Emotional language processing: An individual differences approach

There has been a surge in emotion and language research. In this article, we focus on the impact of individual differences in personality traits, attitudes, and age on the real-time comprehension of emotional language. In the personality trait section, we discuss research indicating that personality acts as a speaker context to facilitate the retrieval of positive words in individuals with high impulsivity. In addition, high anxiety individuals are oriented toward negative words, with sustained attention. In the attitude section, we show that moral value acts as a cognitive-semantic feature to be considered by readers at the retrieval stage of word processing, in first language speakers but not in second language speakers. Later, if there is a mismatch between people's moral values and the word they read, emotional responses take place, in both first and second language speakers. In the aging section, we overview research in our lab showing that older adults more rapidly notice positive content in a word, compared to younger adults. However, they do not neglect negative content. On the contrary, they are able to inhibit negative words if the words are low arousing. In addition, when words are presented along with their sentential context, older adults rapidly use positive context to make positive words more positive. When it comes to prediction in language, older adults do not actively predict negative outcomes, whereas younger adults do. Finally, in the general discussion, we emphasize the implications of the reviewed research for language, emotion, and social psychology and recommended next steps in future research.