title: Emotional connotations of words related to authority and community.
abstract: We present a database of 858 German words from the semantic fields of authority and community, which represent core dimensions of human sociality. The words were selected on the basis of co-occurrence profiles of representative keywords for these semantic fields. All words were rated along five dimensions, each measured by a bipolar semantic-differential scale: Besides the classic dimensions of affective meaning (valence, arousal, and potency), we collected ratings of authority and community with newly developed scales. The results from cluster, correlational, and multiple regression analyses on the rating data suggest a robust negativity bias for authority valuation among German raters recruited via university mailing lists, whereas community ratings appear to be rather unrelated to the well-established affective dimensions. Furthermore, our data involve a strong overall negative correlation-rather than the classical U-shaped distribution-between valence and arousal for socially relevant concepts. Our database provides a valuable resource for research questions at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience and social psychology. It can be downloaded as supplemental materials with this article.
authors.affiliation: Department of General and Neurocognitive Psychology and Cluster "Languages of Emotion", Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195, Berlin, Germany, gesche.schauenburg@fu-berlin.de.
authors.forename: Gesche
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Schauenburg
authors.forename: Jens
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ambrasat
authors.forename: Tobias
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Schröder
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: von Scheve
authors.forename: Markus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Conrad
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001318:Authoritarianism; D016208:Databases, Factual; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D012659:Semantic Differential; D055815:Young Adult