Sliding into happiness: A new tool for measuring affective responses to words

Accuracy and precision of responses to visual analog scales: Inter- and intra-individual variability

Visual analog scales (VASs) are gaining popularity for collecting responses in computer administration of psychometric tests and surveys. The VAS format consists of a line marked at its endpoints with the minimum and maximum positions that it covers for respondents to place a mark at their selected location. Creating the line with intermediate marks along its length was discouraged, but no empirical evidence has ever been produced to show that their absence does any good. We report a study that asked respondents to place marks at pre-selected locations on a 100-unit VAS line, first when it only had numerical labels (0 and 100) at its endpoints and then when intermediate locations (from 0 to 100 in steps of 20) were also labeled. The results show that settings are more accurate and more precise when the VAS line has intermediate tick marks: The average absolute error decreased from 3.02 units without intermediate marks to 0.82 units with them. Provision of intermediate tick marks also reduced substantially inter- and intra-individual variability in accuracy and precision: The standard deviation of absolute error decreased from 0.87 units without tick marks to 0.25 units with them and the standard deviation of signed distance to target decreased from 1.16 units without tick marks to 0.24 units with them. These results prompt the recommendation that the design of VASs includes intermediate tick marks along the length of the line.

Words describing feelings about death: A comparison of sentiment for self and others and changes over time

Understanding public attitudes towards death is needed to inform health policies to foster community death awareness and preparedness. Linguistic sentiment analysis of how people describe their feelings about death can add to knowledge gained from traditional self-reports. This study provided the first description of emotive attitudes expressed towards death utilising textual sentiment analysis for the dimensions of valence, arousal and dominance. A linguistic lexicon of sentiment norms was applied to activities conducted in an online course for the general-public designed to generate discussion about death. We analysed the sentiment of words people chose to describe feelings about death, for themselves, for perceptions of the feelings of ‘others’, and for longitudinal changes over the time-period of exposure to a course about death (n = 1491). The results demonstrated that sadness pervades affective responses to death, and that inevitability, peace, and fear were also frequent reactions. However, words chosen to represent perceptions of others’ feelings towards death suggested that participants perceived others as feeling more negative about death than they do themselves. Analysis of valence, arousal and dominance dimensions of sentiment pre-to-post course participation demonstrated that participants chose significantly happier (more positive) valence words, less arousing (calmer) words, and more dominant (in-control) words to express their feelings about death by the course end. This suggests that the course may have been helpful in participants becoming more emotionally accepting in their feelings and attitude towards death. Furthermore, the change over time appeared greater for younger participants, who showed more increase in the dominance (power/control) and pleasantness (valence) in words chosen at course completion. Sentiment analysis of words to describe death usefully extended our understanding of community death attitudes and emotions. Future application of sentiment analysis to other related areas of health policy interest such as attitudes towards Advance Care Planning and palliative care may prove fruitful.

Investigating the effects of pain observation on approach and withdrawal actions

Previous research has shown that observing another individual receiving a painful stimulus leads to motor facilitation as indexed by faster reaction times. The current study explores whether the type of action that is executed modulates this facilitation effect. Specifically, we examined whether approach-like and withdraw-like movements are differentially influenced by pain observation. In experiment 1, participants performed key presses (approach) and releases (withdraw) after observing another person in pain (vs. no pain). In experiment 2, participants used a joystick to make forward (approach) and backward (withdraw) movements after observing another person in pain (vs. no pain). Across both experiments, we did not find evidence for differential effects of pain observation on approach-like and withdraw-like movements. We do, however, report a robust response-general effect of pain observation on motor behaviour (i.e., faster reaction times after pain observation vs. no pain, regardless of movement type). We discuss these results in relation to the wider emotion, attention, and social neuroscience of empathy literatures.

Reliability of the sliding scale for collecting affective responses to words

Warriner, Shore, Schmidt, Imbault, and Kuperman, Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 71; 71-88 (2017) have recently proposed a slider task in which participants move a manikin on a computer screen toward or further away from a word, and the distance (in pixels) is a measure of the word's valence. Warriner, Shore, Schmidt, Imbault, and Kuperman, Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 71; 71-88 (2017) showed this task to be more valid than the widely used rating task, but they did not examine the reliability of the new methodology. In this study we investigated multiple aspects of this task's reliability. In Experiment 1 (Exps. 1.1-1.6), we showed that the sliding scale has high split-half reliability (r = .868 to .931). In Experiment 2, we also showed that the slider task elicits consistent repeated responses both within a single session (Exp. 2: r = .804) and across two sessions separated by one week (Exp. 3: r = .754). Overall, the slider task, in addition to having high validity, is highly reliable.

Emotional reactivity and perspective-taking in individuals with and without severe depressive symptoms

The perspective-taking ability to imagine another person's feelings and thoughts is paramount for successful communication. This study pursued two questions regarding the link between perspective-taking and depressive symptomatology in a task where participants provided responses to words ranging in their positivity. First, we examined in a between-participants experimental manipulation how the presence of depressive symptoms influenced participants' emotional reactivity. Second, we measured within-participants, how their responses change as a function of the perspective they are assigned to take, that of a depressed or a non-depressed person. Our main interest is in the interaction of the two effects: we examine how one's emotional state determines the ability to engender someone else's responses. Our central finding is that depressive symptoms lead to emotional insensitivity, i.e., weaker responses to extremely positive and negative words. Furthermore, depressive symptoms come with a much weaker ability to take a non-depressed perspective. Finally, non-depressed participants demonstrated an excellent ability to mimic the blunt affect of depression when responding for the other group, suggesting that the outlook of a depressed individual is available to people throughout the range of depressive symptomatology. We discuss the implications of these findings for quantifying emotional reactivity during depression, as well as the diagnosis and prognosis of depression.