Emotional Word Vs Neutral Word PDF

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A research work to determine which words take more time to respond between emotional words and neutral words....

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PSY101 Lab

“A report on the experiment of human reaction time difference between emotional and neutral words” Name: Shakil Ahmed Badhon ID: 1621419630 Section: 07 Submitted to: Ashma Rahman

Abstract The main purpose of the report is to determine the difference of human reaction time between emotional words and neutral words. The reaction time differs from person to person based on their judgments. It also depends on the context and the subject. Emotional and neutral words have been used as independent variables and the reaction time has been used as dependent variables. I chose a hypothesis that the reaction time of the emotional words will be more than the neutral words. But after conducting an experiment I figured out that my respondent took more time to react on neutral words instead of emotional words. My findings do not match with my hypothesis.

Introduction To conduct the report, I did a psychological experiment on a participant. The participation was totally volunteer. The reaction time of emotional words and neutral words were noted and used for further analysis. There had been a difference between the reaction time of emotional words and neutral words. This happened because of the difference between human thinking process. Everyone can have different perspectives for different words. Emotional words trigger one's sentiment, feelings, and memories. These things affect the reaction time for person to person. The reaction of emotional words is subjective because everyone has their view of seeing things. On the other hand, neutral words are those words that are used in our daily life. The reaction of neutral words is more subjective because these have more or less the same to everyone. Generally, the reaction time of emotional words is more than the neutral words. Because anyone can have different feeling for anything. Everyone’s perspective and thinking process is different from each other. But this is not constant. Sometimes, neutral words can take more time to react. One person can have feelings and emotions for neutral words. The mind of the person plays a role here. It also varies on different factors like age, race, sex, and the surrounding environment of the participant.

Literature Review According to a theory of some researchers, emotional words take less time to respond than neutral words. According to this model, the cognitive processing of emotional information tends to be faster than the cognitive processing of neutral information, because the former is essential to survival and/or to fight or flight responses (Lang, Bradley, & Cuthberd, 1990). A statistical report found on a website also agrees with the theory. The report says that emotional words process faster in the human brain than the neutral words. The statistics revealed that emotional words, whether positive or negative, are processed faster than neutral words. This effect appears to be categorical rather than graded; is not modulated by emotional arousal, and is not limited to words explicitly referring to emotions. The authors suggest that emotional connotations facilitate processing due to the grounding of words' meanings in emotional experience (Vinson, Ponari, & Vigiliocco, 2013). Another group of researches told the opposite. According to them, neutral words takes less time to respond. According to this account, emotional stimuli yield greater engagement of attention during the initial stages of cognitive processing. Such early engagement of attention takes time and effort to be subsequently terminated and consequently slows down response times (Pratto & John, 1991; Wentura, Rothermund, & Bak, 2000).

Definition of Word Word is the basic unit of a language. It can be a letter or a group of letters that has a meaning. The meaning can be expressed in both verbal or written manner. A word refers to symbolizes something with specific meaning. When we see or hear a word a specific thing comes into our mind. We provide our reaction to the word. But the reaction can be different from person to person. One person can have emotional feelings for a neutral word, on the other hand, one can have no feeling for an emotional word (Definition of Word | Dictionary.Com, n.d.) 

Neutral Words: Neutral words are those words that do not trigger our past feeling, experiences, and memories. These words are usually used in our daily life with no emotional attachment. These words have more or less the same meaning to everyone (Neutral Words Definition | English Dictionary for Learners | Reverso, n.d.)

Example: Water, Table, Classroom, etc. 

Emotional Words: Emotional words are those words that hit our past feelings, experiences, and memories. These words have a direct attachment to our feelings and emotion. Everyone has a different feeling and sentiment for these words. It varies more from person to person (Emotional Words Definition | English Dictionary for Learners | Reverso, n.d.)

Example: Love, Father, Happiness, etc.

Reaction Time Reaction time is the time a person takes to reply to another word. The human brain needs some time to function something. I researched to calculate the reaction time of my participant. A person first hears a word, understands it, and then reacts to the word. In this experiment, the participant reacted with the immediate word that came to his mind after hearing a word and understanding it.

