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Measuring emotional expression with the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count
Jeffrey H Kahn1, Renée M Tobin, Audra E Massey
1Department of Psychology, Illinois State University, Normal, IL 61790-4620, USA. jhkahn@ilstu.edu
The American Journal of Psychology
|July 27, 2007
Summary
The Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program effectively measures emotion expression. Studies confirm LIWC
Area of Science:
- Psychological Science
- Computational Linguistics
Background:
- The Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program is frequently employed to quantify emotion expression.
- However, the construct validity of LIWC for measuring emotion expression remains underexplored.
Purpose of the Study:
- This research aimed to validate the use of LIWC for assessing emotion expression.
- Specifically, it investigated whether LIWC's emotion process word counts are sensitive to the verbal expression of sadness and amusement.
Main Methods:
- Three experimental studies were conducted.
- These studies involved analyzing written autobiographical memories and participants' reactions to emotionally evocative film clips.
- LIWC counts of emotion process words were compared across different emotional states and individual difference measures.
Main Results:
- Experiment 1 showed that written sad and amusing memories yielded expected differences in LIWC emotion counts.
- Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that LIWC counts differed based on induced momentary sadness and amusement.
- Experiment 3 also indicated weak associations between LIWC emotion counts and individual differences in emotional reactivity, expressivity, and personality.
Conclusions:
- The findings support the construct validity of LIWC for measuring the verbal expression of emotion.
- LIWC provides a reliable method for quantifying emotional content in text.
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