostdijk, N., Reynaert, M., Monachesi, P., Noord, G. van Ordelman, R., Schuurman, I., & Vandeghinste, V.
2008 From D-Coi to SoNaR: A reference corpus for Dutch. In N. Calzolari, K. Choukri, B. Maegaard, J. Mariani, J. Odijk, S. Piperidis, & D. Tapias (Eds.), Proceedings of the sixth International Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC’08). Marrakech: European Language Resources Association (ELRA). Available from [URL].Google Scholar
Orwell, G.
1961 Politics and the English language. In G. Orwell, Collected essays (337–351). London and Liverpool: Mercury Books.Google Scholar
Paivio, A.
1971 Imagery and verbal processes. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
1986 Mental representations: A dual coding approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Paivio, A., Yuille, J. C., & Madigan, S. A.
1968 Concreteness, imagery, and meaningfulness values for 925 nouns. Journal of Experimental Psychology Monograph Supplement 76(1p2), 1–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pettus, C., & Diener, E.
1977 Factors affecting the effectiveness of abstract versus concrete information. The Journal of Social Psychology 103(2), 233–242. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reyes, R. M., Thompson, W. C., & Bower, G. H.
1980 Judgmental biases resulting from differing availabilities of arguments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39(1), 2–12. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2001 Resolving the effects of concreteness on interest, comprehension, and learning important ideas from text. Educational Psychology Review 13(3), 263–281.Google Scholar
Sadoski, M., Goetz, E. T., & Rodriguez, M.
2000 Engaging texts: Effects of concreteness on comprehensibility, interest and recall in four text types. Journal of Educational Psychology 92(1), 85–95. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sanders, T., Land, J., & Mulder, G.
2007 Linguistics markers of coherence improve text comprehension in functional contexts. Information Design Journal 15(3), 219–235. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Scharrer, L., Stadtler, M., & Bromme, R.
2014 You’d better ask an expert: Mitigating the comprehensibility effect on laypeople’s decisions about science-based knowledge claims. Applied Cognitive Psychology 28(4), 465–471. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shedler, J., & Manis, M.
1986 Can the availability heuristic explain vividness effects? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51(1), 26–36. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Silfhout, G. van, Evers-Vermeul, J., Mak, W. M., & Sanders, T. J. M.
2014 Connectives and layout as processing signals: How textual features affect students’ processing and text representation. Journal of Educational Psychology 106(4), 1036–1048. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smith, S. M., & Shaffer, D. R.
2000 Vividness can undermine or enhance message processing: The moderating role of vividness congruency. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 26(7), 769–779. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Spooren, W., Smith, B., & Renkema, J.
2000 De invloed van stijl en type argumentatie op de overtuigingskracht van een direct mail. Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing 22, 344–357.Google Scholar
Spreen, O., & Schulz, R. W.
1966 Parameters of abstraction, meaningfulness, and pronounceability for 329 nouns. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 5(5), 459–468. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D.
1973 Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology 5(2), 207–232. DOI logoGoogle Scholar