North South University

Department of History & Philosophy

Reaction Time to Emotional and Neutral Words

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 ABSTRACT

The objective of this test was to compare reaction times to emotional and neutral words. A North
South University student participated, responding to 30 words read aloud—15 neutral and 15
emotional. The participant was instructed to say the first word that came to mind, excluding proper
nouns or opposites. Reaction time was the dependent variable (DV), while the type of word
(emotional or neutral) was the independent variable (IV). The hypothesis predicted longer reaction
times for emotional words. However, the results showed the participant did not take longer to react
to emotional words, contradicting the hypothesis and existing research. Thus, there was
insufficient evidence to support the hypothesis.

INTRODUCTION

Sensation and perception are the two essential components of this investigation. The former is
defined as "A physical feeling or perception resulting from something happening to or coming into
contact with the body" in the English Oxford Dictionary (Oxford Dictionary, 2018). The five main
human senses of touch, taste, sight, sound, and smell allowed one to observe and perceive the
environment. According to the dictionary, perception is "the ability to see, hear, or become aware
of something through the senses," and that is how the two words - sensation and perception -
collaborated in this endeavor. The subsequent experiment "Reaction Time to Neutral and
Emotional Words" was concerned with the "auditory sense" among other senses; it focused on how
and why humans react to certain words while interacting with one another. Numerous studies have
been conducted on the reaction time to various types of words. According to each study, the
reaction time varies based on the nature of the word. A study conducted in May 2010 revealed that
for the Emotional Stroop task, greater avoidance was associated with delayed reaction times to
physical aggression words, while greater anxiety was associated with faster reaction times to
neutral, physical, and relational aggression words (Johnson, 2012). Wilhelm Wundt conducted
another study in which he tested the impact of emotional and neutral words on reaction time. The
results demonstrated that participants required more time to respond to emotional versus impartial
words (Wundt, 1879).

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Neutral Words:

A word is a linguistic unit that speakers of the language can use to refer to a distinct and of type of
words, including neutral and particular unit of meaning. There are many words that are
nonjudgmental and do not trigger memories, feelings, and experiences are all called neutral words.
For example, classroom, cupboard, suitcase, etc.

Emotional Words:

Words with an emotional impact are known as emotional words. Words that stir up old emotions,
memories, and experiences are referred to as emotional words. These words are closely related to
our emotions and sentiments. Such words evoke various emotions and sentiments in each person.
It varies more from person to person. For example, honeymoon, darling, kiss, etc. Emotional words
could be positive such as "home" and "love", and also negative such as "death" and "rage".
According to a theory of some researchers, emotional words take less time to respond than neutral
words. The cognitive processing of emotional information tends to be faster than the cognitive
processing of neutral information because the former is essential to survival and/or to fight or flight
responses. Many studies concluded that a complex stimulus increases reaction time due to slowing
down the reaction process. It is more relevant for survival and is associated with a general
slowdown of the processing of stimuli, due to a defense mechanism that freezes activity in the face
of threat. Generally, emotional words incite differential reactions than neutral words. Nevertheless,
words are typically processed within a context rather than in isolation. Brazil's research on the
same field, it is stated that people tend to take more time to respond to emotional words. According
to this account, emotional stimuli yield greater engagement of attention during the initial stages of
cognitive processing.

Reaction Time:

The span of time taken by people or machines to deliver a response to a given event or stimulus is
called reaction time. Usually, the human brain takes adequate time to understand the situation or
hear anything and then respond to the event happening around them. Reaction time refers to the
period of time between when something is perceived and when a response is created. It is the
ability to identify, comprehend, and respond to the stimulus. But sometimes the time it takes to
respond to a certain stimulus can change. As a result, factors such as age, mood, knowledge,

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physical condition, prior experience, and so many other factors affect the reaction time. Given that
cognitive aptitude is believed to continue until about the age of 20 and the participant's age may
have an impact as well. It can also be said that participants who are young and in their 20s tend to
react quicker than participants who are in their 70s. Also, whether the person is introvert or
extrovert may matter. An introvert is really shy to answer the questions and hence they may
naturally take more time. Whereas an extrovert would answer easily and quickly. Or when
someone is injured or mentally disturbed, they will take more time to react to a situation. Their
mental situation here is a vital factor to influence the whole experiment. Also, being familiar with
the same type of psychological experiment can be the reason to shorten the experiment time than
usual. When the participant is new to the experiment, that will be accurate.

Purpose:
The purpose of the experiment was to determine the difference in reaction time between emotional
words and neutral words.

