Emotional Words Research Articles

Words and Attitudes of the Heart: The Emotional Content of Christian Nationalist Communications

Christian nationalism has emerged as an important component of the relationship between religious identities and political attitudes. While several studies have analyzed the constellation of Christian nationalist elites and the effects of Christian nationalist orientations on public opinion, to date no study has explored how Christian nationalist elites message to the public or what effects these messages have. Moreover, the current literature lacks comparisons of Christian nationalism to other similar orientations. This study uses content analysis to compare the content and use of emotion language of Facebook messages of Christian nationalist, Christian Christian nationalism (CN) opposition, and patriotic groups. I find that these groups focus posts on issues that are stereotypical to the group identity, and that the use of emotion language differs by topic and group type. Additionally, groups’ use of emotion language shifts the emotional responses of readers, especially in Christian nationalist groups. This study adds to our understanding of the role of emotion in social media communications and the effects of social media communications on readers.

Adversity and error-monitoring: Effects of emotional context.

This study tested whether self-reports of childhood adversity would predict altered error processing under emotional versus non-emotional task conditions. N = 99 undergraduates completed two selective attention tasks, a traditional color-word Stroop task and a modified task using emotional words, while EEG was recorded. Participants also completed self-report measures of adverse and positive childhood experiences, executive functioning, depression, current stress, and emotion regulation. Reports of adversity were robustly correlated with self-reported challenges in executive functioning, even when controlling for self-reported depression and stress, but adversity was not correlated with task performance. With regard to neural markers of error processing, adversity predicted an enhanced error-related negativity and blunted error-positivity, but only during the emotion-word blocks of the task. Moreover, error-related changes in alpha oscillations were predicted by adversity, in a pattern that suggested less error responsiveness in alpha patterns during the emotion block, compared to the color block, among participants with higher adversity. Overall, results indicate alterations in error monitoring associated with adversity, such that in an emotional context, initial error detection is enhanced and sustained error processing is blunted, even in the absence of overt performance changes.

Emotion processing in concrete and abstract words: evidence from eye fixations during reading

ABSTRACT We replicated and extended the findings of Yao et al. [(2018). Differential emotional processing in concrete and abstract words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 44(7), 1064–1074] regarding the interaction of emotionality, concreteness, and imageability in word processing by measuring eye fixation times on target words during normal reading. A 3 (Emotion: negative, neutral, positive) × 2 (Concreteness: abstract, concrete) design was used with 22 items per condition, with each set of six target words matched across conditions in terms of word length and frequency. (e.g. shocking, reserved, fabulous) and concrete (e.g. massacre, calendar, treasure) target words appeared (separately) within contextually neutral, plausible sentences. Sixty-three participants each read all 132 experimental sentences while their eye movements were recorded. Analyses using Gamma generalised linear mixed models revealed significant effects of both Emotion and Concreteness on all fixation measures, indicating faster processing for emotional and concrete words. Additionally, there was a significant Emotion × Concreteness interaction which, critically, was modulated by Imageability in early fixation time measures. Emotion effects were significantly larger in higher-imageability abstract words than in lower-imageability ones, but remained unaffected by imageability in concrete words. These findings support the multimodal induction hypothesis and highlight the intricate interplay of these factors in the immediate stages of word processing during fluent reading.

Exploring the diversity of emotion in hospitality and tourism from big data: a novel sentiment dictionary

PurposeAlthough the importance and variety of emotions have been emphasized in existing literature, studies on discrete emotions remain limited. This study aims to propose a method for more precise recognition and calculation of emotions in massive amounts of online data on attraction visitor experiences and behaviour, by using discrete emotion theory.Design/methodology/approachUsing HowNet’s word similarity calculation technique, this study integrated multiple generic dictionaries, including the sentiment vocabulary ontology database of the Dalian University of Technology, the National Taiwan University Sentiment Dictionary and the Boson Dictionary. Word2vec algorithm filters emotion words unique to hospitality and tourism in 1,596,398 texts from Sogou News, Wikipedia and Ctrip reviews about attractions, and 1,765,691 reviews about attractions in China.FindingsThe discrete sentiment dictionary developed in this study outperformed the original dictionary in identifying and calculating emotions, with a total vocabulary extension of 12.07%, demonstrating its applicability to tourism.Research limitations/implicationsThe developed new dictionary can be used by researchers and managers alike to quickly and accurately evaluate products and services based on online visitor reviews.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to construct a sentiment dictionary based on discrete emotion theory applicable to hospitality and tourism in the Chinese context. This study extended the applicability of affective psychology to hospitality and tourism using discrete emotion theory. Moreover, the study offers a methodological framework for developing a domain-specific sentiment dictionary, potentially applicable to other domains in hospitality.

