Language and other measures used to study emotion


Researchers are increasingly using language to study emotion, yet we know little about how language measures relate to other measures often used to study emotion. Across 3 large, multimodal datasets, we tested whether different language dictionaries relate to self-report, observer report, facial expressions, and vocal cues of emotion. 

We find that language measures (in particular, language measures of valence) are correlated with a range of other measures used to study emotion and may therefore be a useful option when self-report and behavioral coding measures are unavailable or impractical for a given research question.