Variables:
There were two types of variables: the independent variable [IV] and the dependent variable [DV].
In this experiment, neutral and emotional words were independent variables. The reaction time is
the dependent variable because it is completely dependent on the words being asked.

Hypothesis:
The hypothesis in this experiment was that the reaction time to emotional words would be longer
than the reaction time to neutral words.

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 METHODOLOGY

Design:
A repeated outcomes design was used in this psychological experiment. The independent variable
(IV) was word type. The levels are composed of neutral and emotional words.

Participant:
An undergraduate student, 22 years old, from the BBA in Marketing department of North South
University volunteered for this psychological experiment.

Apparatus/Materials:
A list of 30 words, 15 neutral [N] and 15 emotional [E] were used. In the list, three columns were
used, one indicating the "response word", one indicating “response word” and another indicating
"reaction time". A timer on a smartphone app was used to note down the reaction time in addition
to a pen to help with note-taking.

Procedure:
The participant was sat across from the experimenter and when the participant was settled in, the
participant was handed the Instructions (Appendix 1) and given enough time to go through it.
Afterwards, the participant made it clear the participant had read through it, we proceeded to the
Participant’s Informed Consent form (Appendix 2). The participant was reiterated to that the
participant was free to leave at any point in time and the participant were told what this experiment
was determining. After these clarifications were made, the participant was told to sign the form
and did so accordingly. Subsequently, a smartphone was set up to act as a timer to time the reaction
times and a pen was used to write down the times and the words the participant uttered. The first
word in (Appendix 3) was “Honeymoon”, it was read aloud and the timer was started after 03.85s
had passed the participant uttered “Red” in response at which point the timer was stopped and the
recorded time was written down along the word. This process was repeated for all 30 words.
Following this, the Feedback form (Appendix 4) was handed to the participant to fill out their
demographic information along with what the participant thought about this experiment. To
conclude, the reaction time for the emotional and neutral words totaled separately and divided by
15 to find their respective reaction times in the calculation sheet (Appendix 5). For emotional

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words the total was 40.28 seconds and the average was 2.685 seconds. For neutral words the total
was 54.02 seconds and the average was 3.601 seconds.

RESULTS

Table 1: Total and average time difference between neutral and emotional words

Type of Word Total Reaction Time (sec) Average Reaction Time (sec)
Neutral Words (15) 54.02 3.601
Emotional Words (15) 40.28 2.685

Only the total reaction time of emotional words [E] were calculated and averaged or divided by
the total number of emotional words. Only the total reaction time of neutral words were calculated
and averaged or divided by the total number of neutral words.

From Table 1, it can be inferred that the participant took longer to react to the neutral words than
the emotional words. More accurately, the participant took an average of 3.601 seconds to react to
neutral words, and 2.685 seconds to react to emotional words.

DISCUSSION

This experiment's findings show that the average time taken to respond to neutral words is longer
than the time taken to respond to emotional words. As a result, these findings differ from previous
research, which often reported slower reactions to emotional stimuli. In this case, participant
responded more quickly to emotional words, emotional words might trigger a sense of urgency or
heightened arousal, which could accelerate reaction times. In contrast, neutral words may not
evoke any strong physiological response, making participants less engaged and therefore slower
to react.

However, despite these unexpected results, some limitations remain. For instance, only one
participant was used in this experiment, which reduces the reliability of the findings. A larger, more
diverse, and randomly selected group of participants would have provided stronger evidence.
Additionally, the participant's personal connection to the experimenter may have influenced the
responses, potentially skewing the data to appear more favorable or thoughtful. Another factor that
might have impacted the results is the shared space in the psychology lab, which lacked

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soundproofing. Noise from other participants conducting their experiments in the same room could
have distracted the participant.

For future research on this topic, it is recommended to involve a broader, randomized selection of
participants, ensure a soundproof environment to eliminate distractions, and avoid using
participants with personal ties to the experimenter. These adjustments could help produce more
accurate and generalizable results.

CONCLUSION

The purpose of this experiment, to differentiate between the neutral and emotional words were
met. The hypothesis that the reaction time to emotional words would be longer was not confirmed
as there was not enough evidence to do so. Therefore, the findings of this experiment are not
congruent with the assumptions and previous research.

REFERENCES

Lang, P.J. Bradley, M. M., & Cuthbert, B. N. (1990). Emotion, attention, and the startle reflex.
Psychological Review, 97, 377-395. [Link]

A [Link] (2019) pdf Sereno, S. Scott, G., Yao, B.

Jaeger, A., Bourscheid, F. R., Santos, [Link] F., & Stein, L. (2017). Recognition of emotional
words. Response time effects of novelty. [Link]