Effects of achievement contexts on the meaning structure of emotion words

ABSTRACT

Little is known about the impact of context on the meaning of emotion words. In the present study, we used a semantic profiling instrument (GRID) to investigate features representing five emotion components (appraisal, bodily reaction, expression, action tendencies, and feeling) of 11 emotion words in situational contexts involving success or failure. We compared these to the data from an earlier study in which participants evaluated the typicality of features out of context. Profile analyses identified features for which typicality changed as a function of context for all emotion words, except contentment, with appraisal features being most frequently affected. Those context effects occurred for both hypothesised basic and non-basic emotion words. Moreover, both data sets revealed a four-dimensional structure. The four dimensions were largely similar (valence, power, arousal, and novelty). The results suggest that context may not change the underlying dimensionality but affects facets of the meaning of emotion words.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion words
• context
• achievement emotions
• emotion components
• meaning structure

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Loderer and collaborators analysed the AECG data solely to examine predictions of the CVT theory (Loderer et al., 2015). The data of the FullGRID have been used only in a cultural comparative analysis (Fontaine et al., 2013). Those data were analysed in a new way in the present article in order to examine context effects on the meaning structure of emotion words.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an ERC Advanced Grant in the European Research Council Community’s 7th Framework Programme under the grant agreement 230331-PROPEREMO (Production and perception of emotion: an affective science approach) to Klaus R. Scherer and by the National Center of Competence in Research Affective Sciences – Emotions in Individual Behaviour and Social Processes financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation (51NF40-104897), hosted by the University of Geneva.