Emotional Learning Using Facial Expression

The Conceptual Act Theory (Barrett, 2006) holds that specific emotion words are arbitrary culturally-learned labels for an array of emotional pleasantness, intensity, and physical symptoms rather than terms for natural categories that exist in the body and mind. To test the of the theory, we divided participants (n=20 recruited online) into two groups: Group 1 saw English words and emotional faces, whereas Group 2 saw nonwords alongside the faces. During training, both groups viewed words/non-words alongside a corresponding emotional face. In testing, both groups viewed only the words/non-words without the faces. Participants in both groups judged the pleasantness and emotional intensity of each word. Preliminary linear mixed model analyses showed that both groups responded similarly to the words and non-words during testing. This may indicate that participants learned the emotional value of the novel, arbitrary nonwords. Data collection is still ongoing.