CROWD 

(Affective norms for Croatian words)

Goal

The goal of this project is to create databases of different affective norms for Croatian words. These databases will allow experimental research in Croatian, a language with a considerable lack of psycholinguistic norms, and provide a useful tool in the investigation of the relationship between language and emotion for the South-Slavic group of languages.

Team Members

Associates

Publications

Ćoso, B., Guasch, M., Bogunović, I., Ferre, P., & Hinojosa, J. A. (2022). CROWD‐5e: A Croatian psycholinguistic database of affective norms for five discrete emotions. Behavior Research Methods, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-022-02003-2

The present study introduces affective norms for a set of 3022 Croatian words on five discrete emotions: happiness, anger, sadness, fear, and disgust. The words were rated by 1239 Croatian native speakers. Each participant rated 251 or 252 words for one discrete emotion on a five-point Likert scale. The analyses revealed a significant relationship between discrete emotions, emotional dimensions (valence and arousal), and other psycholinguistic properties of words. In addition, small sex differences in discrete emotion ratings were found. Finally, the analysis of the distribution of words among discrete emotions allowed a distinction between “pure” words (i.e., those mostly related to a single emotion) and “mixed” words (i.e., those related to more than one emotion). The new database extends the existing Croatian affective norms collected from a dimensional conception of emotions, providing the necessary resource for future experimental investigation in Croatian within the theoretical framework of discrete emotions.

Ćoso, B., Guasch, M., Ferre, P., & Hinojosa, J. A. (2019). Affective and concreteness norms for 3,022 Croatian words. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 72(9), 2302–2312. (WOS) https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021819834226 

This study presents subjective ratings for 3,022 Croatian words, which were evaluated on two affective dimensions (valence and arousal) and one lexico-semantic variable (concreteness). A sample of 933 Croatian native speakers rated the words online. Ratings showed high reliabilities for all three variables, as well as significant correlations with ratings from databases available in Spanish and English. A quadratic relation between valence and arousal was observed, with a tendency for arousal to increase for negative and positive words, and neutral words having the lowest arousal ratings. In addition, significant correlations were found between affective dimensions and word concreteness, suggesting that abstract words have a tendency to be more arousing and emotional than concrete words. The present database will allow experimental research in Croatian, a language with a considerable lack of psycholinguistic norms, by providing researchers with a useful tool in the investigation of the relationship between language and emotion for the South-Slavic group of languages. 

Conferences

Ćoso, B., Guasch, M., Bogunović, I., Pavlinušić Vilus, E., Ferré, P., & Hinojosa, J. A. (2022) Affective norms of valence and arousal for 400 most frequent English words in Croatian language. Sociolinguistics Symposium 24 - Inside and beyond binaries, 13th-16 th July 2022, Ghent, Belgium (poster, online).

Ćoso, B., Guasch, M., Ferre, P., & Hinojosa, J. A. (2018). Affective norms of valence, arousal, and concreteness for 3, 022 Croatian words. Joint Meeting of SEPEX-SEPNECA-AIP experimental, Campus Juan del Rosal, UNED, Madrid, Spain, 3-6 July 2018