A study analysed colexification patterns—where different concepts share the same word—across 2,474 languages to investigate the cross-cultural consistency of emotion concepts. The research revealed significant variation in how emotions are categorised across languages, with geographic proximity influencing similarity. However, hedonic valence (pleasantness/unpleasantness) and physiological activation emerged as universal structuring principles underlying emotion semantics across language families, suggesting a shared biological basis despite cultural diversity in emotional understanding. The findings highlight the interplay between cultural evolution and biological constraints in shaping emotional language and experience. This approach offers a new quantitative method for exploring human cognition on a global scale.
Source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaw8160
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