Development of emotionally arousing noun phrases by adding modifiers:

Stimulus development with little mental image change

Abstract

We developed emotionally positive, neutral, and negative noun phrases by adding different modifiers to identical nouns. First, we explored modifiers to add to nouns to change emotional valences. Second, we assessed the subjective emotional valences and the subjective frequency of contact of the developed noun phrases. Third, we examined the differences between the mental images that formed from the positive, neutral, and negative noun phrases. The contents of the mental images formed from the noun phrases developed in this study did not differ among the positive, neutral, and negative noun phrases compared with those in a previous study. An incidental recall experiment was conducted to assess whether emotions could be evoked by the presentation of the positive and negative noun phrases compared with the neutral phrases. Nouns in the positive and negative noun phrases were recalled more frequently than those in the neutral noun phrases, suggesting that the positive and negative noun phrases evoked emotions that resulted in an increase in recall performance. We propose that these noun phrases could serve as stimuli in studies on emotion, memory, and mental imagery.