Love, laugh, life-the effect of empathy on the processing of emotion-label, emotion-laden and neutral abstract words.

ABSTRACT: While there is accumulating evidence that emotional words are processed faster than neutral words, findings regarding processing differences between emotion-label and emotion-laden words are inconsistent, potentially due to uncontrolled word- or participant-specific characteristics. We therefore analyzed lexical decision reaction times for emotion-label, emotion-laden, and neutral abstract words, while controlling for subjective differences in word valence, arousal, concreteness, and interoception, as well as considering inter-individual differences in empathy. We neither replicated the facilitatory emotionality effect for emotion-label or emotion-laden compared to neutral word processing nor found evidence for a reaction time difference between emotion-label and -laden words. Notably, how

SUBMITTER: Espey L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12432158 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature