Methodology In Experiment 1, participants were asked to rate the intent of the speaker regarding how ironic, mocking, polite, and funny they intended their remark to be. In Experiment 2, participants read the scenarios as tracking of their eye movements occurred.
"You are so helpful!" A Humorous Poster by Media MICE, based loosely on the full text of Can J Exp Psychol 2021;75(2):146-154.*
Introduction The phrase "You are so helpful!" If uttered in a negative context can have devastating effects on the adolescent mind. Many teenagers, and maybe people who were once teenagers, both recall how upon taking out the trash, they were told by their mothers "You are so helpful!" Given that in both categories the teens and former teens A) Never took out the trash, B) Only took out the trash if their mothers asked repeatedly and C) Rolled their eyes when asked to take out the trash, all categories were never quite sure if their mothers sincerely meant "You are so helpful!" or whether the mothers did so sarcastically.
Results "Our younger adult participants did not appear to immediately activate a nonliteral interpretation of an ambiguous remark made by an older adult unless they had evidence from past experience that the remark is often used as an insult," the authors found. In other words, if they were told on a prior occasion "You are so helpful!" while A) refusing to do the dishes B) leaving a wet towel on the bed C) Not using a coaster for their drink, they were likely to disbelieve all future forms of "You are so helpful!" "However, ratings of the ironic intent of the statements were unaffected by speaker age;" according to the authors. "The age of the speaker affects the ease of interpretation but not the final outcome." To put it more accurately, how old their mothers were didn't matter. It was the fact that it was their mother that contributed to an ironic interpretation.
This led to a considerable amount of confusion, and in the worst cases, some former teens despise the phrase "You are so helpful!" In one case, the words "You," "are," "so," and "helpful" – even if used separately and not in the coordinated phrase "You are so helpful!" – took on a pejorative connotation. In order to better understand this phrase of considerable frustration, authors investigated a cue that readers could use to determine whether a remark such as "You are so helpful!" is supposed to be a compliment, or more sinisterly, as an ironic insult. The entire eye care community could help play a role in resolving the intentions of this mysterious phrase by developing better technology for eye movement tracking, as that was a key feature of one research component here.
Conclusion "The results are consistent with constraint-based theories of sentence comprehension," the authors noted. No one in eye care is expected to understand what that means. That said, the authors know they are so helpful, sincerely.
*Jared D. Pandolfo A. The effect of speaker age on the perception of ironic insults. Can J Exp Psychol. 2021;75(2):146-154.
[Warning: Don’t take this poster seriously!]