The Role of Language in Emotional Development

Natural emotion vocabularies as windows on distress and well-being

“…Future research should investigate experimentally whether the state mood intensification such as we observed could have been constructed in part by more elaborative use of emotion synonyms. If so, this could be interpreted in line with constructivist emotion theories: while finding a precise emotion labels is presumed to aid in emotion regulation because it creates access to relevant emotion knowledge 5,44 , applying more than one relevant label may be counterproductive for downregulating negative states, given that the labels may also reify the perception and felt experience of the state being named 34 . It is tempting to use the current findings to speculate about whether and how broad emotion vocabularies may be psychologically adaptive (i.e., functions causally to increase individuals' well-being).…”

“…For instance, verbalizing taste sensations aids later memory retrieval 42 , suggesting words may sustain fleeting subjective states. Emotion labels, in particular, may influence which emotions individuals perceive in others and experience themselves 32,34,36,43 . Future research should investigate experimentally whether the state mood intensification such as we observed could have been constructed in part by more elaborative use of emotion synonyms.…”

“…Perhaps other features of emotion language, or coordinated habits or skills, are needed instead of-or in addition to-emotion language diversity. Instead of or in addition to EVs, psychological effects of emotion language may hinge on several other factors, including perhaps: context-specificity/precision of emotion language selections 18,44 , deep conceptual emotion knowledge 34 , cognitive efficiency of emotion naming processes 13,20 , and/or accompanying mental stance (e.g., nonreactiveness 58 ; nonjudgmentalness 59 ; perceived clarity of emotions; and/or ambiguity tolerance 10,60 ). Because words may help construct experience 34 , we cautiously speculate, based on our positive EV findings, that positive EV may be an especially fruitful target for mechanistic and applied study.…”

“…Dewey 31 has described the function of words as "a fence, a label, and a vehicle-all in one" 31 , meaning that words not only divide our continuous stream of experiences into discrete units, but also catalog experiences in memory for future use, and conceptually scaffold our interpretations of future events. Several others have articulated similar roles for language in shaping experience (see language-as-context 32 ; the mangrove effect 33 ; essence placeholders 34 ). Initial experiments seem to confirm that verbal concepts help construct perceptions of reality, including the experience and interpretation of emotional states 5,[34][35][36][37] .…”

“…Several others have articulated similar roles for language in shaping experience (see language-as-context 32 ; the mangrove effect 33 ; essence placeholders 34 ). Initial experiments seem to confirm that verbal concepts help construct perceptions of reality, including the experience and interpretation of emotional states 5,[34][35][36][37] .…”