Emotional economies of pleasure among the gentry of eighteenth-century England

ABSTRACT This article analyses familial cultures and exchanges of pleasure among 11 eighteenth-century gentry families. The research is based on a substantial collection of family correspondence and identifies emotion words within these letters to understand familial conversations about pleasure and the various purposes that pleasure was put to. Here pleasure is problematised and studied as an emotion. There are three main arguments. Firstly, the letters reveal a previously hidden world of family pleasure, connected to but in some ways remote from the public and sensory pleasures of the urban renaissance that most previous studies have focused on. The letters reveal an emotional economy of pleasure, where feelings materialised as currencies underlying the building and breaking of family relationships. Secondly, pleasure was not a singular or solitary feeling, but rather operated in affective clusters with other emotions such as anxiety and surprise. Finally, pleasure and displeasure were vital in keeping good order among the gentry and between the gentry and their subordinates, within inheritance systems and family dynamics where inequality and an unequal distribution of resources were part of everyday life.

Online commodity recommendation model for interaction between user ratings and intensity-weighted hierarchical sentiment: A case study of LYCOM

The online commodity recommendation (OCR) model mines users’ historical behavior characteristics and recommends products that may be of interest according to user preferences. Online reviews are among the most important information sources for OCR. However, the explicit and implicit emotional words in online review texts have different structures in the expression of multi-attribute emotions. To fully utilize review information and improve the recommendation accuracy, we propose an OCR model that considers the interaction of multiple attributes and hierarchical emotions and calculates a score weighted by emotion intensity. First, to balance the efficiency and accuracy of information extraction while considering the coexistence of explicit and implicit expressions in online review text, a multi-attribute hierarchical emotion lexicon construction method is proposed. Second, based on the advantage of intuitionistic fuzzy sets in terms of information expression superiority, multi-attribute review text information expression of the affective polarity and intensity of online review text is realized. Then, combined with the weighted singular value decomposition and factorization machine method, we propose an OCR model for interactions between multi-attribute emotions and scores through fusion and recombination of the eigenvectors of users and products. Finally, tourism products on the LYCOM website are used as an example to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Early Childhood Teachers’ Emotion Validating Language Regarding Negative Emotions: Comparisons by Child Gender

ABSTRACT This study examined teachers’ emotion-validating language regarding negative emotions in early childhood classrooms. By analyzing teachers’ emotion language differing by child gender, the research highlights the gendered socialization of emotional expression, especially regarding negative emotions, in early childhood contexts. In toddler and preschool classrooms, 28 teachers were video recorded during four 30-minute sessions of free play time for a total of approximately 40 hours. Videos were coded for teachers’ emotion language regarding negative emotions with attention to the gender of the child to whom the language was spoken. Results indicate that teachers validate negative emotions more to girls than to boys. This aligns with previous research suggesting that girls’ expression of emotion is more encouraged and acceptable than boys’. This work highlights potential gender differences in emotion socialization and points to missed opportunities to validate boys’ negative emotions and thus develop their emotion language and regulation skills. Implications for teacher professional development are discussed.

A Speech Act Analysis of Language of Emotion in Governor Akeredolu's Post Owo Massacre Broadcast

The attack on the worshippers of St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, Ogwaluwa, Owo, Ondo State, Nigeria has further revealed the state of insecurity in the Nigerian sociospace. The grisly act, referred to as Owo massacre, has attracted widespread condemnation from individuals and groups in and outside the shore of Nigeria. This paper attempts the analysis of the post Owo massacre speech of the Governor of Ondo State, Nigeria, Arakunrin Odunayo Oluwarotimi Akeredolu’s as presented in his state broadcast on Owo terror attack. The text of the Post Owo Massacre Speech of Governor Odunayo Oluwarotimi Akeredolu as contained in his state broadcast made on June 7, 2022, entitled Owo terror attack, was downloaded from the Facebook page of Oluwarotimi Akeredolu Aketi on https://fb.watch/mhM-xkaQUu/ and analysed using Speech Act Theory as propounded by J. L Austin (1962) and expatiated by John Searle (1971). The study identifies the illocutionary acts of assertive, directive, expressive and commissive; analyse the performative functions of the identified illocutionary acts and the communicative element that give effectiveness to the acts in the emotional speech and concludes that emotion dictates the choices of the communicating elements deployed in the post Owo massacre state broadcast of Arakunrin Odunayo Oluwarotimi Akeredolu.

