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Keeping it Cool: Emotional Biases in the English Lexicon

Keeping it Cool: Emotional Biases in the English Lexicon. Amy Beth Warriner & Victor Kuperman. The Pollyanna Hypothesis.

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Keeping it Cool: Emotional Biases in the English Lexicon

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  1. Keeping it Cool: Emotional Biases in the English Lexicon Amy Beth Warriner & Victor Kuperman

  2. The Pollyanna Hypothesis There is a universal human tendency to use evaluatively positive words more frequently, diversely and facilely than evaluatively negative words. Put even more simply, humans tend to “look on (and talk about) the bright side of life.” Boucher & Osgood, 1969 There is a universal human tendency to use evaluatively positive words more frequently, diversely and facilely than evaluatively negative words. Put even more simply, humans tend to “look on (and talk about) the bright side of life.” Warriner & Kuperman

  3. Type Frequency Of all the words we have in our lexicon, how many are positive and how many are negative? The distribution of items in our lexicon reflects what we pay attention to and distinguish between in our world. Warriner & Kuperman

  4. Token Frequency How often do we use the positive and negative words available in the lexicon? Is valence related to word frequency of occurrence? We may purposely use more positive words to reflect or create positive experiences OR our increased use of certain words may create positive feelings from mere exposure. Warriner & Kuperman

  5. Previous Studies Warriner & Kuperman

  6. Comparing Datasets *Correlation between ratings is .919, but only 4,504 words overlapped Warriner & Kuperman

  7. Emotion is (at least) Two-Dimensional EXAMPLES High Valence, High Arousal SEX High Valence, Low Arousal RAINBOW Low Valence, High Arousal GUNPOINT Low Valence, Low Arousal DUST • Valence • Measured on a scale of 1 (how sad) to 9 (how happy) a word makes a person feel • Arousal • Measured on a scale of 1 (how calm) to 9 (how excited) a word makes a person feel NOT YET EXAMINED Warriner & Kuperman

  8. OUR GOALS • To re-examine the positivity bias (valence) with respect to both type and token frequency • With a large set of carefully collected, restricted, and valid emotional ratings • Across a variety of corpora • To perform the exact same analyses for arousal and compare them to valence Warriner & Kuperman

  9. VALENCE Types and Tokens in Warriner et al, 2013 Scale Midpoint Unweighted Mean Weighted Mean Warriner & Kuperman

  10. Types and Tokens in Warriner et al, 2013 VALENCE Scale Midpoint Unweighted Mean Weighted Mean Warriner & Kuperman

  11. AROUSAL Types and Tokens in Warriner et al, 2013 Scale Midpoint Unweighted Mean Weighted Mean Warriner & Kuperman

  12. AROUSAL Types and Tokens in Warriner et al, 2013 Scale Midpoint Unweighted Mean Weighted Mean Warriner & Kuperman

  13. Testing Other Corpora Warriner & Kuperman

  14. Re-analysis of Kloumann et al’s Data(our ratings; only overlapping words) Warriner & Kuperman

  15. Therefore our research confirms… a POSITIVITY BIAS present in TOKENS (there is nearlya balance in the number of positive and negative types, but we talk more about positive ones) a CALMNESS BIAS present in TYPES (there are many more calm than arousing types, and we speak equally frequently about both) VALENCE AROUSAL Warriner & Kuperman

  16. Future Questions • What is the direction of causation between real world phenomena and these biases? (i.e. social cohesion, risk aversion) • Do these biases parallel semantic density in a way that explains behavioral measures? • Are there gender, group, or individual differences in the presentation of these biases? Warriner & Kuperman

  17. Thank you.Any questions? Warriner & Kuperman

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