ENHANCING EMOTIONAL VOCABULARY FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL LITERACY

Abstract

Various aspects of language development, comprehension and neurological functioning contribute to reflective psychological attitudes and indicate the importance of language in understanding human behaviour. In this perspective we focus our attention on the role of emotional language in shaping psychological literacy. Our research mostly relies on the findings of the Theory of Constructed Emotion (TCE) and EmotionFocused Therapy (EFT) that confirmed the importance of emotional vocabulary in the process of forming the effective understanding of the emotions and creating new conscious experiences. Due to the development of affective neuroscience, emotional vocabulary is presented as a necessary tool for psychological studies of personality, emotions and mood that aim to increase empirical evidence on the ways how emotions are organised in the mind. Special attention is given to the phenomenon of blended emotions that refer to the simultaneous experience of two or more emotions. We show that the awareness of the complexity of emotional experience is directly related to finding words that capture combinations of a variety of emotions. Keywords: emotional vocabulary; psychological literacy; emotion awareness; emotional psychology