How language shapes emotional facial expression perception: an ERP study on the role of emotion word type

While it is widely acknowledged that emotion-label words (such as fear and sadness) play a crucial role in emotion perception, there is a limited understanding of how words laden with emotional meaning (e.g., virus, recovery), which do not explicitly refer to emotional states, influence emotion perception. This study conducted two experiments to explore how emotion-label words (Experiment 1) and emotion-laden words (Experiment 2) impact the perception of emotional facial expressions within the masked priming paradigm. Participants were tasked with assessing the valence of emotional facial expressions, and both behavioral and electrophysiological data were recorded. Behavioral results from Experiment 1 revealed that positive emotion-label words, as opposed to negative ones, elicited a priming effect. Emotional facial expressions led to a reduced Late Positivity Complex (LPC) when preceded by related emotion-label words compared to unrelated ones. However, Experiment 2 did not show any priming effects in behavioral and Event-Related Potential (ERP) measurements when emotion-laden words were used as primes. The combined results from both experiments underscore that only emotion-label words exert a priming effect on facial expression perception. This highlights the significance of specific emotion words, namely emotion-label words, such as fear and sadness, in shaping emotion perception. The influence of language on emotion perception appears to be restricted to words explicitly conveying emotion concepts, at least in the masked priming paradigm.