This paper contributes to the ongoing methodological debate on context-free versus in-context presentation of experimental tasks. We report an experiment using the paradigm of a bribery experiment. In one condition, the task is presented in a typical bribery context, the other one uses abstract wording. Though the underlying context is heavily loaded with negative ethical preconceptions, we do not find significant differences with our 18 independent observations per treatment. We conjecture that the experimental design transmits the essential features of a bribery situation already with neutral framing, such that the presentation does not add substantially to subjects’ interpretation of the task.

A comprehensive database of emotional prototypicality (EmoPro) scores for 1,122 words in second-language (L2) English was provided and aided in selecting L2 English emotion-label words. EmoPro refers to the degree to which a word clearly represents or conveys an emotion. The results showed that EmoPro was influenced by various factors, including valence, arousal, socialness, age of acquisition (AoA) and concreteness. EmoPro in the L2 context demonstrated its ability to predict naming and lexical decision performance. The similarities observed between EmoPro in the L2 and in the first language (L1) exhibited comparable correlations with other emotional and semantic factors and shared associations with predictors in the L1. This study also serves as a valuable tool for research on L2 emotion words, especially in the selection of prototypical emotion-label words in L2 English.

While conducting experiments via the Internet has become quite popular recently, there is still an ongoing debate regarding the reliability of data obtained using this method, especially for subtle manipulations and measurements susceptible to minor changes (e.g., reaction times). In this series of two experiments employing the emotional Stroop task (using emotional word stimuli differing in their valence, arousal, and subjective significance levels), we compared the reaction times of participants taking part in experiments either in the laboratory (Experiment 1) or online (Experiment 2). In line with previous studies, there were no significant differences observed between the two experiments. Both modes of conducting studies yielded a similar pattern of results, namely interactions between valence and arousal, and a three-way interaction between valence, arousal, and subjective significance. We conclude that the pattern of disturbance in cognitive processing caused by affect is not susceptible to the setting that the subjects are in, which may be a significant argument for reliability of affect-related experiments conducted online.

Previous research suggests that emotion words elicit lower emotional reactivity in languages acquired later in life (LX), prompting bilinguals to make less emotional decisions when responding to emotionally charged moral dilemmas in the LX compared to their first language (L1). This study investigated the influence of word emotionality on bilinguals’ moral judgements by manipulating the degree of emotiveness of the moral questions (i.e., emotive versus neutral conditions) accompanying different types of moral dilemmas (i.e., personal/sacrificial versus impersonal/realistic). Mixed effects logistic regression models revealed that the use of the LX increased the number of utilitarian decisions in both the emotive and the neutral conditions but only in the sacrificial moral dilemmas. Moreover, the emotive questions led to more deontological moral judgements than the neutral questions but only in the L1. Taken together, these findings provide further insight into the impact of emotion on bilinguals’ moral decision-making.

Emotional prototypicality (EmoPro) quantifies the extent to which an emotion-label word represents emotion concepts. While previous research demonstrated faster recognition for high EmoPro words than low EmoPro words in Spanish, the modulation of EmoPro on emotion word recognition in other languages and its dependence on task demands remain unclear. This study employed both the lexical decision task (Experiment 1) and the valence judgment task (Experiment 2) to investigate the EmoPro effect among Chinese speakers. The results not only confirmed the role of EmoPro in Chinese emotion word recognition, supporting the prototype theory of emotion concepts, but also highlighted that the EmoPro effect was more pronounced in the valence judgment task (an explicit emotion task) than in the lexical decision task (an implicit emotion task). This suggests that EmoPro is associated with the ease of accessing emotion concepts and serves as an affective-semantic variable.

Second language (L2) learners need to acquire large vocabularies to approach native-like proficiency. Many controlled experiments have investigated the factors facilitating and hindering word learning; however, few studies have validated these findings in real-world learning scenarios. We use data from the language learning app Lingvist to explore how L2 word learning is affected by valence (positivity/negativity) and concreteness of target words and their linguistic contexts. We found that valence, but not concreteness, affects learning. Users learned positive and negative words better than neutral ones. Moreover, positive words are learned best in positive contexts and negative words in more negative contexts. Word and context valence effects are strongest on the learner’s second encounter with the target word and diminish across subsequent encounters. These findings provide support for theories of embodied cognition and the lexical quality hypothesis and point to the linguistic factors that make learning words, and by extension languages, faster.

Autobiographical memories (AMs) are partly influenced by people's ability to process and express their emotions. This study investigated the extent to which trait emotional intelligence (EI) contributed to the emotional vocabulary of 148 adolescents – 60 speakers of Spanish as a heritage language (HL) raised in Germany, 61 first-language (L1) German speakers and 27 L1 Spanish speakers – in their written AMs of anger and surprise. The results revealed that heritage speakers with high trait EI used more emotional words in their AMs. These bilinguals also used more positive, negative and high-arousal words in their HL and in their AMs of anger. Similar patterns were observed in the AMs produced in Spanish (HL and L1), but L1 Spanish speakers used more emotional words in their AMs of surprise. By contrast, L1 German speakers used more emotional words than bilinguals in their AMs in German, and AMs of anger in German included more emotional vocabulary than those addressing surprise events.

