Concepts of Emotion: "Emotionness", and Dimensional Ratings of Italian Emotion Words

Abstract

Italian emotion terms (N = 153) were judged by samples of Italian university students in eight studies, two of which were replications. The studies collected normative ratings (a) on the dimensions of Valence, Intensity, and Duration, and (b) on “emotionness” (i.e. prototypicality judgements, frequencies in a spontaneous production task, and reaction times in word categorisation). Two sets of multiple regression analyses showed that Intensity, Duration, and Valence ratings significantly predicted, but to a varying degree, individual “emotionness” ratings, as well as “emotionness” factor scores, a compound index. Intensity appeared to be a dimension that can subsume information about other emotion features, especially duration. Additional predictors included word length, and, less often, frequency of words in the language. The results were interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that “emotionness” judgements are summary-like statements of a complex computation that considers emotional features denoted by a word.