Differences in action tendencies distinguish anger and sadness after comprehension of emotional sentences
Year: 2007
Type: article
Abstract: We investigate the complex relations among language, emotion, and action.Emotions function to ready the body to take effective action (Davidson, 1994;Frijda, 2005), but how specific are these action tendencies, do they correspond to actual physical impulses, or are they merely abstract?Work in the neuroscience of language suggests that language comprehension utilizes the neural substrates of perception, action, and emotion (Gallese, Keysers & Rizzolatti, 2004;Rizzolatti & Arbib, 1998).Therefore, we hypothesize that comprehending emotional language will prime particular actions.To test this hypothesis we measured the amount of time it takes participants to move a lever either toward or away from the body while reading angry, sad or emotionally neutral sentences.Reading angry (versus sad) sentences results in faster movements away from the body, while reading sad (versus angry) sentences result in faster movements towards the body.The results suggest that emotional action tendencies may result from emotional language understanding, and that these tendencies may be quite specific.
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W17312975