The role of valence and origin of emotions in emotional categorization task for words

Abstract

Abstract Emotional meaning of words can be defined in terms of a few factors, including traditionally investigated valence and arousal, as well as recently proposed emotional origin. The emotional origin is a dimension spanned by the concepts of automatic vs. reflective emergence of an emotion. This article presents the results of an investigation focused on the role of valence and emotional origin of word connotations for moderately arousing verbal stimuli for performance in emotional categorization task. The task for participants was to assess whether a given word has for them an emotional meaning. Behavioral results showed a higher proportion of words indicated as emotional for both negative and positive in comparison to neutral stimuli as well as for stimuli inducing automatic originated emotion, as compared to other groups. ERP amplitude differences, localized in specific regions were, observed for valence and origin in 250–690 ms time range. Effects of origin were found earlier in time in comparison to the effects of valence. The novelty of this study is that it demonstrates that the origin of emotion, besides the well-known valence, is a significant factor for the processing of words in an emotional categorization task.