Leipzig Affective Norms for German: A reliability study

Abstract

To facilitate investigations of verbal emotional processing, we introduce the Leipzig Affective Norms for German (LANG), a list of 1,000 German nouns that have been rated for emotional valence, arousal, and concreteness. A critical factor regarding the quality of normative word data is their reliability. We therefore acquired ratings from a sample that was tested twice, with an interval of 2 years, to calculate test-retest reliability. Furthermore, we recruited a second sample to test reliability across independent samples. The results show (1) the typical quadratic relation of valence and arousal, replicating previous data, (2) very high test-retest reliability (>.95), and (3) high correlations between the two samples (>.85). Because the range of ratings was also very high, we provide a comprehensive set of words with reliable affective norms, which makes it possible to select highly controlled subsamples varying in emotional status. The database is available as a supplement for this article at http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental. © 2010 The Psychonomic Society, Inc.