Words used to describe emotion are influenced by experience, context and culture; nevertheless, research studies often constrain participant response options. We explored the influence of response options on how people conceptualise emotion words in two cross-sectional studies. In Study 1 participants rated the degree to which a large set of emotion words (n = 497) fit five basic emotion categories – Happy, Sad, Angry, Fearful, Neutral. Twenty-four words that fit well within these categories were included in Study 2. In Study 2 response options were expanded to include two additional basic emotions (Disgust, Joy), and six complex emotions (Amusement, Anxiety, Contentment, Irritated, Pride, Relief). Only half of the Study 1 words were categorised into the same emotion categories in Study 2. An increase in diversity of ratings for both positive and negative valenced words suggested overlaps in people’s conceptualisations of emotion words. Results suggest potential benefits of providing research participants complex emotion categories of varying intensity, which may better reflect people’s nuanced conceptualisations of emotion. Future research exploring varied response options may provide further insight into how people categorise and differentiate emotion words.

The importance of including measures of emotion processing, such as tests of facial emotion recognition (FER), as part of a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment is being increasingly recognized. In clinical settings, FER tests need to be sensitive, short, and easy to administer, given the limited time available and patient limitations. Current tests, however, commonly use stimuli that either display prototypical emotions, bearing the risk of ceiling effects and unequal task difficulty, or are cognitively too demanding and time-consuming. To overcome these limitations in FER testing in patient populations, we aimed to define FER threshold levels for the six basic emotions in healthy individuals. Forty-nine healthy individuals between 52 and 79 years of age were asked to identify the six basic emotions at different intensity levels (25%, 50%, 75%, 100%, and 125% of the prototypical emotion). Analyses uncovered differing threshold levels across emotions and sex of facial stimuli, ranging from 50% up to 100% intensities. Using these findings as “healthy population benchmarks”, we propose to apply these threshold levels to clinical populations either as facial emotion recognition or intensity rating tasks. As part of any comprehensive social cognition test battery, this approach should allow for a rapid and sensitive assessment of potential FER deficits. (JINS, 2015, 21, 568–572)