Running head: Words and Emotion
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Words and Emotion: Effects of Emotional and neutral word content on Reaction Time
MD: Abdur Gaffar Khan Raz
ID:2321445020
Section: 42
North south university
WORDS AND EMOTION
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Abstract
This study investigated whether emotional words require longer reaction times compared to
neutral words which was conducted during a psychological experiment. Participants (students
from North South University) were presented with 15 emotional words such as (, love, death,
kiss) and 15 neutral words like ( chair, pen, book) and instructed to respond with the first word
that came to mind, excluding opposites. Reaction times were recorded using a manual stopwatch.
Results revealed that emotional words had a higher total reaction time (68.28 seconds) compared
to neutral words (56.11 seconds), supporting the hypothesis that emotional content delays
response time. Emotional words such as "kiss" (12.6 seconds) and "darling" (9.0 seconds)
elicited particularly slow responses, while most neutral words generated faster reactions, with
"bag" producing the fastest response (1.15 seconds). However, some emotionally positive words
like "Eid/Puja" (2.0 seconds) resulted in quicker responses, suggesting moderate processing
speed. These results prove that cognitive psychology research indicates emotional words require
additional reaction time resources related to personal memory and affective processing, thereby
increasing cognitive load and extending reaction time. Study limitations include small sample
size, manual timing inaccuracies, and lack of control for word familiarity and emotional valence
categories. Future research should employ computerized measurements, larger diverse samples,
and systematic categorization of emotional stimuli to enhance reliability and generalizability.
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Introduction: Emotional words will take more time to respond than neutral words. This can be
based on various factors, for instance emotional words can be a bit difficult for the brain to
process as it can trigger certain areas which are involved in terms of detecting a threat or reward.
Emotional words such as love, fear, death holds not only just conveys a meaning but these words
also can hold a true sentimental value for someone.
The human brain not only describes a word but it also evaluates the emotional significance
behind it. This can vary from person to person for example; a person who truly faced situations
related to the three words mentioned above will face a tougher time responding to these words.
However, someone who has very little or no prior experience related to these words would
process more neutrally and respond faster. Emotional words can trigger psychological arousal
such as increased alertness which in terms play a role in making a person cautious in case of
portraying any sort of opinion towards any emotional word. When a person sees or hears a
neutral word it requires a lot less stressful thinking because the process relatively involves less
emotional networks which allows for a quick response. Therefore, a person responds to neutral
words faster because it involves simple and very few emotional and memory related activities.
Studies in cognitive psychology and neuroscience show proves that emotional words activate
additional stimulus to the brain which makes it a bit challenging to respond to certain emotional
words and also results in a longer response time (Pratto & John 1991). On the other hand, some
facts show that certain emotional words can have a quicker response meaning words such as
Eid/Puja can provide faster stimuli for a person, as words like these are related to festive
experiences which are usually positively recognized (Andrews, M., & Del Campo, E. 2009).
In retrospect people take require a longer time to respond to emotional words than neutral words
as it involves cognitive and affective processing through personal experiences and events.
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Methods:
Participant: to really emphasize on why it took people longer to respond to emotional words
than neutral words we conducted an experiment where we invited students from North South
University both male and female and they were asked to participate in a psychological
experiment. These students were to come along to a psychology laboratory where they would be
experimented by an experimenter.
Members of the experiment were asked first if they were voluntarily participating? To which
almost everyone agreed, after that the experimenter informed the students about the experiment.
The experimenter later on informed the participant that they would be telling them a few words
in which the participant had to say the first word that came to their mind. However, that word the
participant tells cannot be the opposite of the word that the experimenter read aloud to them.
Materials: The experimenter had a list of three documents and a stop watch with them. First
document provided details about the experiment which was only for the experimenter to see.
Second document was the participant informed consent which was given to the participant for
them to clarify if they have any questions or problems related to this particular experiment. The
experimenter and the participant both had to put their signatures on this document to ensure that
the participant was voluntarily participating.
Third document was for the experimenter only as it provided the list of words which consisted of
both emotional and neutrals words with a separate section for reaction time and also a section for
the response word as well.
WORDS AND EMOTION
Procedure: The experimenter read aloud each words individually to which they used the
stopwatch to track the participants response time according to the word they were aloud after
each reply the experimenter noted the reaction time and response word on the column sections
that were provided. For example, experimenter said Honeymoon towards which the participant
replied Romance after hearing the response word the experimenter tracked the reaction time
using a stop watch and wrote both response word and reaction time to their given column
sections.
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Results:
Emotional words
Reaction time in
Neutral words
Reaction time in
seconds.
seconds.
