Informality and Hedging in Psychology Research Articles across Time

By Lauren Raveret

Writing 210: Academic Research and Writing

 

 

Introduction and Method

In 2016, Hyland and Jiang conducted an extensive analysis on whether or not academic writing is becoming more informal. The academic disciplines included in the study were biology, engineering, sociology, and applied linguistics. Journal articles from 1965, 1985, and 2015 were compared using the following model to quantify features of informality in academic writing:

List of informal features.

1. First person pronouns to refer to the author(s) (I and we)

e.g., “I will approach this issue in a roundabout way.”

2. Unattended anaphoric pronouns (this, these, that, those, it) that can refer to antecedents of varying length

e.g., “This is his raw material.”

3. Split infinitives – an infinitive that has an adverb between to and the verb stem

e.g., “The president proceeded to sharply admonish the reporters.”

4. Sentence-initial conjunctions or conjunctive adverbs

e.g., “And I will blame her if she fails in these ways.”

5. Sentence-final preposition


e.g., “A student should not be taught more than he can think about.”

6. Listing expressions (‘and so on’, ‘etc’, ‘and so forth’ used when ending a list)

e.g., “These semiconductors can be used in robots, CD players, etc.”

7. Second person pronouns/determiners to refer to the reader (you and your)

e.g., “Suppose you are sitting at a computer terminal which assigns you role R”

8. Contractions


e.g., “Export figures won’t improve until the economy is stronger.”

9. Direct questions


e.g., “What can be done to lower costs?”

10. Exclamations


e.g., “This is not the case!” (p. 44)

 

Based on their results, Hyland and Jiang claim in their abstract, “Our results show only a small increase in the use of these features, and that this is mainly accounted for by increases in the hard sciences rather than the social sciences” (p. 40). Later on in the article, Hyland and Jiang state, “it is the science and engineering disciplines in our sample which have become less formal while trends for the social science fields indicate a reduction in the use of these informal features” (p. 48). Their claims about social sciences, however, appear to be overstepping what the data show, considering the only social sciences that Hyland and Jiang include in their study are sociology and applied linguistics. It might be safe to say that sociology and applied linguistics have become slightly more formal, but Hyland and Jiang cannot make an argument about social science based on data only from sociology and applied linguistics writing.

In response to Hyland and Jiang’s generalizations on social science based on data from writing in only two social science discipline, in this paper, I conduct research on, analyze, and discuss the trends in a social science that Hyland and Jiang ignore: psychology.Considering psychology incorporates aspects of biology, especially in more neuroscience-related areas of psychology, I hypothesized that changes in the field over time would be more similar to biology than to sociology or applied linguistics. Since I do not have the resources or time to analyze 90 research papers per discipline as Hyland and Jiang did, I focus on the works of two Wake Forest University psychologists who have been active in the field since the 1980s, and I collected their interview-based impressions on their own writing and psychology writing in general. I chose four research articles co-authored by Professor Terry Blumenthal, who specializes in psychophysiology, and four research articles co-authored by Professor Deborah Best, who specializes in cross-cultural and developmental psychology. For each professor, two of the articles analyzed were published in the 1980s and the other two articles were published after the year 2000.¹ Comparing articles across time, co-authored by the same psychology professors. controls for differences in personal writing style that might account for changes if articles by different authors published during different time periods were analyzed instead. Ideally, this at least partially makes up for the lack in sample size compared to Hyland and Jiang’s study.

In order to gain understanding of the changes, or lack thereof, in articles published in academic psychology journals between the 1980s and after 2000, I incorporate both quantitative analysis using Hyland and Jiang’s informal features model and my own model for quantifying instances of hedging, and qualitative analysis through interviewing Blumenthal and Best on their experiences and opinions. The interview questions used are included in Appendix A. After combining textual analysis with author interviews, the importance of interviewing writers in the field being studied is apparent. Hyland and Jiang use extensive quantitative data to analyze shifts in writing over time, but without asking members of each field their perspectives, there is no way of knowing the meaning behind any textual changes. Through interviewing Best and Blumenthal, I uncovered variables that account for their changes in writing that are not completely explained by the field of psychology simply becoming more formal, such as the rise of technology, shift in audience, shift in genre, and personal reactions to field developments.

