Bias Due to Language Style
How do choices in language formality and complexity used in digital technology impact users?
We have conducted a series of studies that investigate how people are influenced by the language used in user interfaces. For example, we have shown that language formality in online studies positively correlates with attention. In security and privacy interfaces, language formality positively correlates with reported compliance (such as to set up two-factor authentication). We have also developed tools that quantify language formality and complexity and that can help designers and developers adapt the language.
Publications
Jackson Stokes, Tal August, Robert A Marver, Alexei Czeskis, Franziska Roesner, Tadayoshi Kohno, and Katharina Reinecke "How Language Formality in Security and Privacy Interfaces Impacts Intended Compliance", Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2023.
Tal August, Katharina Reinecke, and Noah Smith, "Generating Scientific Definitions with Controllable Complexity", Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), 2022. PDF
Tal August and Katharina Reinecke, "Pay Attention, Please: Formal Language Improves Attention in Volunteer and Paid Online Experiments", Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2019. PDF