Psychological Aspects of German Signal Words in Evacuation Warnings

Laura Künzer (), Gesine Hofinger () and Tina Zink ()
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Laura Künzer: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Department of Intercultural Business Communication
Gesine Hofinger: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Department of Intercultural Business Communication
Tina Zink: University of Regensburg, Department of Psychology

A chapter in Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics 2012, 2014, pp 1135-1147 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Signal words in evacuation warnings have an alerting and informing function related to the degree of danger. The psycho-acoustic urgency of the signal word used should match the contextual urgency (urgency mapping). In two experiments, characteristics of five German signal words were tested in the context of underground transportation systems. Participants rated the dimensions semantic field, urgency and explicitness for the German signal words. The German signal words were presented individually (exp. 1) or embedded in different loud speaker announcements with varying voice styles (exp. 2). As expected the ranking order for urgency was the same as for explicitness. Data showed that “Gefahr” is perceived as most urgent and most explicit. “Hinweis” is least urgent and least explicit. For the other three signal words used (“Vorsicht”, “Warnung”, “Achtung”) no clear order was found. “Achtung” is familiar in German announcements and warnings which influenced the ratings. Conclusions for the design of evacuation announcements are drawn.

Keywords: Spoken warning; Signal word; Urgency; Explicitness; Semantic field; Evacuation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-319-02447-9_93

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-02447-9_93

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