How do emotion words impact children's emotion learning?

Previous research suggests that the use of emotion labels helps children to learn about emotions. However, the mechanism behind this relation remains somewhat elusive. The present study examined 3-year-old children's (N = 72; Mage = 3.51 years; 42 female) ability to match faces to emotional vignettes, and the role that the use of emotion labels plays in this process. Parents identified participating children as White (N = 37), multiracial (N = 17), African American/Black (N = 5), Asian (N = 5), Hispanic (N = 3), Latino (N = 2), South Asian/Indian (N = 1), Middle Eastern (N = 1), and other (N = 1), and most children had a parent with a college degree (N = 66). After a pretest, children heard either explicit emotion labels ("she feels annoyed"), novel labels ("she feels wuggy"), or irrelevant information ("she sits down") paired with a vignette and associated facial configuration. Children were then tested again at posttest for evidence of learning. Results revealed that children only improved from pre- to posttest in the explicit label condition, demonstrating that explicit emotion labels, which are likely to be familiar to children, facilitate children's learning of emotion information. Altogether, our results suggest that familiarity with emotion words from prior daily experience may best explain how emotion words influence children's learning about emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

More than labels: neural representations of emotion words are widely distributed across the brain.

Although emotion words such as "anger," "disgust," "happiness," or "pride" are often thought of as mere labels, increasing evidence points to language as being important for emotion perception and experience. Emotion words may be particularly important for facilitating access to the emotion concepts. Indeed, deficits in semantic processing or impaired access to emotion words interfere with emotion perception. Yet, it is unclear what these behavioral findings mean for affective neuroscience. Thus, we examined the brain areas that support processing of emotion words using representational similarity analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging data (N = 25). In the task, participants saw 10 emotion words (e.g. "anger," "happiness") while in the scanner. Participants rated each word based on its valence on a continuous scale ranging from 0 (Pleasant/Good) to 1 (Unpleasant/Bad) scale to ensure they were processing the words. Our results revealed that a diverse range of brain areas including prefrontal, midline cortical, and sensorimotor regions contained information about emotion words. Notably, our results overlapped with many regions implicated in decoding emotion experience by prior studies. Our results raise questions about what processes are being supported by these regions during emotion experience.

Exploring barriers to care home research recruitment during the COVID-19 pandemic: The influence of social media recruitment posts and public sentiment.

Recruitment of care home staff to research studies is recognised as challenging. This was further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated negative media portrayal of care home workers. Social media use has surged since the onset of COVID-19 lockdowns, offering a plausible approach to understanding the barriers to care home research recruitment and gaining insight into public perceptions of care home workers. To utilise comments from two Facebook recruitment posts to: 1) gain an understanding of potential barriers to recruitment of healthcare workers (HCWs) in UK care homes, and 2) explore public sentiment towards care home research and care homes in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-sectional study analysed comments from two Facebook posts (available June-October 2021) advertising a separate study on psychological support for care staff during the pandemic. This study was situated within a larger investigation into the mental health and wellbeing of care home staff and employed both qualitative analysis and quantitative methods (word count and correlations between words used and between posts). Three themes were identified from the qualitative analysis: support, mistrust and blame. There was a greater use of words associated with support and negative emotive words in post 2. Post 2 comments featured significantly more choice words and first-person singular pronouns than post 1 which indicated a resentful sentiment from those who advocate freedom of choice and control. Discussion of mistrust towards researchers was most prominent in post 1 indicating the importance of relationship building between researchers and HCWs in UK care homes. With attribution to blame, there was a larger range of negative emotion words than positive emotion words. Taken together our findings offer novel insights into why recruitment to care home research during the pandemic including the use of social media might be problematic. Social media is a useful tool for recruitment but should not be considered as a one-time input. Researchers should pro-actively engage with the study population from the start using co-design with resident and public groups to support recruitment and ensure these populations are accurately represented within research.