Overall, there is a slight increase in informality features from Blumenthal and Best’s 1980s papers to their 2000s+ papers; however, there are differences in the patterns of changes in informality for each individual professor and for individual informality and hedging features, which are discussed in this paper. I hypothesized that changes in the professors’ writing would become more informal as a result of changes in the field of psychology. After interviewing Blumenthal and Best, it is revealed that these changes may be more due to each professor’s personal response to external changes that have occurred since the 1980s, such as technological advances and disciplinary changes, and that Hyland and Jiang’s informal features model does not fully encapsulate the trends in psychology writing over time.

Results and Discussion

Textual Analysis

Table 1 shows the sum number of instances of each informality feature per 10,000 words in Blumenthal’s papers from the 1980s (’80s Blumenthal total), Blumenthal’s papers from 2015 (’00s+ Blumenthal total), Best’s papers from the 1980s (’80s Best total), and Best’s papers from 2003 (’00s+ Best total). This table also includes the total informality instances per 10,000 words in all 1980s papers (’80s total) and in post-2000 papers (’00s+ total). Additionally, the percent changes of number of informality feature instances per 10,000 words for each professor and for the professors combined from the 1980s to 2000+ are included.

The total percent change in use of informality features for both psychologists’ writing combined (14.13%) shows that overall, psychology research article writing increased in informality. However, this was largely accounted for by increases in the use of first person pronouns and sentence-initial conjunctions/conjunctive adverbs. The use of direct questions, split infinitives, and unattended anaphoric pronouns decreased. The total percent change of informality in these two psychologists’ writing between the 1980s and after 2000 shows a mild increase in informality. However, the story is more complex since this mild increase in informality is due to some features increasing and some features decreasing over time, and differences between each professor’s results.

Table 2 shows Best and Blumenthal’s number of hedging terms per 10,000 words in Blumenthal’s papers from the 1980s (’80s Blumenthal), Blumenthal’s papers from 2015 (’00s+ Blumenthal), Best’s papers from the 1980s (’80s Best), and Best’s papers from 2003 (’00s+ Best). In the table, hedging is also split between “Hedging others’ work” and “Hedging own work.” “Hedging others’ work” refers to when the author uses a hedging term while discussing previous psychology literature in their research article. “Hedging own work” refers to when the author uses hedging terms while discussing the research from the study being presented by the research article. This table also includes the total hedging instances per 10,000 words in all 1980s papers (’80s total) and in post-2000 papers (’00s+ total). Additionally, the percent changes of number of informality feature instances per 10,000 words for each professor and for the professors combined from the 1980s to 2000+ are included.

Best and Blumenthal’s use of hedging terms have generally decreased between the 1980s and after 2000. Blumenthal’s use of hedging terms to hedge both his own and others’ work decreased. For Best, however, her hedging of others’ work increased, while her hedging of her own work decreased. This created a small net increase in total hedging use for Best.     

Case Study 1: Blumenthal

In his interview, Blumenthal referred to his field of writing as “science writing” instead of how I labeled it as “psychology writing.” Blumenthal views his writing as neither more nor less formal than his peers. He feels that science writing is generally formal, and that this formality has not changed over time since he started his first publication just over 30 years ago. The only increase in informality he can think of is the increase in “cutesy” titles to make journal articles more attractive since there are so many more peer-reviewed journals now than when he first started his career. Indeed, when looking at the total percent change of Blumenthal’s measured informality from the 1980s to 2015 (-9.28%), it appears that his writing became slightly more formal but largely remained the same. However, looking at his percent changes in the individual informality features tells a more complex story. Blumenthal did not use sentence-final preposition, listing expressions, second person pronouns, contractions, or exclamations in any of his articles, which supports his assertion that his writing is generally formal. His use of unattended anaphoric pronouns, split infinitives, sentence-initial conjunctions/conjunctive adverbs, and direct questions decreased over time. If it were not for Blumenthal’s large increase in his use of first person narrative (134.30%), his overall percent change in informality would be much more significant than -9.28%.

