Linguistic Affect: Positive and Negative Emotion Words Are Contagious, Predict Likability, and Moderate Positive and Negative Affect

Emotion words used to describe experiences of affect were experimentally examined. Participants primed with positive linguistic affect used positive more words (p = .005*) and those primed negatively used more negative words (p = .002*). Affect was better predicted by the words provided than the experience discussed (p = .002*).