Words that carry both positive and negative emotional associations capture our attention more often and for longer than words with a clearly positive or negative meaning, Polish psychologists have found.
Under certain conditions, people also remembered information more quickly and accurately when it was presented alongside emotionally ambiguous words.
Some words are difficult to classify clearly as either positive or negative. Examples include “birthday”, “controlling” and “pattern”, according to Adrianna Wielgopolan, PhD, from the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Warsaw.
“We look at the word ‘cat’ and have generally positive feelings. We read the word ‘pandemic’ and have negative ones. An emotionally ambiguous word carries mixed, opposing emotional charges – for instance, being simultaneously positive and negative,” Wielgopolan told PAP – Science in Poland.
Wielgopolan, Radosław Wcześniak and Professor Kamil Imbir investigated how emotional ambiguity affects attention and information processing. Their findings were published in Scientific Reports.
The researchers conducted two experiments in which participants had to memorize and recognize previously presented words or letters. At the same time, the scientists tracked their eye movements, including how often and for how long they looked at individual words.
Emotionally ambiguous words attracted participants’ gaze more frequently and for longer periods than unambiguous words. The effect occurred regardless of the specific type of ambiguity involved – whether it concerned emotional valence, the source of the response or its level of activation.
Wielgopolan says this may be a direct consequence of the words’ ambiguity.
“These are ambiguous, mixed words, words that, at first glance, leave us feeling somewhat unsure of their nature. They require more reflection to notice and comprehend both of these characteristics,” she said.
Where and for how long people direct their gaze can provide an indirect measure of attention. Novel, unusual or difficult-to-understand stimuli generally hold attention for longer.
The scientists examined three forms of emotional ambiguity. The first involved a combination of positive and negative emotional valence. The second involved a mixture of automatic and more reflective reactions. The third concerned a combination of automatic arousal and subjective importance.
In the first two cases, participants not only paid more attention to the words but also gave more accurate answers and responded significantly faster than when dealing with unambiguous words. The same effect was not observed for the third type of ambiguity.
Wielgopolan hypothesises that detecting contradictory characteristics may require greater mental effort and lead to more thorough, reflective processing. She adds, however, that further research is needed to explain the mechanism.
“Earlier studies showed that inducing a state of emotional ambivalence resulted in greater creativity and higher accuracy in estimating answers,” she said.
‘Virus’ before and during the pandemic
People’s emotional responses to words can be influenced by age, experience, culture and language. It is not yet known whether these factors also affect which words people perceive as emotionally ambiguous and how they respond to them.
“We do not know this yet specifically for ambiguous words, though we suspect that this is the case,” Wielgopolan said.
She points to the word “virus” as an example. In a database compiled in 2016, it was rated as fairly negative. In a 2022 database, based on data collected during the pandemic, it was among the words rated most negatively.
“You can see the impact of what is happening around us and how it changes our perception of language,” she said.
The researchers are now investigating whether emotional ambiguity affects decision-making, particularly whether it makes people more open to changing their minds. They are examining whether perceiving different emotional characteristics in the same stimulus might be linked to greater openness to alternative possibilities.
“Perhaps we can also change our minds more quickly when we experience ambiguity? This research is still ongoing, as we still know relatively little about emotional ambiguity and about ambivalence in general,” Wielgopolan said.
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