Emotional Words Research Articles

Public Health Messaging on Twitter During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Observational Study.

Effective communication is crucial during health crises, and social media has become a prominent platform for public health experts (PHEs) to share information and engage with the public. At the same time, social media also provides a platform for pseudoexperts who may spread contrarian views. Despite the importance of social media, key elements of communication, such as the use of moral or emotional language and messaging strategy, particularly during the emergency phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, have not been explored. This study aimed to analyze how PHEs and pseudoexperts communicated with the public during the emergency phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. We focused on the emotional and moral language used in their messages on various COVID-19 pandemic-related topics. We also analyzed their interactions with political elites and the public's engagement with PHEs to gain a deeper understanding of their influence on public discourse. For this observational study, we gathered a dataset of >539,000 original posts or reposts from 489 PHEs and 356 pseudoexperts on Twitter (subsequently rebranded X) from January 2020 to January 2021, along with the replies to the original posts from the PHEs. We identified the key issues that PHEs and pseudoexperts prioritized. We also determined the emotional and moral language in both the original posts and the replies. This allows us to characterize priorities for PHEs and pseudoexperts as well as differences in messaging strategy between these 2 groups. We also evaluated the influence of PHEs' language and strategy on the public response. Our analyses revealed that PHEs focused more on masking, health care, education, and vaccines, whereas pseudoexperts discussed therapeutics and lockdowns more frequently (P<.001). PHEs typically used positive emotional language across all issues (P<.001), expressing optimism and joy. Pseudoexperts often used negative emotions of pessimism and disgust, while limiting positive emotional language to origins and therapeutics (P<.001). Along the dimensions of moral language, PHEs and pseudoexperts differed on care versus harm and authority versus subversion across different issues. Negative emotional and moral language tends to boost engagement in COVID-19 discussions across all issues. However, the use of positive language by PHEs increases the use of positive language in the public responses. PHEs act as liberal partisans: they express more positive affect in their posts directed at liberals and more negative affect in their posts directed at conservative elites. In contrast, pseudoexperts act as conservative partisans. These results provide nuanced insights into the elements that have polarized the COVID-19 discourse. Understanding the nature of the public response to PHEs' messages on social media is essential for refining communication strategies during health crises. Our findings underscore the importance of using moral-emotional language strategically to reduce polarization and build trust.

Parents’ and toddlers’ emotion regulation: the importance of emotion talk

ABSTRACT Through emotion socialization, parents shape their children’s emotional development. Parents’ characteristics determine how they do this. We investigated parents’ emotion regulation, belief in the importance of emotion talk, and emotion socialization in the form of emotion talk in relation to toddlers’ emotion regulation. During an online video-call task 75 Dutch mothers talked with their toddlers (M-age = 23 months, Range = 21-25) about illustrations depicting emotion-related situations. On average 2.33% of the total words used by parents were emotions words. The emotion regulation strategies of parents did not relate to their emotion talk and the emotion talk of parents did not relate to children’s emotion regulation. However, parents with stronger beliefs in the importance of emotion talk, did use more emotion words and reported more effective emotion regulation in their children. Possibly time is needed for emotion talk to consolidate into children’s emotion regulation.

“Out of sight out of mind”: attentional characteristics in mothers who have children with autism

BackgroundFamilies are faced with enormous challenges in caring for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) over a lifetime. As the main caregiver of children, mothers who have children with autism are in poor health compared to the mothers of typically developing (TD) children. Previous studies have revealed that the mental health of mothers has a direct impact on children. On the other hand, attention bias (AB) can be an important indicator of the mental status. Therefore, the characteristic of AB of mothers who have children with autism can be a window into the treatment of autism.MethodsIn this study, 28 mothers who have children with autism and 31 mothers of typically developing children completed the modified dot-probe task to explore the attention bias.ResultsWe found that there was a significant difference of AB between mothers who have children with autism and mothers of typically developing children, which indicated that mothers who have children with autism tend to avoid negative emotional words.ConclusionsThe current study illuminates the attentional characteristics of mothers who have children with autism toward emotional words, which provides a new starting point for the intervention of mothers of children with autism.

