Schwering Steven C, Ghaffari-Nikou Natalie M, Zhao Fangyun, Niedenthal Paula M, MacDonald Maryellen C
Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI USA.
Affect Sci. 2021 Apr 20;2(2):178-186. doi: 10.1007/s42761-021-00034-0. eCollection 2021 Jun.
Fiction reading experience affects emotion recognition abilities, yet the causal link remains underspecified. Current theory suggests fiction reading promotes the simulation of fictional minds, which supports emotion recognition skills. We examine the extent to which contextualized statistical experience with emotion category labels in language is associated with emotion recognition. Using corpus analyses, we demonstrate fiction texts reliably use emotion category labels in an emotive sense (e.g., ), whereas other genres often use alternative senses (e.g., ). Furthermore, fiction texts were shown to be a particularly reliable source of information about complex emotions. The extent to which these patterns affect human emotion concepts was analyzed in two behavioral experiments. In experiment 1 ( = 134), experience with fiction text predicted recognition of emotions employed in an emotive sense in fiction texts. In experiment 2 ( = 387), fiction reading experience predicted emotion recognition abilities, overall. These results suggest that long-term language experience, and fiction reading, in particular, supports emotion concepts through exposure to these emotions in context.
阅读小说的体验会影响情绪识别能力，但因果关系仍不明确。当前理论认为，阅读小说能促进对虚构人物心理的模拟，从而支持情绪识别技能。我们研究了语言中与情绪类别标签相关的情境化统计经验在多大程度上与情绪识别有关。通过语料库分析，我们证明小说文本确实以情感意义使用情绪类别标签（例如， ），而其他体裁通常使用其他意义（例如， ）。此外，小说文本被证明是关于复杂情绪的特别可靠的信息来源。在两项行为实验中分析了这些模式对人类情绪概念的影响程度。在实验1（ = 134）中，阅读小说文本的经验预测了对小说文本中以情感意义使用的情绪的识别。在实验2（ = 387）中，总体而言，阅读小说的经验预测了情绪识别能力。这些结果表明，长期的语言经验，尤其是阅读小说，通过在情境中接触这些情绪来支持情绪概念。
