Abstract

This paper presents a study concerning the ability to understand emotional lexicon in normal and psychopathological subjects. Aim of the study is to define the semantic profiles of seven emotional terms (fear, happiness, sadness, anger, shame, guilt and jealousy) by investigating the ranges of meanings that the subjects associate with the emotions. For each of the seven emotional term 180 adult subjects (60 normal, 60 with personality disorders, 60 with schizophrenic disorder) filled out Scherers' questionnaire on appraisal checks for the elicitation and discrimination of emotions (1988). To identify the semantic dimensions of each emotion (emotional profiles) seven factor analyses were conducted. Oneway Anova was also conducted on factorial scores of semantic dimensions for each emotion in order to identify effects of groups (normal, with personality disorders, with schizophrenic disorder) on subjects' answers. Results showed that some appraisal dimensions differ in relation to the three groups, while other variations concern specific emotional terms. Implications for cognitive models of emotion as connecting point between normality and pathology are discussed.