Conceptual structure of emotions

Abstract

Theories of semantic organization have historically prioritized investigation of concrete concepts pertaining to inanimate objects and natural kinds. As a result, accounts of the conceptual representation of emotions have almost exclusively focused on their juxtaposition with concrete concepts. The present study aims to fill this gap by deriving a large set of normative feature data for emotion concepts and assessing similarities and differences between the featural representation of emotion, nonemotion abstract, and concrete concepts. We hypothesized that differences between the experience of emotions (e.g., happiness and sadness) and the experience of other abstract concepts (e.g., equality and tyranny), specifically regarding the relative importance of interoceptive states, might drive distinctions in the dimensions along which emotion concepts are represented. We also predicted, based on constructionist views of emotion, that emotion concepts might demonstrate more variability in their representation than concrete and other abstract concepts. Participants listed features which we coded into discrete categories and contrasted the feature distributions across conceptual types. Analyses revealed statistically significant differences in the distribution of features among the category types by condition. We also examined variability in the features generated, finding that, contrary to expectation, emotion concepts were associated with less variability. Our results reflect subtle differences between the structure of emotion concepts and the structure of, not only concrete concepts, but also other abstract concepts. We interpret these findings in the context of our sample, which was restricted to native English speakers, and discuss the importance of validating these findings across speakers of different languages. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Figure 1

Property Types by Conceptual Condition

Figure 2. Variability in Semantic Representations

Note. (a) Changes in proportion of features generated by individual participant and is colored by participant. (b) Changes in proportion of features generated for each conceptual stimulus and is colored by conceptual condition.

Figure 3

Property Types by Order Generated

Figure 4. Feature Distinctiveness Within and Among Semantic Categories

Note. (a) Distinctiveness within category. (b) Distinctiveness among all categories. (c) Distinctiveness within category. (d) Distinctiveness among all categories. Outliers are represented on boxplots as dots, while mean values are represented as diamonds.