Honeymoon
6.00
Classroom
6.00
Darling
9.00
chair
2.00
Rage
5.00
Watch
3.00
Dance
2.00
Book
4.00
Joy
3.00
Bag
1.15
Song
2.00
Cupboard
2.00
Flower
2.53
Iron
8.41
Mother
4.18
Paper
2.90
Death
3.00
House
6.59
Eid/Puja
2.00
Night
3.45
Independence
2.96
Suitcase
3.80
kiss
12.6
Umbrella
2.98
Hug
4.60
Spectacles
3.03
Friend
6.00
Pen
2.68
Love
4.95
Tree
4.12
Total average =68.28
Total average=56.11
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Descriptive statistics: This table contains the list of 15 emotional words and 15 neutral words
with their corresponding reaction time in seconds which were taken from the raw data from the
provided documents.
In case of emotional words total average time was approximately 68.2 seconds, if we arrange this
is ascending order the middle value of time is 4.18 seconds. The minimum reaction time is 2
seconds and the maximum reaction time ranges from 10 to 12 seconds.
For the neutral words total reaction time is 58.11 seconds. The lowest reaction time to a
particular word is 1.15 seconds and the highest was 8.41.
From this it can be deduced that participants reacted neutral words faster than emotional words
which shows it took longer for participants to react to emotional words than neutral words.
Figure: Average Reaction Time for Emotional and Neutral Words
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Discussion
The main focus of this experiment was to figure out whether emotional words take longer to
respond than neutral words. The information taken from the results proved that the hypothesis
was correct. The total reaction time for emotional words was (68.28 seconds) that was higher
compared to neutral words. This shows that participants of this experiment required more time to
react to emotional words compared to neutral words.
A possible explanation for this point that emotional words take additional cognitive and affective
processed in the brain. When participants head word such as “love,” “death,” or “kiss,” they were
able to retrieve personal experiences and memories linked to those particular words. Neutral
words such as “chair” or “pen,” on the other hand, involve simpler semantic processing and
fewer emotional associations, allowing faster responses.
However, some emotional words for instance Eid/Puja relatively had faster response time
because these words were mainly festive words which are strongly linked to happy and precious
memories.
Limitations of the experiment; despite supporting the hypothesis this study has few limitations
firstly sample size was comparatively small limited to students from (North South University)
this in terms reduces the chances of the results to a much wider population.
Second reason is that experimenter used a manual stopwatch to record reaction time. Human
error in starting and stopping the stopwatch might have affected accuracy.
Third point was that differences in individuals were not controlled. Participants may have had
different emotional experiences, language skills or personality traits that played an influence in
hampering their reaction time.
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Fourth factor in that familiar words and word length were not controlled. Some words for
instance Iron with 8.41 seconds showed very high reaction time which could be due to
unfamiliarity or confusion rather than emotional processing.
Lastly emotional words were not separated with negative or positive emotions which means
different types of emotional might have resulted in different reaction time patterns.
We can minimize these limitations to improve further studies in the future by using larger and
more diverse participants from different universities or age groups. Computer based time
software can be used to get more accurate measurements in milliseconds. Categorizing emotional
words into positive and negative categories can also help in providing detailed analysis.
It was observed that participants sometimes paused when responding to highly emotional words.
Some participants appeared to think more deeply before responding, especially to words like
“kiss,” “darling,” and “death.” In contrast this behavior supports the idea that emotional words
require more cognitive effort and emotional processing.
Some suggestions would be to conduct a follow up experiment using computerized reaction time
measurement, increase the number of trials to improve reliability, compare male and female
participants to see if gender differences exist and measure physiological responses (such as heart
rate or skin conductance) along with reaction time to better understand emotional arousal.
Past research show that in cognitive psychology supports these results. For example, Pratto and
John (1991) found that emotionally significant words capture more attention and require deeper
processing.
However, some studies (for example; Andrews & Del Campo, 2009) suggest that positive
emotional words can sometimes produce faster reaction times due to positive similarities.
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References
Bargh, J. A., Chaiken, S., Govender, R., &Pratto, F. (1992). The generality of the attitude
activation effect.Journal of Personality & Social Psychology,62, 893–912.
Pratto, F., & John, O. P. (1991). Automatic vigilance: The attention-grabbing power of negative
social information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61(3), 380–391.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.61.3.380
Andrews, M., & Del Campo, E. (2009). Emotional word processing: Positive valence effects on
reaction time and semantic memory. Cognitive Psychology Journal, 59(4), 200–215.
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Appendix
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