Psychology Lab Report-1

Report Title: Effects of Emotional and Neutral Words on

Reaction Time

Name: Md Sabbir Sarker

ID: 1611386030

Section: 18

Submitted to: MAS1

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 Abstract
The report titled “Effects of Emotional and Neutral Words on Reaction Time” tried to explain that how
emotional or neutral words have an impact on participant’s response words as well as response time. The
report explained the meaning of the terms Emotion, Neutral, Words, Response Time. It also talked about
previous research about emotional and neutral stimuli and human reaction on that. The objective of this
report is to find what kind of words affect our response time the most. The hypothesis was “Emotional
words would affect our response time more than the neutral words. The report has explained one theory of
emotion which was selected according to participant’s reaction. A participant was required for an
experiment to prove its hypothesis. I have used a participant, 15 emotional and 15 neutral words as stimulus,
stopwatch and a data sheet for analysis to conduct the experiment. The participant used in this experiment
was 21 years old who was not affected by any injury or diseases. I had to select someone following these
criteria as it was the requirement. I have informed my participant about my experiment and took his consent
before conducting the experiment. After putting his response time on emotional and neutral words on data
sheet, I inputted them in excel to calculate the total and mean reaction time and generated a graph using the
data to find out which words had most response time. The experiment has some limitations which are it
wasn’t conducted on the lab and also I only used one participant. After conducting the experiment I found
out that the participant took much time to respond to emotional words than neutral words.

Table of Contents

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1.0 Introduction..................................................................................................................................4

2.0 Method........................................................................................................................................5

3.0 Data processing and Statistical Analysis...........................................................................................6

4.0 Results.........................................................................................................................................6

5.0 Discussion....................................................................................................................................8

References.........................................................................................................................................9

Appendix.........................................................................................................................................10

1.0 Introduction
Emotion has a huge impact on human’s life. It kind of control our body. Our emotional expression create an
image on peoples mind about ourselves. Emotion can both make and break a person. Sometimes it gives us
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strength to achieve something, be kind and humble and be normal. Sadly, it also make us depressed when
something unfortunate happens, our life becomes a standstill. We need to have control over our emotion so
that other people do not take advantage of it. That is why an experiment was conducted to find out whether
people are more emotional or neutral to take further step for improvement. We have used 2 variables in the
experiment which definition is given below:

Emotion: Emotion is a psychological state related with the sensory system expedited by concoction
changes differently connected with contemplations, sentiments, conduct reactions, and a level of joy or
dismay.

Emotional Words: Expressions which make us feel emotional.

Neutral: Unbiased towards Something.

Neutral Words: Word that do not make us feel anything.

Response time: The length of time taken for a person or system to react to a given stimulus or event.

Previously similar study was conducted on 14 male and 16 female student of Saint Joseph University. They
were exposed to a positive and negative picture and asked to write any word after seeing the picture. They
also observed their bodily reaction, facial expression and response time. The objective is this study was to
find positive or negative stimulus affecting a person’s emotion. [CITATION Tri13 \l 1033 ]

The objective of my study to investigate whether the participant take more time to response to
emotional words or neutral words.

The study related to three theory of emotion. According to James Lange theory of emotion, a stimulus
causes bodily reaction which produces emotion.

The hypothesis of this report is, “People take longer time to respond to emotional words than neutral
words”.

This study is essential to find out how much emotional people are now a days and also to take measures to
control their emotions.

2.0 Method

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Materials:

To conduct the experiment about response time on emotional and neutral words I needed the following
materials:

 Participant information form

 Consent form
 Demographic information form
 15 emotional and 15 neutral words small paper
 Data Sheet
 Comment sheet for Participant
 Stopwatch

All the materials were provided by our lab instructor.

Participant:
The name participant I chose for the experiment is Samiul Islam, who is 21 years old and he is healthy.

Design and Procedure:

Experiment Location: South Academic Block, Room No. SAC305, North South University,
Bashundhara, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Procedure: Firstly I welcomed my participant and offered him a seat. I sat face to face with him. Next, I
gave my participant information sheet to get a knowledge about the experiment. Then I took his consent by
getting his signature in the consent form. I gave both written and verbal instructions about how the study
will be carried out and the task of the participant and provided further clarification. Then I started my
experiment. I gave the participant both emotional and neutral words at random so that his responses don’t
get affected by over exposer of one stimuli. I asked the participant to write any words which came to his
mind on the sheet of stimuli but the word cannot be an antonym or any name. I started the stopwatch when
he started writing and stopped when he stopped writing to find his response time on the exposure of stimuli.
I recorded his response word and time on the data sheet. After exposing him to all words, I gave him a
comment sheet about the experiment and after that I gave him demographic information form. After

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finishing all the activities I thanked my participant for helping me in the research. Lastly I took my lab
instructors signature on the data sheet.

3.0 Data processing and Statistical Analysis

Firstly, I inputted all the data sheets data in excel. Next I used formula in excel to find the total reaction time
and mean reaction time. I done Data processing and statistical analysis separately for the both categories of
stimuli.

emotional word (less than 1 second)

Axis Title

... ng e e y ng er r th ei
d ... s g d ve
ey rli ra
g nc jo
so w ot
he a en kis hu en lo
n a da flo de p fri
ho d m
nd
e
i

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 Chart Title

Axis Title

... ai
r ch ok g rd n
pe
r
us
e ht as
e la a.
.. n e
ss ch at bo ba oa iro ni
g el ct pe tre
cla w pb pa ho itc br e
cu su um sp

According to the graph above we can interpret that, Total response time and mean response time was higher
for emotional words than neutral words. Although you will observe that, response time for emotional high if
you consider the words individually. If you consider them as a unit by measuring and comparing their mean
and total response time you will see that response time for emotional word is higher than the response time
for neutral words.

5.0 Discussion
My hypothesis is right. People are taking longer time to response to emotional words than to neutral words.
My data representation and analysis make my hypothesis evident. My findings can be used as example in
further studies or literature. Yes some things of my findings was surprising. My participants took much time
to respond to neutral words like suitcase and house. He perceived house as emotional word and it triggered
some of his feelings that is why he wrote favorite in response to house. However it only took him less than
10 seconds to respond to emotional words like rage and dance. He said he dislikes rage and dance. The
participant I used in this experiment and his emotion matched with theory of James. When he was exposed
to neutral words, his facial expression seems like confused as he didn’t know the meaning of the word.
When he was exposed to words like mother and family, there was smile in his face. Exposure of words like
honeymoon and kiss, there was shyness. Other theories of emotion can be used depending on the participant
psychology and the environment.

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However I had some certain limitations which are:

 The experiment was conducted in a classroom not in a laboratory so the environment might affect
the experiment
 I only experimented on one participant so my results are not that much reliable
 I had some time constrains so I had to finish the experiment early

The additional question that could arise from the study is:

 Why some people take more time to response to some neutral words and take less time to respond
to some Emotional words?
 Can environment be a factor that can affect the experiment?
 Should the person for experiment needs to be educated enough to understand the words?
 Can mental illness like depression affect the response of the participants?

Overall from my research I found out that people are more emotional now a days which they need to
control otherwise they will face some social problems. I also found some words responses depends on a
person’s experience rather than the traits of the word.

References
Engen, T. K. (2013). The Effect of Positive and Negative Pictures on the Students. Pennsylvania: Saint
Joseph University.

Feldman, R. S. (2010). Understanding Psychology. New York: Mac G hill.

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