The Power of Persuasive Language in Judicial Opinions

Judicial opinions wield immense power, not only in shaping the outcomes of legal disputes but also in molding societal norms and public perceptions of justice. This paper examines the persuasive tools embedded in judicial language, exploring its symbolic enactment of authority, its rhetorical techniques, and its impact on legal interpretation. By dissecting the use of analogies, metaphors, emotive language, repetition, and parallelism, the analysis illuminates how judges craft their reasoning to establish authority, persuade audiences, and legitimize decisions. Moreover, it underscores the ethical considerations and responsibilities accompanying such linguistic choices. As a communicative enterprise, the law depends on its language for both clarity and persuasion, making rhetorical skills a cornerstone of judicial practice. The study concludes by emphasizing the importance of rhetorical training for judges and advocates, suggesting that further research into the evolution of judicial communication can enhance understanding of its role in shaping law and society. Keywords: Judicial opinions, persuasive language, legal rhetoric, analogies, metaphors.

Parental singing during kangaroo care: parents' experiences of singing to their preterm infant in the NICU

IntroductionSinging fosters emotional connections, attachment, bonding, and language development in infants. Prematurely born infants, however, are at risk of missing this vital communication, impacting neurodevelopment and family wellbeing, especially during prolonged hospital stays. Kangaroo care provides physiological and emotional support, while Creative Music Therapy (CMT) has demonstrated positive effects on neurodevelopment, parental wellbeing, and attachment. The Singing Kangaroo project, a Swedish-Finnish multi-center randomized controlled trial (RCT), investigated the impact of parental singing during kangaroo care. This qualitative follow-up study explores these findings through the lens of Antonovsky's Sense of Coherence (SOC) model.MethodSemi-structured interviews were conducted with 28 families (20 intervention group, eight control group) at their infant's 5-month corrected age. The intervention group received CMT twice weekly during kangaroo care for 4 weeks in the NICU, while the control group received standard care. Data were analyzed inductively, followed by deductive categorization within the SOC framework, focusing on its three core components: Manageability, Comprehensibility, and Meaningfulness.ResultsParents in the intervention group reported enhanced understanding of how singing fosters attachment and boosts their self-esteem, aligning with increased manageability and comprehensibility. Control group parents also experienced joy in singing, which positively influenced family wellbeing, albeit less extensively. Across both groups, singing was described as a meaningful activity that strengthened parent-infant bonding and promoted emotional connection within the family.ConclusionParental singing during kangaroo care, particularly when supported by a trained music therapist, enhances parents' sense of coherence by fostering comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness. This study highlights the long-term benefits of integrating CMT into family-centered NICU care to support both infants' neurodevelopment and family wellbeing.

Localizing music’s “language of emotion” in the human brain: A functional MRI study of scale and emotion processing.

Localizing music’s “language of emotion” in the human brain: A functional MRI study of scale and emotion processing.

Email outreach attracts the US policymakers’ attention to climate change but common advocacy techniques do not improve engagement

One of the most challenging aspects of climate change mitigation today is not identifying solutions but reaching political leaders with climate scientists’ existing solutions. Although there is substantial research on climate change communication, research rarely focuses on one of the most impactful groups: policymakers. It is essential to test theoretically sound methods to increase lawmakers’ attention to research evidence. In a series of four rapid-cycle randomized controlled email trials (N = 6642–7620 per trial), we test three common and theoretically derived advocacy tactics to increase U.S. policymaker engagement with a climate change fact sheet sent via email (i.e., a norms manipulation, a number focused manipulation, and emotional language manipulation). In all four trials, the control message increased engagement more than messages using advocacy tactics, measured by fact sheet clicks. This demonstrates the importance of testing communication methods within the appropriate populations, especially a population with considerable influence over climate policy.

Using natural language processing to identify patterns associated with depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Combining data-driven natural language processing techniques with traditional methods using predefined word lists may offer greater insights into the connections between language patterns and depression and anxiety symptoms, particularly within specific stressful contexts. Between 2020 and 2021, 1106 participants wrote narrative responses describing their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic and completed the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21 (DASS). We investigated language patterns associated with DASS symptoms using established categories from Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) and sentiment analysis, as well as exploratory natural language processing techniques. Finally, we constructed machine learning regression models in order to assess how much of the variance in DASS symptoms is related to language use. We found significant positive bivariate correlations between total DASS symptoms and hypothesized LIWC categories: first-person singular pronouns, absolute language, and negative emotion words. These results remained largely similar when using negative sentiment scores and when statistically controlling for gender, age, and education. Exploratory n-gram analyses also revealed new individual words and phrases correlated with total DASS symptoms. Lastly, our regression models demonstrated a significant association between language use and total DASS symptoms (R2 = 0.36-0.62). The current study is one of the first to examine associations between language use and DASS symptoms during the pandemic using both traditional and data-driven techniques. These results replicate and extend prior findings regarding negative emotion and absolute language and identify unique correlates of DASS symptoms during pandemic-related stress, contributing to the literature on language and mental health more broadly.

