How emotional are words ambiguous on the spaces of valence, origin and activation?

ABSTRACT

Not all of the stimuli that we encounter are unequivocal; some of them may be ambiguous. In a series of two experiments, we investigated how people perceive and assess the emotionality of the words ambiguous on three emotional spaces: valence (dimensions of positivity and negativity), origin (automaticity and reflectiveness), and activation (arousal and subjective significance). Using two types of measurement – behavioural and webcam-based eye tracking – we compared words of moderate and high ambiguity on each of those spaces with control (uniequivocal) words. The behavioural measurements indicated that reaction times were significantly longer for the control words than for all the ambiguous words; the emotionality of words of ambiguous valence and origin was rated as significantly lower than the control words and words of ambiguous activation. The eye-tracking measurements indicated that words of ambiguous valence and origin caused significantly more and longer eye fixations than control words and words of ambiguous activation. The results showed the visible distinctiveness of the ambiguous words compared with the control words; they also showed differences between words of various ambiguities, verifying the proposed new model for the emotional ambiguity and presenting the behavioral and eye tracking correlates for each of the three ambiguities.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotional words
• ambivalence
• ambiguity
• origin
• webcam-based eye tracking

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Kasjan Pietras and Magdalena Lasota for their help in gathering the data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Conflict of interests

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Data deposition

The datasets are available in an online figshare repository: https://figshare.com/s/9a2ddeeeff792837c871.

Notes

1 We described each of the scales to the participants, namely: “The first picture shows a person in a neutral state. Last picture shows an individual who is obviously elated – relevant experiences could include fun, delight, happiness, relaxation, satisfaction, or repose. The remaining pictures depict intermediate states” (positivity scale), “The first picture shows a person in a neutral state. Last picture shows an individual who is clearly distressed – relevant experiences could include panic, irritation, disgust, despair, defeat, or crisis. The remaining pictures depict intermediate states” (negativity scale), “The pictures show an individual who is gradually more and more overwhelmed with appeals from the heart – words that could represent these experiences include being beside oneself, complete commitment, full engagement, impulsivity, spontaneity, lack of hesitation” (automaticity scale), “The pictures shows a person who is gradually more and more under the sway of the mind, who is reflective – words that could be used to represent this state include feelings that result from contemplation, planning, consideration, prediction, choices, or comparisons” (reflectiveness scale), “The first picture shows a person whose current experience is not significant to his goals, plans, and expectations – his experience could be referred to using words such as trivial, gone unnoticed, fleeting, inconsequential, insignificant, unimportant. The last picture shows a person who is experiencing something very important to his goals, plans, and expectations – his experience could be referred to with words such as vitally important, significant, turning-point, consequential, meaningful, decisive. The remaining pictures depict intermediate states” (subjective significance scale), and “The first pictures shows an individual who is very calm, almost sleeping – relevant states could include relaxation, tranquility, idleness, meditation, boredom, or laziness. The last picture shows an individual who is bursting with arousal – relevant states could include excitation, euphoria, excitement, rage, agitation, or anger. The remaining pictures depict intermediate states” (arousal scale; Wielgopolan & Imbir, 2023).

Additional information

Funding

The studies were funded by the grant of the Excellence Initiative Research University (Ist Complex programme of support for UW PhD students). This work was supported by Ministerstwo Edukacji i Nauki: [Grant Number BOB-IDUB-622-20/2022].