Abstract
Ambiguous stimuli are useful for assessing emotional bias. For example, surprised faces could convey a positive or negative meaning, and the degree to which an individual interprets these expressions as positive or negative represents their “valence bias.” Currently, the most well-validated ambiguous stimuli for assessing valence bias include nonverbal signals (faces and scenes), overlooking an inherent ambiguity in verbal signals. This study identified 32 words with dual-valence ambiguity (i.e., relatively high intersubject variability in valence ratings and relatively slow response times) and length-matched clearly valenced words (16 positive, 16 negative). Preregistered analyses demonstrated that the words-based valence bias correlated with the bias for faces, rs(213) =.27, p <.001, and scenes, rs(204) =.46, p <.001. That is, the same people who interpret ambiguous faces/scenes as positive also interpret ambiguous words as positive. These findings provide a novel tool for measuring valence bias and greater generalizability, resulting in a more robust measure of this bias.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1392-1401 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Social Psychological and Personality Science |
Volume | 12 |
Issue number | 7 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Sep 2021 |
Keywords
- ambiguity
- emotion
- language
- nonverbal
- valence bias
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Social Psychology
- Clinical Psychology