Social media network public opinion emotion classification method based on multi-feature fusion and multi-scale hybrid neural network.

With the rapid development of the internet, an increasing number of users express their subjective opinions on social media platforms. By analyzing the sentiment of these texts, we can gain insights into public sentiment, industry changes, and market trends, enabling timely adjustments and preemptive strategies. This article initially constructs vectors using semantic fusion and word order features. Subsequently, it develops a lexicon vector based on word similarity and leverages supervised corpora training to obtain a more pronounced transfer weight vector of sentiment intensity. A multi-feature fused emotional word vector is ultimately formed by concatenating and fusing these weighted transfer vectors. Experimental comparisons on two multi-class microblog comment datasets demonstrate that the multi-feature fusion (WOOSD-CNN) word vector model achieves notable improvements in sentiment polarity accuracy and categorization effectiveness. Additionally, for aspect-level sentiment analysis of user generated content (UGC) text, a unified learning framework based on an information interaction channel is proposed, which enables the team productivity center (TPC) task. Specifically, an information interaction channel is designed to assist the model in leveraging the latent interactive characteristics of text. An in-depth analysis addresses the label drift phenomenon between aspect term words, and a position-aware module is constructed to mitigate the local development plan (LDP) issue.

Development of a checklist for cognitive assessment requirements (CARE) based on a Delphi consensus study

Situational factors can influence cognitive performance and should be considered for conducting cognitive assessments. The objective of this project was to develop a checklist for Cognitive Assessment Requirements (CARE) to identify these situational factors before conducting cognitive assessments and account for them. This study employed a four-round Delphi approach involving 22 experts to identify situational factors that can impact cognitive assessment results. The development of a robust and well-balanced checklist was guided by a consensus-driven approach, which considered metrics such as Interquartile Deviation (IQD) (> 1.00), Percentage of Positive Responses (PPR, above 60%), and mean importance ratings (< 3 on a 5-point Likert scale) to assess both degree of agreement and item importance. Consensus was reached, leading to a 14-item checklist to evaluate cognitive assessment requirements. These items were categorized into six groups: Acute Illness or Physical Discomfort, Medication Effects and Substance Use, Sleep Quality and Fatigue, Emotional State, Language factors, and Environmental factors. The CARE can be employed prior to cognitive assessments to identify situational factors of relevance to the individual client, thereby creating a more favorable environment for cognitive evaluation, and enhancing the reliability of the assessment findings. Furthermore, the CARE can help determine the level of confidence in the results by assessing whether the conditions are conducive to testing or if situational factors may undermine the validity of the evaluation.

Emotionalization of the 2021–2022 Global Energy Crisis Coverage: Analyzing the Rhetorical Appeals as Manipulation Means in the Mainstream Media

As the issues of the world’s overreliance on fossil fuels still remain unresolved, mainstream media play a central role in influencing public attitudes towards energy sources. This article aimed to consider Aristotle’s rhetorical appeals as manipulation means in the news coverage of the 2021–2022 global energy crisis. Using computer-aided text analysis, media framing, discourse, and rhetorical analyses, this paper analyzes 600 news articles published on the websites of the four mainstream media sources from the key countries that were affected by the crisis. The results confirmed emotionalization of the news coverage that occurred through the use of similar rhetorical appeals and emotive language means aimed at inducing positive or negative feelings and shaping public opinion. The UK and US mainstream media appeared to rely more on the opinions of political, business, and energy authorities, highlighting a high level of politicization of their coverage. The findings also indicated polarization of the attitudes in the coverage, with mainly negative narratives about fossil fuels and more positive narratives about renewable energies, which contributed to public opinion manipulation and energy decision-making. This study opens up perspectives for future research on media emotions and rhetorical appeals as powerful manipulation means in applied linguistics, rhetoric, and journalism.

