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Article In: Humans, Machines, and Embedded Translation
Edited by Sandra L. Halverson and Jean Nitzke
[Translation, Cognition & Behavior 8:2] 2025
► pp. 143–

When beliefs translate

Investigating reaction times, affective responses, and individual differences in translating politically charged sentences

ORCiD logo with link | Universidad de MurciaMurcia
ORCiD logo with link | Universidad de MurciaMurcia
ORCiD logo with link | Universidad de MurciaMurcia
ORCiD logo with link | Universidad de MurciaMurcia
ORCiD logo with link | Universidad de MurciaMurcia
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
This study investigates how congruence between ideologically charged sentences and translation students’ political orientations influences cognitive processing during translation. Using reaction times (RTs) as an index of processing effort, we examined the effects of ideological alignment, emotional arousal, personality traits, and working memory capacity on translation performance. In our predominantly progressive sample, progressive sentences elicited faster responses overall, whereas progressive participants were generally slower than conservative participants, regardless of sentence ideology. The interaction between sentence ideology and participants’ ideology did not reach conventional significance, but the descriptive pattern was compatible with a facilitation effect, with progressive participants responding faster when processing ideologically congruent content.
Emotional arousal further modulated processing speed in combination with ideological variables. For progressive sentences, medium arousal produced the fastest responses, whereas for conservative sentences it was associated with the slowest RTs: low and high arousal levels tended to slow down responses to progressive sentences but speed up responses to conservative sentences. In addition, a marginally non-significant interaction with participants’ ideology (p = .051) suggested that high arousal may facilitate responses for progressive participants while tending to slow down conservative participants. Higher working memory capacity significantly predicted faster RTs. Regarding personality traits, Openness to Experience showed a small but statistically significant positive association with RTs, with higher Openness linked to slightly longer response times, which may reflect a more reflective or creative approach to translation choices. Overall, these findings highlight the relevance of ideological congruence and emotional arousal in translation processing and support interdisciplinary approaches that integrate cognitive individual differences into translation research.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Reaction Time as a Window to Cognition in Translation
  • 3.Ideology and (In)congruence as Cognitive Interference Factors
  • 4.Affect, personality and working memory as modulators of cognitive processing in translation
    • 4.1Emotional response
    • 4.2Personality traits
    • 4.3Working memory
  • 5.The present study
    • 5.2Aim and hypotheses
    • 5.2Participants
    • 5.3Materials and stimuli
      • 5.3.1Stimuli
      • 5.3.2Materials: Tests and questionnaires
    • 5.4Task and procedure
    • 5.5Data analysis
  • 6.Results and discussion
    • 6.1Hypothesis 1: Influence of ideological congruence
    • 6.2Hypothesis 2: Emotional effect of ideological content
    • 6.3Hypothesis 3: Personality traits
    • 6.4Hypothesis 4: Working memory
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Author queries
  • References
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