Pathos in Natural Language Argumentation: Emotional Appeals and Reactions

In this paper, we present a model of pathos, delineate its operationalisation, and demonstrate its utility through an analysis of natural language argumentation. We understand pathos as an interactional persuasive process in which speakers are performing pathos appeals and the audience experiences emotional reactions. We analyse two strategies of such appeals in pre-election debates: pathotic Argument Schemes based on the taxonomy proposed by Walton et al. (Argumentation schemes, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008), and emotion-eliciting language based on psychological lexicons of emotive words (Wierzba in Behav Res Methods 54:2146–2161, 2021). In order to match the appeals with possible reactions, we collect real-time social media reactions to the debates and apply sentiment analysis (Alswaidan and Menai in Knowl Inf Syst 62:2937–2987, 2020) method to observe emotion expressed in language. The results point to the importance of pathos analysis in modern discourse: speakers in political debates refer to emotions in most of their arguments, and the audience in social media reacts to those appeals using emotion-expressing language. Our results show that pathos is a common strategy in natural language argumentation which can be analysed with the support of computational methods.

Exploring the Emotional Experience of Tourists in Immersive Service Scenarios: A Case Study of Super Wenheyou Restaurant

With the rapid development of the immersive service scenarios, the practical problems of the tourism industry have gradually undergone qualitative changes, and the core contradiction has changed from the simple "tourism attraction" to the more complex "tourism experience quality" problem. In the process of "immersive experience", "emotion" plays a powerful guiding role in the immersive scenarios design, guiding tourists to real-time interaction, immersive and emotional resonance. Therefore, emotional experience has become the key in the development of immersive service scenarios. This study collects the data of tourists in Wenheyou through a questionnaire of tourists' emotional experience test, and discusses the tourists' emotional experience needs, effects and improvement strategies under the background of the three-stage characteristics of immersive scenarios and emotional interaction. Tourists' emotional experience and Word frequency by ROST CM (ROST Content Mining System) 6.0, was employed for data analysis. The study elucidates that within the Wenheyou immersive service scenarios, the physical service environment, cultural stimuli, and service products serve as primary catalysts for fostering positive emotional experiences among tourists. Drawing on psychological theories and utilizing the PANAS (Positive Affect and Negative Affect Schedule) scale and Robert Plutchik's emotion wheel model, the research delves into tourists' emotional experiences within the Wenheyou immersive service scenarios. It identifies key factors shaping positive and negative emotional experiences, offering valuable insights for service enterprises to enhance tourists' emotional quality.

Associations between lyric and musical depth in Chinese songs: Evidence from computational modeling.

Musical depth, which encompasses the intellectual and emotional complexity of music, is a robust dimension that influences music preference. However, there remains a dearth of research exploring the relationship between lyrics and musical depth. This study addressed this gap by analyzing linguistic inquiry and word count-based lyric features extracted from a comprehensive dataset of 2372 Chinese songs. Correlation analysis and machine learning techniques revealed compelling connections between musical depth and various lyric features, such as the usage frequency of emotion words, time words, and insight words. To further investigate these relationships, prediction models for musical depth were constructed using a combination of audio and lyric features as inputs. The results demonstrated that the random forest regressions (RFR) that integrated both audio and lyric features yielded superior prediction performance compared to those relying solely on lyric inputs. Notably, when assessing the feature importance to interpret the RFR models, it became evident that audio features played a decisive role in predicting musical depth. This finding highlights the paramount significance of melody over lyrics in effectively conveying the intricacies of musical depth.

Inhibition in the emotional Hayling task: can hypnotic suggestion enhance cognitive control on a prepotent negative word?

ABSTRACT Recent studies suggest that instrumental hypnosis is a useful experimental tool to investigate emotional and language processing effects. However, the capacity of hypnotic suggestions to intervene during the response inhibition of emotional words remains elusive. This study investigated whether hypnotic suggestion can improve the inhibition of prepotent negative word responses in an emotional Hayling sentence completion task. High-suggestible participants performed a computerised emotional Hayling task. They were first asked to select the appropriate words ending highly predictable sentences among two propositions (initiation part), and then to select the filler words that did not end the sentences correctly (inhibition part). Half of the expected final words had a negative emotional valence, while the other half was neutral. The task was performed in a control condition (without suggestion) and with a hypnotic suggestion to decrease emotional reactivity. The results revealed that hypnotic suggestion (compared to the control condition) hastened response times on negative final words in the inhibition part, showing that hypnotic suggestion can enhance cognitive control over prepotent negative word responses in a sentence completion task. We suggest that this modulation stems from a reduction in the emotional relevance of the final words caused by the hypnotic suggestion.