Recent studies suggest that similarity in emotional features and concreteness are critical cues underlying word association in native speakers. However, the lexical organization of a foreign language is less understood. This study aims to examine the structure of word associations within the mental lexicon of a foreign (English) and a native language. To this end, 145 native Spanish-speakers produced three lexical associates to cue words in both the foreign and native language. We observed that the associates were more neutrally valenced in the foreign language. Moreover, as cue words increased in their arousal, the produced associates were less arousing in the foreign language. Thus, the structure of these lexical associations could account for prior evidence of emotional detachment in foreign languages. Finally, as cues were more abstract, the foreign language associates were more abstract. Our findings revealed that the linguistic context modulated the lexical associations.

In the present study, we developed affective (valence and arousal) and sensory–motor (concreteness and imageability) norms for 210 English idioms rated by native English speakers (L1) and English second-language speakers (L2). Based on internal consistency analyses, the ratings were found to be highly reliable. Furthermore, we explored various relations within the collected measures (valence, arousal, concreteness, and imageability) and between these measures and some available psycholinguistic norms (familiarity, literal plausibility, and decomposability) for the same set of idioms. The primary findings were that (i) valence and arousal showed the typical U-shape relation, for both L1 and L2 data; (ii) idioms with more negative valence were rated as more arousing; (iii) the majority of idioms were rated as either positive or negative with only 4 being rated as neutral; (iv) familiarity correlated positively with valence and arousal; (v) concreteness and imageability showed a strong positive correlation; and (vi) the ratings of L1 and L2 speakers significantly differed for arousal and concreteness, but not for valence and imageability. We discuss our interpretation of these observations with reference to the literature on figurative language processing (both single words and idioms).

Valence is a crucial concept in studying spatial voting and party competition. The widely adopted approach is to rely on intercepts of vote choice models and to infer, based on their size and direction, how valence affects party strategies in empirical settings. The approach suffers from fundamental statistical flaws. This contribution provides the statistical fundamentals to advance the empirical modeling of valence. It proposes an appropriate modeling approach to interpret intercepts as valences and alternate specifications to parameterize the effects of valence.

Two experiments explored how the context of recently experiencing an abundance of positive or negative outcomes within a series of choices influences risk preferences. In each experiment, choices were made between a series of pairs of hypothetical 50/50 two-outcome gambles. Participants experienced a control set of mixed outcome gamble pairs intermingled with a randomly assigned set of (a) all-gain, (b) all-loss, or (c) a mixture of all-gain and all-loss gamble pairs. In both experiments, a positive experience led to reduced risk taking in the control set and a negative experience led to increased risk taking. These patterns persisted even after the all-gain and all-loss gamble pairs were no longer present. In addition, we showed that the good luck attributed to positive experiences was associated with decreased, rather than increased, risk taking. These results ran counter to the house money effect, and could not readily be accounted for by changes in assets. We suggest that the goals associated with the predominant valence are likely to be assimilated and applied to other choices within a given situation. We also discuss the need to learn more about the characteristics of choice bracketing and mental accounting that influence which aspects of situational context will be included or excluded from consideration when making each choice.

A distinction is proposed between recommending for preferred choice options and recommending against non-preferred choice options. In binary choice, both recommendation modes are logically, though not psychologically, equivalent. We report empirical evidence showing that speakers recommending for preferred options predominantly select positive frames, which are less common when speakers recommend against non-preferred options. In addition, option attractiveness is shown to affect speakers’ choice of frame, and adoption of recommendation mode. The results are interpreted in terms of three compatibility effects, (i) recommendation mode—valence framing compatibility: speakers’ preference for positive framing is enhanced under recommending for and diminished under recommending against instructions, (ii) option attractiveness—valence framing compatibility: speakers’ preference for positive framing is more pronounced for attractive than for unattractive options, and (iii) recommendation mode—option attractiveness compatibility: speakers are more likely to adopt a recommending for approach for attractive than for unattractive binary choice pairs.

Vowels are associated with valence, so that words containing /i/ (as in English meet) compared with /o/ (as in French rose) are typically judged to match positively valenced persons and objects. As yet, valence sound symbolism has been mainly observed for Indo-European languages. The present research extends this to a comparison of Japanese-speaking and German-speaking participants. Participants invented pseudo-words as names for faces with different emotional expressions (happy vs. neutral vs. sad vs. angry). For both Japanese-speaking and German-speaking participants, vowel usage depended on emotional valence. The vowel I was used more for positive (vs. other) expressions, whereas O and U were used less for positive (vs. other) expressions. A was associated with positive emotional valence for Japanese-speaking but not German-speaking participants. In sum, emotional valence associations of I (vs. rounded vowels) were similar in German and Japanese, suggesting that sound symbolism for emotional valence is not language specific.

Previous studies analysing the differences in emotionality in first and second language suggest that affective content of lexical items is modulated in certain contexts. This paper investigates the differences in valence and arousal ratings for 300 early words, in both oral and written modalities, through speakers’ subjective appraisal of words given by two immersion groups of Spanish late bilinguals (Chinese and European) compared with a group of native speakers. The main goal of our study is to identify the lexical areas where variability occurs, regarding to a set of affective (emotional charge and intensity), grammatical (nouns, adjectives and verbs) and semantic (concreteness) features of words. Our results show that valence is the dimension where the greatest variability is observed between native and bilinguals, although the influence of the independent factors differs considerably. Besides, arousal yields illuminating data regarding the grammatical category of words and differentiation between the groups of participants.