@science: Institutions have spent years publishing guides discouraging phrases like "master bedroom" or "pipeline" over concerns they cause psychological harm. A new study tested that claim directly — and found no evidence for it. Researchers led by Michael Eskenazi at Stetson University ran two studies. First, 616 U.S. adults rated 175 word pairs pulled from popular language guides against their recommended replacements, judging familiarity, acceptability, and anxiety. People did prefer the alternative terms slightly, but the vast majority of flagged words were still rated highly acceptable — negative ratings clustered almost entirely around actual recognized slurs, not the ambiguous everyday phrases language guides commonly target. The second study tested for real psychological impact. 334 adults read one of two versions of the same short story — one containing 25 flagged terms, one using the suggested replacements — then completed measures of anxiety, positive and negative emotion, and social belonging. The researchers found no measurable differences in well-being between groups, including specifically among participants from marginalized backgrounds, who were no more affected by the flagged language than anyone else. The flagged-language group actually scored slightly higher on reading comprehension. The one exception: participants scoring high in "interpersonal victimhood," a trait describing chronic feelings of being wronged and a need for recognition, showed a slight uptick in negative emotion regardless of which version they read. Eskenazi is careful to draw a firm distinction: these findings apply to ambiguous phrases that have lost or never carried discriminatory meaning, not to actual slurs or intentionally abusive language, which the study did not test and does not defend. The research is also limited to one-time exposure in a fictional story, not repeated exposure in a real workplace or school community, which critics argue is a meaningfully different test. source: Eskenazi, M.A., Semenyna, S.W., & Ferguson, C.J. (2026). Pipelines and Master Bedrooms: How Harmful is Harmful Language? Journal of Open Inquiry in the Behavioral Sciences.

974

2026-09-20 20:11:10

To see more videos from user @science, please go to the Tikwm homepage.