Development of a list of emotional words comprising two-character idioms

Abstract

In this study, we aimed to create a list of stimulus words suitable for evoking emotions that are placed evenly in the emotional space. College students (n＝38) were invited into the laboratory and presented with two-character (Kanji) idioms, which were controlled for the number of characters and moras. We asked the students to evaluate the emotional valence and arousal level on an affect grid for each of the two-character idioms. We succeeded in creating a list of emotional words that minimize the interdependent influences of emotional valence and arousal factor as much as possible. A total of 271 two-character idioms were constituted using an evaluation that focused on the evoked emotions, and not on the attributions of the words’ meanings. Therefore, the inventory has adequate validity as a list of emotional words to be used for experiments.