Natural emotion vocabularies as windows on distress and well-being

To date we know little about natural emotion word repertoires, and whether or how they are associated with emotional functioning. Principles from linguistics suggest that the richness or diversity of individuals’ actively used emotion vocabularies may correspond with their typical emotion experience...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2020-09, Vol.11 (1), p.4525-4525, Article 4525
Main Authors: Vine, Vera, Boyd, Ryan L., Pennebaker, James W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/477/2811
706/689/477/2811
Adolescent
Blogs
College students
Consciousness
Emotions
Female
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
Individual differences
Linguistics
Male
Mental Health
Mood
multidisciplinary
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Sex Factors
Speech
Students - psychology
Students - statistics & numerical data
Vocabulary
Well being
Writing
Young Adult
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Summary:To date we know little about natural emotion word repertoires, and whether or how they are associated with emotional functioning. Principles from linguistics suggest that the richness or diversity of individuals’ actively used emotion vocabularies may correspond with their typical emotion experiences. The current investigation measures active emotion vocabularies in participant-generated natural speech and examined their relationships to individual differences in mood, personality, and physical and emotional well-being. Study 1 analyzes stream-of-consciousness essays by 1,567 college students. Study 2 analyzes public blogs written by over 35,000 individuals. The studies yield consistent findings that emotion vocabulary richness corresponds broadly with experience. Larger negative emotion vocabularies correlate with more psychological distress and poorer physical health. Larger positive emotion vocabularies correlate with higher well-being and better physical health. Findings support theories linking language use and development with lived experience and may have future clinical implications pending further research. Having a rich negative emotion vocabulary is assumed to help cope with adversity. Here, the authors show that emotion vocabularies simply mirror life experiences, with richer negative emotion vocabularies reflecting lower mental health, and richer positive emotion vocabularies reflecting higher mental health.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-020-18349-0