Imagery, concreteness, and meaningfulness as determiners of the emotionality of words when meaning is controlled

Abstract

We studied variables that influenced rated emotionality value of words and the contribution of each one. 218 subjects rated each word in a list of 98 pairs of words (196 words), one concrete word and one abstract word in each pair, on imagery, concreteness, meaningfulness, and emotionality. Date of entry of each word into Spanish and word length were also examined. Stepwise multiple regression procedures were performed to evaluate the contribution made by each variable to over-all emotionality values. 39.06% of the emotionality variance was explained by imagery. Concreteness and meaningfulness values contributed 3.62% and 2.82%, respectively. Word length and date of entry were rejected in the final equation, as their contributions were minimal.