Den mørke side af semantisk kontekst [The Dark Side of Semantic Context]: Semantic Context Boosts People’s Confidence in Their Ability to Comprehend Danish

Semantic context helps people comprehend information, but it can also create illusions of truth and understanding. To what extent does increased semantic context boost people’s confidence in their ability to perform highly technical skills, such as understanding a foreign language? We addressed this question across five experiments by showing subjects a video clip of people speaking Danish. Some subjects saw the subtitled video while others saw the unsubtitled version. Then we asked subjects to rate how well they thought they would be able to understand Danish in new situations. We found that people who saw the subtitled videos thought they would understand more of that language in new situations compared to those who saw the unsubtitled videos, even though their actual understanding did not improve. These findings suggest that relative to situations of lesser semantic context, greater semantic context creates illusions not simply of understanding but also of greater skill.