Supplemental Material for How Do Emotion Words Impact Children’s Emotion Learning?

Supplemental Material for How Do Emotion Words Impact Children’s Emotion Learning?

The Sharing of Pandemic-Related Information From U.S. Government Twitter Accounts

The rapid onset of COVID-19 created a desire for information about the virus and government-directed response efforts. This study explores the sharing of Twitter posts from U.S. government officials and organizations during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study followed two paths of investigation. First, significant differences in the retweet frequency of government sources were determined based on the source (public officials and agencies, Republican- or Democrat-led states) and differentiated by equal time periods (40 days pre- or post-pandemic declaration). The study findings show that the frequency at which government accounts were retweeted in the U.S. was significantly impacted by the pandemic period, with the post-pandemic period significantly more active as governments wrestled with unprecedented economic, policy, and societal concerns related to the crisis. A greater reliance on public officials as opposed to public agencies or departments was seen, as was a greater tendency to retweet the posts of government officials from Democrat-led states. The second path examined the content of government tweets to determine the linguistic factors which predict retweet frequency. Study results found that both positive and negative emotional language in tweets predicted the frequency of retweeting government sources, though the results varied based on the source. The study results provide insight into the government-affiliated information sources users chose to share with their networks as well as the types of language that appeal to citizens during times of crisis.

Emotions Effects and Interpretation of Language: Semantic Observation

This paper examines the influence of emotions on language comprehension from a semantic standpoint. It proposes that language has an impact on the regulation and expression of emotions, while emotions also affect language. Specifically, it suggests that emotions primarily have negative effects on the interpretation and importance of language in various contexts among diverse individuals. The paper adopts Ko¨vecses' (2004) approach for linguistic lexical analysis of emotional words and categories in language. It applies this methodology to analyze two songs by male and female singers in the modern era. According to the affect-as-information theory and appraisal theory, it is determined that emotions can change the meaning of any language produced by human cognition. Language can express emotions through a range of words, symbols, and representations that relate to emotional context, gender distinctions, and the natural environment.

Objective Linguistic Markers Associated with Callous-Unemotional Traits in Early Childhood

Background. Callous-unemotional (CU) traits are associated with interpersonal difficulties and risk for severe conduct problems (CP). The ability to communicate thoughts and feelings is critical to social success, with language a promising treatment target. However, no prior studies have examined objective linguistic correlates of childhood CU traits in early childhood, which could give insight into underlying risk mechanisms and novel target treatments. Methods. We computed lexical (positive emotion, sad, and anger words) and conversational (interruptions and speech rate) markers produced by 131 children aged 5–6 years (M = 5.98; SD = 0.54, 58.8% female) and their parents while narrating wordless storybooks during two online visits separated by 6–8 weeks (M = 6.56, SD = 1.11; two books, order counterbalanced). Audio recordings were diarized, time-aligned, and orthographically transcribed using WebTrans. Conversational markers were calculated using R and word frequencies were calculated using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software. We examined links between child CU traits and linguistic markers, and explored whether relationships were moderated by child sex. Results. Higher CU traits were associated with fewer positive emotion words produced by parents and children. Higher CU traits were also associated with greater concordance in the degree of interruptions and expression of anger emotion words by parents and children. Conclusions. Results suggest that objective linguistic correlates of CU traits are detectable during early childhood, which could inform adjunctive treatment modules that improve outcomes by precisely tracking and targeting subtle communication patterns.

Developmental Impacts of PANS/PANDAS and Inadequate Support for Children and Families.

This article examines the degree to which major domains of child development are affected by Pediatric Acute-Onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome (PANS)/Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections (PANDAS). Using cross-sectional survey data collected with an international sample of parents who identify as having children with PANS/PANDAS (N = 402), this study analyzed parent-reported developmental impacts and access to treatment and adequate supports. Parents reported that PANS/PANDAS negatively impacted their children's development across all domains: Emotional Development (92% of children), Social Development (90%), Cognitive Development (86%), Academic Growth (86%), Identity Development (83%), Talent Development (73%) and Language Development (50%). In addition, developmental impacts were likely to be more severe for children whose parents reported a greater number of inadequate supports with parenting, school, extracurricular activities, and crisis situations. These results indicate that children and families affected by PANS/PANDAS need better support to maximize children's opportunities, at home, in school, and in their communities, to continue developing despite challenging neuropsychiatric symptoms.