The fact that Blumenthal’s writing decreases in frequency of informality features, except for personal pronouns, suggests Hyland and Jiang’s possible misinterpretation of the formality of using first person pronouns. Blumenthal’s use of first person pronouns consists exclusively of “we” used when referring to Blumenthal and his co-authors, particularly when discussing research methods or hypotheses. For example, in one of the 2015 articles, Blumenthal writes, “In our studies, we hypothesized that a startling stimulus would result in increased no-go error rates compared to no-go trials without a startle stimulus.” While Blumenthal’s writing generally becomes more formal over time, he also becomes more willing to use first person narrative. These results from the textual analysis contradict Blumenthal’s interview responses. Blumenthal reported that he prefers not to use first and second person narrative in research articles. During the interview, he recalled a conversation that he had with a student about taking out the first person narrative in her thesis earlier that morning. When I asked him why he does not like first person narrative, he replied, “Because I think that it folds the science in with the person, and I think that the science should be above the person.” His view on first and second person narratives has not changed throughout his career because he never thought that using them was a good idea in research writing.

So what might account for Blumenthal’s sharp spike in first person pronoun use from the 1980s to 2015? One potential reason for this is his shift in reader audience. When he writes research articles, Blumenthal imagines that his audience is his colleagues that he sees at annual conferences and their students at other universities. That is whom he is thinking of when he writes, and whom he considers when ensuring that his writing makes sense, but many other people read what he publishes. Blumenthal said that over time, students have become more sophisticated, partly because of the infinite amount of information at their fingertips due to the rise of the Internet. He thinks that this is a positive change because he is now more challenged. Blumenthal noted that this increase in number of students who are able to read his articles motivates him to make sure that his papers are teaching something to his readers. He pays more attention to clarity in his writing, and he tries to make sure that students will not get lost when they are reading his research articles. Since his writing has become more geared towards students, perhaps his increase in first person narrative reflects an effort to increase the clarity of his writing. Typically, the alternative to using first person pronouns to discuss the methods of a study is using passive voice. However, the use of passive voice can often complicate a concept. Therefore, perhaps Blumenthal’s increase in his use of first person narrative is an unintentional result of his efforts to ensure that undergraduate students can follow his research articles.

One conscious way Blumenthal reported making an effort to tailor his writing to students is by having some of his students read his research articles before sending them to the editor, which is a strategy he began five years into his career as a publishing psychologist. This means that he did not use this technique with the two articles from the 1980s of his that I analyzed. Now, he encourages his students to disagree with what he writes so that he can improve his writing before sending it to the editor. When reading his research articles from 2015 in contrast to his articles from the 1980s, I noticed more definitions of field-specific terms. For example, in one of his 2015 research articles, he writes, “Prepulse inhibition of startle (PPI) is a sensitive measure of processing of both the prepulse and the startle stimulus, and it is also a way to modify the impact of the startle response on subsequent or ongoing processing.” Blumenthal does not explain terms in such a way in his 1980s research articles. Perhaps he clarifies more terms in his later papers because he anticipates more students reading his writing who are not members of his specific area in the field of psychology. In his interview, Blumenthal said, “[students] might not be as familiar with the specific terminology in my area. Every area of research has a set of words that are sort of reserved for that area. They mean something special to us. So I have to make sure people understand that—what those words mean.” Blumenthal’s increased clarification of field-specific terms, and his choice to have students read his articles before submitting them confirms his shift in audience from the 1980s to 2015.

When asked how he feels about using direct questions, Blumenthal thought that it is a good idea to use direct questions because they make people stop and think. Sometimes he uses direct questions as the title of his research articles. He also feels that he is more likely to use a direct question now than during the beginning of his career. This diverged from the results of the textual analysis because between the 1980s and 2015, Blumenthal’s use of direct questions actually decreased.

Blumenthal also talked about a newer type of journal that he refers to as “ego press,” where psychologists publish their articles to get their name out there. However, these “ego press” journals are for-profit, and the authors have to pay to have their articles published. Traditionally, readers would pay for articles through subscriptions, but now that everything is online, it is difficult to get readers to pay to read articles online. Therefore, the financing of journals has shifted from the readers paying to the authors paying, which Blumenthal thinks causes traditionally “unpublishable” articles to become published simply because their authors can afford it. Blumenthal does not pay for his articles to be published, which restricts his reading audience, but he still appears on indexes such as PubMed, PsychoInfo, and Google Scholar. He is a fan of open science, but he also recognizes that he does not have a good “capitalist solution.”