Analisis Framing Dan Retorika dalam Teks Pidato Menteri Luar Negeri RI Terkait Isu Kemanusiaan di Palestina Tahun 2024

This study focuses on the analysis of rhetoric and framing in the speeches of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia, Retno Marsudi, delivered at two major international forums in 2024, namely the United Nations Security Council Open Debate and the International Court of Justice. Using a qualitative approach grounded in the interpretive paradigm, this research employs Ibnu Hamad's framing analysis to understand how the Minister of Foreign Affairs constructs discourse related to humanitarian issues in Palestine. Pathos rhetoric serves as a key element in the speech text, used to evoke the audience's emotions and influence their perception of human rights issues in the Israel-Palestine conflict. The analysis results reveal that Minister Retno Marsudi’s speeches highlight verbal and non-verbal symbols that reinforce Indonesia's solidarity with Palestine. The use of emotional language, quotes from Israeli officials, and symbolic attributes like the keffiyeh support the framing aimed at portraying Israel as the primary perpetrator of humanitarian crimes. Strategic fact presentation is also employed to emphasize the United Nations Security Council's failure to enforce resolutions against Israel. Priming is conducted by selecting critical moments to maximize the audience's attention to the delivered message. This study provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of humanitarian diplomacy through state speeches. However, the effectiveness of the pathos rhetoric used needs further examination by observing the audience's direct responses. This research is expected to contribute to the development of political communication studies, particularly in the context of framing and rhetoric in state speech texts.

Portfolio assessment in AI-enhanced learning environments: a pathway to emotion regulation, mindfulness, and language learning attitudes

In recent years, the incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) into instructional settings has sparked important interest in how it can develop different aspects of language learning, principally in the realm of assessment. While traditional assessment methods have long been central to evaluating learners’ progress, the rise of AI tools presents an opportunity to revolutionize assessment practices by providing more personalized and adaptive feedback. This study explored the significance of portfolio assessment in AI-assisted environments, focusing on its impact on academic emotion regulation (AER), mindfulness, and attitudes toward language learning. A total of 69 students (38 in the experimental group (EG) and 31 in the control group (CG) from Bahir Dar University, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, aged 22–34 years, participated in this quasi-experimental study. The participants, enrolled in the final term of their Bachelor’s program in English Teaching, were randomly assigned to either the EG or CG. The EG engaged in a portfolio assessment approach where AI was employed by the course instructor to review the portfolios and provide continuous, individualized feedback. Conversely, the CG also followed a portfolio assessment approach but relied on traditional teacher-led feedback without AI integration. The study employed pretests and posttests to measure AER and mindfulness levels before and after the intervention. Additionally, an attitude questionnaire was administered to the EG to assess their perceptions of AI-based portfolio assessment. Data analysis included analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), independent sample t-test, and one-sample t-test to determine the effects of the intervention. The findings indicated the potential of AI-assisted portfolio assessment in enhancing AER and mindfulness while fostering positive attitudes toward language learning. By comparing AI-integrated and traditional approaches, this study provides valuable insights into the role of AI in promoting effective and engaging learning experiences in EFL contexts.

Cultural fit in emotion versus language: a study of Dutch-speaking Belgians and Turkish migrants in Belgium.

Cultural fit is thought to benefit immigrants' wellbeing and integration. Previous research on cultural fit focused on explicit attitudes (e.g., how individuals identify with their heritage and host cultures) at the expense of psychological processes (e.g., the extent to which individuals make meaning in similar ways with their surrounding culture). We examined cultural fit in meaning-making in emotional contexts in two complementary ways: first, based on patterns of emotion endorsement (emotional fit), second, based on patterns of word use describing emotional situations (language fit). Dutch-speaking Belgians and Turkish migrants in Belgium (Ns = 100) described two positive and two negative emotional situations, and rated the intensity of their experience on a set of emotion terms. Language patterns in the descriptions, as quantified by the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, distinguished between cultures more effectively than rating patterns. The two fit measures did not converge; they were in fact negatively associated in some analyses, particularly for Turkish migrants' emotional fit and language fit with Belgian culture, suggesting that when these migrants felt similar emotions, they attended to different aspects of their experience. Future research should disentangle the implications of various types of cultural fit on outcomes relevant to immigrant minorities.

Categorization processes in emotion expression recognition: The roles of language and essentialism.

We examined categorical processing biases in the perception and recognition of facial expressions of emotion across two studies. In both studies, participants first learned to discriminate between two ambiguous facial expressions of emotion selected from the middle of a continuous array of blended expressions (i.e., an array created from morphing images of two facial expressions together, with still images selected in equidistant increments). Participants were then asked to recognize the specific expressions they were trained to discriminate. In Study 1, target expressions labeled with emotion words (e.g., more angry face) during discrimination and recognition tasks were misremembered as more perceptually distinct from one another and therefore more perceptually similar to the stereotypical expression for their labeled emotion category than they were in reality. Critically, in Study 2, these recognition biases were significantly reduced or absent in conditions where the target expressions were not labeled with emotion words (e.g., Face A), demonstrating the role of emotion words in promoting categorical processing biases in emotion recognition. Moreover, in the absence of emotion labels, peoples' beliefs about the nature of emotion categories were related to the extent to which they employed categorical processing during emotion perception and recognition. Specifically, people with more essentialist beliefs about emotion categories-believing emotion categories are more innate, biologically-based, and immutable-exhibited more pronounced categorical processing biases during emotion recognition. Findings shed light on the critical role of language and cognition in constructing emotion and add to empirical findings on categorical processing in emotion perception. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotion word production tasks grant insight into the development of emotion word organization and accessibility.

