People's active emotion vocabulary: Free listing of emotion labels and their association to salient psychological variables

Abstract

The study is on the 'working emotion vocabulary', i.e., words easily accessed when people are asked to list emotions. Participants (N 1146, 65.9% women, 15-30 year-olds), in an on-line task, listed 621 distinct words; 21 words were listed by 10%-65% (including joy, happiness, sadness, fear, anger, by 50% at least), 93 by 2%-9% (not including 'errors', e.g., naming eliciting events), 507 by 1%. In sum, most listed words did refer to emotions and showed great variability. Women supplied more 'Correct' Emotion Words (CEW) than men. The active (CEW) and the 'passive' vocabulary (e.g., ability to recognize synonyms of emotion targets) were uncorrelated. Production of negative (4,95) and positive (3,76) CEW was significantly associated with emotion-related abilities and traits - e.g., recognition of facial expressions of emotions, expressive transparency, awareness of emotions, life satisfaction, loneliness, alexithymia and health. The results have implications for emotion communication and understanding. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.