Even though Blumenthal does not participate in this new genre of “ego press,” his genre of traditional academic journal articles has changed throughout his career. His early papers minimally discuss the limitations of the study, whereas his later papers make a point to explicitly discuss them, and one even has a section entitled “Limitation and future direction.” This increase in explicit discussion of limitations might explain Blumenthal’s decrease in use of hedging over time as demonstrated by Table 2. At first, his interview responses about hedging seemed to contradict his negative percent change in hedging from the 1980s to 2015. In his interview, Blumenthal reported that he hedges often and believes that scientists should hedge because “we can know if some things won’t happen, we can know some things will happen, but there are way more things that might happen and might not happen. I think that absolutes are often to be avoided.” Blumenthal believes that he hedged less at the start of his career because he thought he was more certain. He believes that he thought he was “righter” back then, and that now he is more careful. However, even though the uncertainty portrayed in his later articles increased, his use of hedging terms decreased. I hypothesize that Blumenthal’s increase in deliberate discussion of limitations allowed for a decrease in the use of hedging words, since the uncertainty of the study was conveyed in a straightforward manner instead of hidden between the lines of the text.

In his interview, Blumenthal said that one of the biggest changes in his psychology writing since the start of his career as a publishing psychologist has been in the mechanics of writing. He started his career using a typewriter to write his journal articles, which forced him to think about his writing from the beginning of the paper to the end of the paper. But now that he uses Microsoft Word, he does not have to think chronologically anymore. He can insert an idea into the middle of his paper if he needs to. He used to do a lot of note-taking before he would start writing his paper, but now he can write freely and revise/fill in details later. This change in Blumenthal’s writing process may also account for changes in textual patterns in his journal articles over time.

Case Study 2: Best

Best believes that her writing has changed since the start of her career because now she is more knowledgeable, and can put concepts, ideas, and findings into a bigger context, and see more connections in the research. She does not believe that there is a great deal of difference between her writing and her peers’ writing in terms of informality due to APA expectations followed by psychology journals. As an editor for the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, she often rejects papers that are too informal. She also noted that she is able to write in a more informal style when writing a book chapter, as opposed to a journal article.

At first, Best stated that she does not believe that psychology writing has changed in formality during her career, but then she admitted that it might have increased in formality due to APA standards becoming more specific. She reported that there is more structure to where a psychologist must put certain things in the article, how to say things, what is expected to be reported, etc. She feels good about these changes because she believes that this has made psychology writing more sophisticated in terms of how to report research findings. When looking at her total percent change of informality feature use (51.23%), Best’s writing appears to increase in informality between the 1980s and 2003. However, the percent changes of each individual informality feature reveal that Best’s increase in informality is completely accounted for by a large increase in sentence-initial conjunctions/conjunctive adverbs (87.7%). Like Blumenthal, she did not use sentence-final preposition, second person pronouns, contractions, or exclamations at all. Best only used one listing expression in all of her essays, which was so insignificant that her percent change in use of that informality feature remained 0. For direct questions, first person pronouns, and unattended anaphoric pronouns, her percent change was negative. Best’s apparent overall increase in informality—even though she decreased in more informality features than she increased and reported an increase in formality in psychology writing over time—highlights the flaws in Hyland and Jiang’s model, especially when a limited amount of articles are analyzed. 

When asked why she thinks an increase in specificity in APA style has occurred, Best replied that it is because the field of psychology used to only be in the U.S. and Europe, and was very WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic). However, now there are many psychologists who are writing and engaged in research who speak English as their second language. Best feels that this shift has pushed APA to become more structured in its guidelines so that non-WEIRD authors have the kind of information that WEIRD authors would already know. Best believes that when psychologists are coming from a language background other than English, they might not think about organizing a research article the same way an English speaker from the U.S. or Europe might think. Therefore, Best feels that this shift in more structure to APA style writing has not affected her as much because the new guidelines are similar to what she was already doing anyway.

Especially as a journal editor, Best is a fan of the current expectations of psychology writing. She recalled a mantra of one of the people who taught her to write, Robert Beck, who also helped found the Wake Forest Psychology Department: “say what you mean and mean what you say.” Best thinks very highly of Beck’s writing, and said that he is one of the best science writers she has ever seen. She agrees with Beck that it is important to communicate clearly in scientific writing. She also talked about making sure students keep the name of the concept they are writing about constant throughout the whole paper. She advises students to “use the same concept name so that people know what you’re talking about.” She then talked about an undergraduate English major who came to Wake Forest’s psychology masters program who thought he was a good writer until Best and Beck “took him apart.” Best recalled, “I think he was very insulted, but then he went to Brandeis for his Ph.D. and they put him in charge of the writing seminar for undergraduates.”