Purpose of the experiment The purpose of the experiment was to determine the difference in human reaction between emotional words and neutral words. Also, to find the difference in reaction time of these two sets of words. Variables Two types of variables were used one in independent variable and the other one is the dependent variable. ● Independent Variables: Independent variables are those variables that can be changed or controlled by the experimenter. These have a direct effect on the dependent variables. If this variable is changed then the whole experiment is changed. In this experiment, neutral and emotional words are independent variables. ● Dependent Variables: The dependent variable is the variable being tested and measured in an experiment. It is completely dependent on the independent variables. It is conditional to the independent variables. In this experiment, the reaction time is the dependent variables because it is completely dependent on the words being asked

Hypothesis I choose a hypothesis that the reaction time of the emotional words will be more than the neutral words. I will experiment and will analyze the data. After getting the result, I will be able to see whether my hypothesis is true or not.

Methodology As the pandemic situation is going on the experiment was conducted in the google classroom application. Every person in the class performed as an experimenter and they chose a participant for them. There were no terms and conditions between the experimenter and the participant. There were no financial transactions. The participation was voluntary work. The experimenter had a list of 30 words including 15 emotional words and 15 neutral words. The experimenter used a stopwatch to determine the reaction time of each word. The reaction times were recorded by the experimenter. When the experiment was completed, the experimenter used the collected data to calculate the average time and to do other analysis. Procedure First, a consent form was signed by both the experimenter and the participant. Since it was a volunteer work the participant was allowed to leave any time he wanted. The participant had to respond to a total of 30 words by the experimenter. He was informed that the response should be the immediate word that came to his mind after hearing and understanding the word. He was not allowed to choose the opposite word. The response time of each word was recorded by the experimenter. Then those data were used to calculate the average reaction time for each word. 3 types of average were calculated that included total average, emotional word average, and neutral world average. These averages has been shown in a tableWords Total Time Average time All Words 114.23 Seconds 3.81 Seconds Neutral Words 63.09 Seconds 4.20 Seconds Emotional Words 51.14 Seconds 3.40 Seconds Table 1: Reaction time difference between neutral and emotional words of my respondent. After analyzing the recorded data, I found that my participant took more time to respond to neutral words than emotional words. He took 3.40 seconds on average per word for the emotional words. On the other hand, he took 4.20 on average to react to a neutral word. My

experiment is showing that emotional words take less time to respond than neutral words which does not match with my hypothesis. My hypothesis is not true. The participant took .80 seconds more to respond to a neutral word.

Conclusion The experiment has been done to make an idea about whether a person takes more time to respond to emotional words instead of neutral words. I designed the experiment by following proper structure. I chose a hypothesis, followed the proper method of data collection, did necessary calculations, and finally compared my findings with my hypothesis. My experiment is showing that a person takes less time to react to emotional words and more on neutral words. But this is not constant. This is just an experiment on a single person. We cannot declare any generalize statement based on this. The result can be varied from person to person. Different factors such as age, sex, nationality, mental state, and surroundings of the participant play an important role here. If I choose another participant for the experiment the result can be different. So, we cannot declare this as a constant thing. But according to my experiment with my particular respondent, I can say that neutral words takes more time to be responded over emotional words.

Reference

Definition of word | Dictionary.com. (n.d.). Dictionary.Com. Retrieved October 6, 2020, from https://www.dictionary.com/browse/word

Emotional words definition | English dictionary for learners | Reverso. (n.d.). Reverso.Net. Retrieved October 6, 2020, from https://dictionary.reverso.net/englishcobuild/emotional+words

Lang, P. J., Bradley, M. M., & Cuthbert, B. N. (1990). Emotion, attention, and the startle reflex. Psychological Review, 97, 377–395. http://dx.doi .org/10.1037/0033295X.97.3.377

Neutral words definition | English dictionary for learners | Reverso. (n.d.). Revrso.Net. Retrieved October 6, 2020, from https://dictionary.reverso.net/englishcobuild/neutral+words

Pratto, F., & John, O. P. (1991). Automatic vigilance: The attention-grabbing power of negative social information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 380 – 391. http://dx.doi.org/10 .1037/0022-3514.61.3.380

Vinson, D., Ponari, M., & Vigliocco, G. (n.d.). How does emotional content affect lexical processing?David. Taylor and Francis Online. doi:10.1080/02699931.2013.851068...