Children are often instructed to "use their words" to communicate their emotions, which requires them to quickly access words that best describe their feelings. Adults vary in their ability to bring both nonemotion and emotion words to mind (two capacities called verbal fluency and emotion fluency). However, no studies have examined how emotion fluency emerges across development, despite the fact that mastering emotion language is an important developmental task. A cross-sectional sample of participants aged 4-25 years (N = 194) generated as many fruit words as possible in 60 s (to measure verbal fluency) and as many emotion words as possible in 60 s (to measure emotion fluency). Emotion fluency was highly correlated with verbal fluency, and both showed similar increases across age, plateauing in late adolescence. Participants produced more negative emotion words than positive or neutral words, and these proportions were invariant across age. Network analyses shed light on the emergence of semantic networks underlying emotion organization across age. Finally, age of acquisition, valence, dominance, concreteness, and word length were significantly associated with the order in which emotion words came to participants' minds, suggesting that these dimensions are associated with the accessibility of emotion concepts. Interestingly, the influence of these dimensions on the order of emotion word production was invariant across age. Results from this study illustrate the developmental emergence of emotion fluency and provide new insight into the key dimensions that are associated with which emotion words rapidly come to mind. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Supplemental Material for Emotion Word Production Tasks Grant Insight Into the Development of Emotion Word Organization and Accessibility

Supplemental Material for Emotion Word Production Tasks Grant Insight Into the Development of Emotion Word Organization and Accessibility

Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Fake News: A Comparative Study of Instagram Users in Greece and Portugal

As our society increasingly relies on digital platforms for information, the spread of fake news has become a pressing concern. This study investigates the ability of Greek and Portuguese Instagram users to identify fake news, highlighting the influence of cultural differences. The responses of 220 Instagram users were collected through questionnaires in Greece and Portugal. The data analysis investigates characteristics of Instagram posts, social endorsement, and platform usage duration. The results reveal distinct user behaviors: Greeks exhibit a unique inclination towards social connections, displaying an increased trust in friends’ content and investing more time on Instagram, reflecting the importance of personal connections in their media consumption. They also give less importance to a certain post’s characteristics, such as content opposing personal beliefs, emotional language, and poor grammar, spelling, or formatting when identifying fake news, compared to the Portuguese, suggesting a weaker emphasis on content quality in their evaluations. These findings show that cultural differences affect how people behave on Instagram. Hence, content creators, platforms, and policymakers need specific plans to make online spaces more informative. Strategies should focus on enhancing awareness of key indicators of fake news, such as linguistic quality and post structure, while addressing the role of personal and social networks in the spread of misinformation.

Exploring semantic expression disparities in intragenerational and intergenerational communication: A novel perspective on socioemotional selectivity theory.

The Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST) posits that older and younger adults have different life goals due to differences in perceived remaining lifetime. Younger adults focus more on future-oriented knowledge exploration and forming new friendships, while older adults prioritize present-focused emotional regulation and maintaining close relationships. While previous research has found these age differences manifest in autobiographical textual expressions, their presence in verbal communication remains unexplored. We recruited 36 older adults and 36 younger adults to form 12 younger adults-younger adults dyads, 12 older adults-older adults dyads, and 12 younger adults-older adults dyads engaging in three conversational scenarios. Analysis of communication transcripts using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count revealed that in intragenerational communication, older adults used more present-focused and family-related words, and fewer future-focused, negative emotion, and knowledge acquisition words compared to younger adults, aligning with SST predictions. However, in intergenerational communication, younger and older adults showed similar patterns in future-focused, cognitive, and family-related language use. This suggests that participants adjusted their goal orientations to accommodate each other, mitigating the age differences proposed by SST and partially supporting the Interpersonal Cognitive Consistency Model. These findings indicate that while SST explains semantic expressions in intragenerational communication, group dynamics toward verbal consistency play a more vital role in intergenerational communication. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

What can emotion and abstract words tell us about context availability ratings?

What can emotion and abstract words tell us about context availability ratings?