When asked what factors influence her writing style, Best said that the subject, co-authors, and audience impact her writing. She noted that the audience essentially depends on the journal for which she is writing, and since she does a lot of cognitive developmental research, she is sometimes communicating with parents. If this is the case, she will not write in the heavy-duty terminology she might use when writing only for psychologists. When writing research articles, Best tries to think mostly about graduate students reading them, but occasionally undergraduates. She also imagines herself writing to colleagues and professors out in the field.Unlike Blumenthal, Best’s imagined audience has not changed since the start of her career.  Considering Blumenthal’s increase in first person pronouns is most likely due to his shift in intended audience, it makes sense that Best’s use of first person pronouns has mostly remained the same over time. In her interview, Best also reported that she does not like to use first or second person narrative in a journal article. In her words, “I think the science ought to communicate for itself…rather than me saying, ‘well I think these things are related,’ [I] let the information speak for itself.” In the methods section, Best said that she typically prefers to go into passive voice rather than use first person narrative. Her continued reluctance to use first person narrative is reflected in her consistent low use of first person pronouns in both the 1980s and 2003.

 In regards to direct questions, Best thinks that sometimes they are acceptable, but sometimes they are “too cute.” One of her current masters students wanted to title her thesis, “Getting ready for school?” and Best’s response was “No, this is a master’s thesis, let’s not do that.” Best also recalled a period of time when social psychologists started giving their research articles really “cute” titles, such as “Carrots and Sticks? What are Rewards and Punishments Like in Japan?” Best thought that this might be good for a talk, but not in a science journal. She said that especially because she was aware of so many social psychologists using direct questions as titles, it became a turn-off for her. “I think science to be a little more boring, I guess,” she said. Indeed, even though Best’s use of direct questions was already low in her 1980s papers, it decreased even more in her 2003 papers. This is one example of how her personal reactions to a development in the field of psychology can change her writing patterns over time. While one area of psychology (social psychology) was increasing in the use of direct questions, Best decreased her use of direct questions in response.

When asked about changes in how confident psychologists can appear in research articles over time, Best recalled a cross-cultural psychology article she came across from the 1960s that was very “matter of fact.” Best described that these researchers drew broad conclusions without speculating about other factors that might have been involved or limitations of the study. Therefore, she believes that psychologists have become more nuanced, more aware of limitations, and more aware of other hypotheses or explanations for findings. She said that it was “almost startling” to read the paper from the 1960s because of the contrast to how psychologists are expected to write now. Best believes that hedging is okay because most of psychology statistics are based on the .05 or .01 p-value, so there is room for error in research. She thinks that there is more hedging now than in the 1960s. Consistent with her interview responses, Best’s overall hedging increased slightly from the 1980s to after 2000. This small net increase in overall hedging was only accounted for by an increase in her hedging of others’ work. Surprisingly, however, Best’s hedging of her own work decreased from the 1980s to 2003, which is a divergence from what her interview response would imply.

This incongruence in what Best reported about her use of hedging and what the data shows is most likely due to a difference between my definition of hedging and Best’s definition of hedging. The data showed that hedging, as I define it, generally decreases over time. However, Best reported an increase in hedging since the start of her career. I defined hedging as the use of terms such as suggest, may, indicate, assume, sometimes, often, somewhat, etc. When Best referred to hedging, she talked about an increase in discussions of limitations and alternate hypotheses. Her definition of hedging was not based on specific words, but on overall concepts. Like Blumenthal, neither of Best’s articles from the 1980s even mentioned the word “limitation,” but both 2003 papers explicitly pointed out the limitations of the study, and one actually had a section labeled “Conclusion and limitations.” Therefore, her decrease in hedging of her own research over time could be explained by the fact that she portrayed uncertainty more explicitly instead of by use of hedging terms.

Best’s hedging of other psychologists’ previous work was the only type of hedging that increased instead of decreased. This can be connected to her discussion in the interview of her skepticism of psychology studies from earlier years. She believes that psychologists today are more nuanced and more aware of limitations and alternative explanations for findings. Her skepticism may have caused her to increase hedging of earlier works. Since the studies themselves do not portray enough uncertainty as Best prefers, especially if they are older, she takes it upon herself to portray the uncertainty of the studies through hedging terminology when referring to their findings. This shows how personal reactions to external changes in psychology, such as increased structure and required discussion of limitations, result in changes in writing patterns. Therefore, personal reactions to developments in an academic field become another variable that can influence an academic writer’s writing patterns over time.

