What makes a word a good representative of the category of “emotion”? The role of feelings and interoception.

Abstract

The words we use to describe emotions vary in terms of prototypicality; that is, some of these words may be more representative of the semantic category of emotion than others (e.g., anger refers more clearly to an emotion than boredom). Based on a multicomponential conception of emotions, the aim of the present study was to examine the contribution of several variables to emotion prototypicality. Some of those variables are related to the distinct components of emotions: evaluation, action, body expression, internal body sensations (interoception), and feelings. Other variables are related to the concreteness/abstractness distinction: sensory experience, social interaction, thought, and morality. We collected ratings for these variables for a large set of words (1,286) which varied in emotion prototypicality. A regression analysis revealed that the variables that most contributed to emotion prototypicality were feelings and interoception. Furthermore, a factor analysis identified two underlying factors: socioemotional polarity and emotional experience. The scores of each word in both factors were used to create a two-dimensional space and a density plot which provides relevant information about the organization of emotion concepts in memory.

What distinguishes emotion-label words from emotion-laden words? The characterization of affective meaning from a multi-componential conception of emotions

“…We also examined the validity of our ratings by comparing the ratings collected in the questionaries with those reported in previous normative studies. This was based on the 103 words that overlapped with the study of Ferré et al (2023) . We found moderate to high Pearson correlations for all the variables: action: r (101) = 0.49, p < 0.01; assessment: r (101) = 0.92, p < 0.01; expression: r (101) = 0.55, p < 0.01; feeling: r (101) = 0.54, p < 0.01; and interoception: r (101) = 0.40, p < 0.01.…”

“…This study followed the approach used by Ferré et al (2023) , who aimed to identify the features that define EM words. The authors examined the contribution of CPM variables to the emotion prototypicality of a set of potential EM words, and identified interoception and feeling as the best predictors of emotion prototypicality.…”

“…In a further study, Scherer and Fontaine (2019) conducted a larger-scale analysis using 142 emotion features, finding that the semantic structure of emotion words is consistent with the CPM. A similar approach was adopted by Ferré et al (2023) , who collected subjective ratings for a large set of potential EM words in relation to a series of variables associated with the different components of emotion: action, assessment, expression, feeling, and interoception. They also considered other variables, such as valence and arousal.…”

“…The aim of this study was to examine whether the most relevant affective characteristics of EM words are also useful to differentiate EM words from EL words, and if they distinguish these two types of words from neutral words. We used the same framework as Ferré et al (2023) and examined the role of a set of variables related to the different components of the emotional response, as well as the role of valence and arousal. We collected ratings for a large set of EM, EL, and NT words in relation to assessment, interoception, expression, action, and feeling.…”

“…Second, we made a prediction model using a Random Forest Classifier to identify the variables that most predicted whether a word belonged to a certain type. Based on the findings of Ferré et al (2023) , we expected feeling and interception to be the most important predictors of word membership in the EM category. Furthermore, these variables might not have a significant role in the definition of EL words, considering that they do not denote emotions, and thus contribute to the differentiation between EM and EL words.…”