Revealing the Meaning Structure of the Emotion Domain across Languages and Cultural Groups

The GRID project is about identifying the transition of universals into culture-specificities in the semantic fields of emotion across linguistic and cultural groups. Based on an extensive review of the general and cross-cultural emotion literature, a GRID has been constructed consisting of 24 emotion terms and 144 emotion characteristics. The 24 emotion terms are representative of the emotion domain in Western languages. The 144 emotion characteristics refer to the different emotion components of the emotion domain, such as appraisals, subjective experiences, action tendencies, expressions, bodily changes and regulation processes. Participants are asked to evaluate to what extent each emotion characteristic can be inferred when an emotion term is used in their own cultural group.

The GRID project has four concrete goals, namely (1) testing whether the basic assumption of the componential emotion theory also applies to the semantic field of emotions, (2) identifying cross-cultural similarities and differences in the underlying dimensional structure of the emotion domain in general and of the specific emotion components, (3) constructing a short instrument for evaluating the meaning equivalence of emotion terms and emotion characteristics, and (4) constructing a world atlas of emotion terms.

(1) The componential emotion theory and the semantic fields of emotion

The basic assumption of the componential emotion theory is that an emotion is to be conceptualized as a process that consists of a synchronization of activity in several emotion components (notably appraisal, subjective experiences, action tendencies, expressive behaviour, bodily changes) as a response to specific events with the aim of preparing the organism quickly for optimal reaction. If the emotion terms which we use in daily language refer to emotion processes as described by the componential emotion theory across the world, then emotion words should simultaneously refer to changes in appraisals, subjective experiences, action tendencies, expressive behaviour and bodily changes in each of the cultural groups. While an emotion term (even when it has been judged as translation equivalent) can be characterized by a highly specific pattern of characteristics, the most basic assumption of the componential emotion theory is that the characteristics themselves can be organized in terms of appraisals, subjective experiences, action tendencies, expressions, and bodily changes. If this prediction is confirmed in each of the languages, then we have made a first important step in revealing the meaning structure across cultural and linguistic groups from a comparative point of view. The emotion components can be used as the conceptual standards of comparison.

(2) Identifying the underlying dimensional structure of the emotion domain

If it has been demonstrated that all emotion components are relevant to describing the meaning of emotions in each of the cultural groups, we can turn our attention to the next question, namely how each of the emotion components, and the emotion domain in general, is structured across cultural groups. The hypothesis is that the underlying dimensions that structure the emotion domain are comparable across cultural groups, even if individual emotion words and individual emotion features can have highly culture-specific meanings. If this hypothesis is confirmed, then these underlying dimensions can be used as point of reference to identify cross-cultural stability or cultural specificity of the concrete emotion words and the concrete emotion features in each of the cultural groups.

(3) Constructing a short instrument for evaluating the meaning equivalence of emotion terms and emotion characteristics

Once stable underlying dimensions and a subset of stable emotion characteristics can be identified, the aim is to make a short GRID instrument that can be used as a methodological tool to investigate meaning equivalence of translations of emotion terms and emotion characteristics. Currently we rely on agreement among translators, however, translation equivalence offers no guarantee that the instruments mean the same for participants from different cultural groups. Comparing profiles of translated emotion terms or translated emotion characteristics on the short GRID will allow us to identify meaning equivalence much more adequately.

(4) Constructing a world atlas of emotion terms

The ultimate goal of the GRID project is to create a world atlas of emotion terms. The short GRID will be used as a point of reference. Culture-specific semantic emotion spaces will be projected onto the common standards that are provided for by the short GRID.

Emotion researchers from all over the world are invited to collaborate in this extensive research endeavour. Currently we have a number of collaborators involved in the project (please click here to see the list of current research collaborators). For further information about the GRID project, please (1) click here for further reading (paper of Klaus Scherer about “What is an emotion?” and short paper of Fontaine, Scherer and Roesch about first results with the Ghent data, and (2) click here for the web-based GRID instrument. If you are interested in collaborating, please send Johnny Fontaine (Johnny.Fontaine@Ugent.be) a message in which you introduce yourself and your interest in the GRID project.

Instructions for those wishing to collaborate on this study

What do you have to do?

• Make a careful translation based on translation-back-translation and committee approaches, and make the translation available to ICCRA, who will pass it on to everybody who is willing to do research on that language.
• Find 150 student participants that want to collaborate in the web-based research.
• Give permission to Johnny Fontaine, Klaus Scherer, and Etienne Roesch to use the data for culture-comparative research on the meaning structure of emotions.

The GRID study is conducted through the self-funding of the collaborating research groups. The collaborators get the following benefits from their collaboration:

• The full data base from their own sample which they are free to publish as they see fit.
• Co-authorship on all publications in which their data-set has been used.
• The profiles of the English words in order to evaluate the meaning equivalence of the words in the target language with the English emotion words.
• The possibility of adding four emotion words and up to ten emotion characteristics that are particularly relevant in their own culture, or that are of particular relevance for their research interests.
• Access to a community of researchers around the world who work with the GRID instrument.

Implementation of the GRID:

• Translation of the GRID instrument. Preliminary research with the GRID has demonstrated that the instrument is very sensitive to slight differences in the meaning of emotion terms (for instance the French “content” and the English “content” demonstrate substantial differences in their profile of characteristics). Therefore it is very important to make a very careful translation of the instrument. We propose that collaborators do the following as a minimum: (1) look for at least one proficient bilingual translator to make a translation from the English version (please click here for the English version) to the local language, (2) look for at least one other proficient bilingual translator to translate the instrument again into English, and (3) construct a committee of at least three people that are knowledgeable about emotions in order to decide upon the final translation of the instrument.
• If you feel that the list of 24 emotion terms is leaving out emotion terms that are central in your cultural group, you can add a block of four emotion terms to the original instrument. Not that this requires that you look for an additional 15 participants to collaborate in the research. Moreover, if you feel there are essential emotion characteristics in your cultural group that are not among the 144, you can add up to 10 emotion characteristics to the instrument. Please note that this implies that your participants will have to work somewhat longer on the instrument. If there are no particular cultural reasons to add terms or characteristics, but you are personally interested in additional terms or characteristics you are welcome to add these (four terms and maximally up to 10 characteristics).
• Once you have the final translation of the instrument (and you have the final wording for the additional terms and/or characteristics) you will be able to make the GRID-website for your language.