Conclusions

Due to the complexity that Hyland and Jiang’s informality model could not capture and the interview responses from Best and Blumenthal, it is apparent that the changes in Best and Blumenthal’s writing between the 1980s and after 2000 are not necessarily part of a larger trend in psychology journal writing, but due to their personal reactions to external changes occurring in the field of psychology. There are other variables besides the formality of the general field that influence Blumenthal and Best’s change in Hyland and Jiang’s informality features and use of hedging. These variables include a shift in imagined audience, the rise of technology, genre shift, and personal reactions to experiences in the field.

Hyland and Jiang’s model misses some complexities of changes in writing over time, especially since it fails to incorporate the kind of qualitative analysis that I retrieved from interviewing authors. Hyland and Jiang make assumptions about the social sciences from purely quantitative data taken on a mass scale without asking the opinions of the writers. Additionally, since their model includes summing the percent changes of each informality feature, some important trends are missed when increases in one area cancel out decreases in another area. For example, sociology’s slight increase in formality could be due to small decreases in the use of informality features, or due to both large increases in some informality features and larger decreases in other informality features. Many of the changes in Best and Blumenthal’s writing are connected to personal perspectives on the development of the field of psychology over time. For example, because Blumenthal believes that more students read his research articles after the rise of the Internet, he has changed his rhetorical methods accordingly. However, Best believes her audience has stayed the same throughout her career, so her writing does not exhibit the same changes over time as Blumenthal’s. After applying Hyland and Jiang’s model to Best’s and Blumenthals’ research articles from the 1980s and after 2000, analyzing the use of hedging, and interviewing Best and Blumenthal on their views in psychology writing over time, the value of combining qualitative data with quantitative data when analyzing change in writing over time becomes apparent.

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References

Benke, C., Blumenthal, T. D., Modeß, C., Hamm, A. O., & Pané-Farré, C. A. (2015). Effects of anxiety sensitivity and expectations on the modulation of the startle eyeblink response during a caffeine challenge. Psychopharmacology, 232(18), 3403–3416. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-015-3996-9

Best, D. L., Williams, J. E., & Briggs, S. R. (1980). A further analysis of the affective meanings associated with male and female sex-trait stereotypes. Sex Roles, 6(5), 735–746. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00287493

Blumenthal, T. D., Avendano, A., & Berg, W. K. (1987). The startle response and auditory temporal summation in neonates. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 44(1), 64–79. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-0965(87)90022-1

Blumenthal, T. D., & Berg, W. K. (1986). The startle response as an indicator of temporal summation. Perception & Psychophysics, 40(1), 62–68. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03207595

Davis, S. W., Williams, J. E., & Best, D. L. (1982). Sex-trait stereotypes in the self-and peer descriptions of third grade children. Sex Roles, 8(3), 315–331. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00287314

Howse, R. B., Best, D. L., & Stone, E. R. (2003). Children’s decision making: the effects of training, reinforcement, and memory aids. Cognitive Development, 18(2), 247–268. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0885-2014(03)00023-6

Hyland, K., & Jiang, F. (Kevin). (2017). Is academic writing becoming more informal? English for Specific Purposes, 45, 40–51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2016.09.001

Shafiro, M. V., Himelein, M. J., & Best, D. L. (2003). Ukrainian and U.S. American Females:

Differences in Individualism/Collectivism and Gender Attitudes. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 34(3), 297-303. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022103034003004

Washington, J. R., & Blumenthal, T. D. (2015). Effects of a startle stimulus on response speed and inhibition in a go/no-go task. Psychophysiology, 52(6), 745–753. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.12400

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Appendix A

Interview Questions

1. Do you notice a difference in the way that you write about research now from when you first started writing about your research?
2. Would you say that when writing research articles, your style is informal or formal compared to your peers? Why?
3. Do you think there has been a shift in the formality of your writing over time?
4. Do you think there has been a shift in the formality of writing in the field of psychology during the time that you have been a psychologist? If so, do you agree with this shift?
5. Do you think there are any issues with the standards of psychology writing today?
6. If you could change the expectations of psychology writing, what would you change?
7. What factors influences your style of writing when you write psychology research articles? Ex: journal, subject, co-authors, audience
8. When you write a research article, whom do you write for? In other words, who do you imagine will read your writing? Who is your audience?
9. How do you feel about using first or second person pronouns in psychology research articles?
10. How do you feel about using direct questions in psychology research articles?
11. Do you pay attention to any specific grammar rules when you write in the field of psychology?
12. Over time, in the field of psychology, has there been a change in the communicated certainty of the findings? How certain do you feel like you can be when writing your findings?

  

Appendix B

Table 1

Informal Features: number of instances of informal features per 10,000 words

 

	’80s Blumenthal total	’00s+ Blumenthal total	Percent change Blumenthal	’80s Best total	’00s Best Total	Percent change Best	’80s total	’00s total	Percent change total
1. First person pronouns to refer to the author(s) (I and we)	7.98	18.71	134.30	7.18	7.11	-1.00	7.59	13.63	79.57
2. unattended anaphoric pronouns (this, these, that, those, it) that can refer to antecedents of varying length	14.97	13.86	-7.44	13.34	11.56	-13.37	14.17	12.85	-9.30
3. split infinitives – an infinitive that has an adverb between to and the verb stem	3.99	0	-100	0	0	0	2.02	0	-100
4. Sentence initial conjunctions or conjunctive adverbs	59.89	46.42	-22.48	36.95	69.35	87.70	48.58	56.46	16.24
5. Sentence final preposition	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
6. listing expressions (‘and so on’, ‘etc’, ‘and so forth’ used when ending a list)	0	0	0	0	0.89	0	0	0.39	0
7. Second person pronouns/determiners to refer to the reader (you and your)	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
8. contractions	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
9. direct questions	1.00	0.69	-30.58	3.08	2.67	-13.37	2.02	1.1.56	-23.04
10. exclamations	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Total	87.83	79.68	-9.28	60.55	91.57	51.23	74.38	84.89	14.13

 

Table 2

Hedging: number of instances of hedging per 10,000 words

	Blumenthal ’80s	Blumenthal ’00s+	Percent change Blumenthal	Best ’80s	Best ’00s+	Percent Change Best	’80s Total	’00s+ Total	Percent Change Total
Hedging other’s work	52.9	20.8	-60.7	27.7	38.2	38.0	40.5	28.4	-30.0
Hedging own work	44.9	17.3	-61.4	44.1	38.2	-13.4	44.5	26.5	-40.5
Total Hedging	97.8	38.1	-61.0	71.8	76.5	6.4	85.0	54.9	-35.4

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A Word from Lauren

I wrote “Informality and Hedging in Psychology Research Articles across Time” as my final case study for WRI 210. During my Spring 2018 semester, I was taking both Academic Research and Writing (WRI 210) and Research Methods in Psychology, which was fascinating because I would be unpacking and discussing academic writing as a high-level concept in one class while being trained in a specific field’s academic writing norms in another class. I was constantly drawing connections between the two classes throughout the semester, so when I noticed some discrepancies between Hyland and Jiang’s findings on informality in the social sciences and what I was learning in my Research Methods in Psychology class, I wanted to further explore what was really happening.

Something that I did not expect going into this writing class was the amount of math I ended up doing to analyze these two professors’ writing. I spent a long time counting and analyzing numbers in an Excel spreadsheet, which was not required of me to complete the assignment, but I felt it was necessary to replicate Hyland and Jiang’s model to some degree. I wanted to methodologically analyze the change in writing over time to remove any bias I had from the results, which funny enough, was a common theme in my interviews with Blumenthal and Best. However, after conducting the author interviews, I also learned that there are shortcomings to such systematic models. For example, if I had focused solely on the numbers from counting hedging instances in the research articles without also asking the authors about their use of hedging, I would have never realized that my definition of hedging differed from theirs, and that a smaller number of hedging instances according to my definition did not necessarily mean that the authors were expressing less certainty in the research findings.

Something I’ve enjoyed as a writing minor at Wake Forest is my ability to explore different types of writing, such as journalism. With this case study assignment, I was able to use some of the skills I learned in journalism classes to conduct the author interviews and incorporate those conversations into a written story, which was another skillset that I did not anticipate tapping into for this Academic Research and Writing class. 

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From Professor Zak Lancaster