The Balanced Affective Word List Project

By Greg Siegle 
University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine
This work completed at, and hosted by San Diego State University / University of California, San Diego

The Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention (CSEA) has created a large normed corpus of over 2000 positive, negative, and neutral words. It is described briefly at their Media Core website.

I have written a program that allows arbitrary length word lists balanced for affective valence, arousal, word length, and word frequency to be generated using the ANEW list. This program must be installed in the same directory as the ANEW list. It runs under DOS on just about any PC compatible computer running Windows 95 or better. To use it, open a DOS shell and type "genanew #words" where #words is the total number of words in the desired list. Optionally you can follow it a keyword specifying whether arousing words should be included ("YES"/"NO"), whether arousal is calculated relatively or absolutely ("REL"/"ABS") with respect to valence, and a file name containing a list of words to exclude. Defaults, when arguments are not specified are to generate lists with arousing words, calculating arousal relatively. Thus the command "genanew 24 NO" would generate a list of 24 relatively non-arousing words balanced for valence, frequency, and length.  Genanew on it's own will print these directions.

Specifically, the following strategy is used. Valence is rated in the Anew list on a 1-9 scale.  Words are only selected if they have a valence standard-deviation <=2. As there were very few words in the corpus that could be considered arousing and neutral, or non-arousing and positive or negative, arousal is calculated relative to valence via a median split, excluding the middle 50 words. Specifically, the following convention is adopted:
 
non-arousing (relative) arousing (relative) non-arousing (absolute) arousing (absolute)
positive (valence>7) arousal<5.34 arousal>6.05 arousal<5 arousal>5
neutral (4<valence<6) arousal<3.98 arousal>4.23 arousal<5 arousal>5
negative(valence<3) arousal<5.47 arousal>5.90 arousal<5 arousal>5

If the program hangs, it is because it is trying to find words. If it's hung up for a while stop it (ctrl-c) and try again. If it still hangs, rerun it asking for fewer words.

Getting the program

The program, NOT including the ANEW wordlist (which you must get directly from UFL) can be obtained at this site

Click to obtain the DOS executable program

 Click to obtain C++ source code.

Note: To use the program you MUST obtain the ANEW word list, and store it in the same directory with the program.

Getting the word list

I do NOT distribute the ANEW word list. To obtain it, please contact Margaret Bradley, Box 100165 HSC, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32610, email: CSEAmedia@phhp.ufl.edu

Running the program

To use the program unzip the zip file you obtained. Put all the files in the SAME directory with the ANEW wordlist. Start up a DOS command prompt (in windows Start->Run and type the word "command"). Then change directories to wherever you put the program (e.g., "CD c:\anewprog"). At the DOS command prompt, type "genanew". It will tell you what the legal syntax is. For example Typing genanew followed by the total number of words you want gives you a list roughly that number of words long. You can specify the word file the program should use by typing it after the number. If you want anxiety words too, type the word ANX after the word file. For example, the command:

wordlist 16 words.prn ANX

would generate a balanced list of 16 words including positive, negative, and neutral words. The resulting printout is of the form word valence length frequency.

Referencing this program

The reference for the ANEW wordlist is:
Bradley, M.M., & Lang, P.J. (1999). Affective norms for English words (ANEW). Gainesville, FL. The NIMH Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention,University of Florida.

The reference for the wordlist program is:
Siegle, G.J. (1994): The Balanced Affective Word List Creation Program. Available Web: http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/CAL/wordlist/

Note: If you use the Balanced Affective Word List Creation Program to select words from the ANEW list you must cite both Bradley & Lang (1999) and Siegle (1994) in your publication. If you use the ANEW wordlist and NOT the word list creation software you do NOT need to cite Siegle (1994). If you use the software and the old wordlist you do NOT need to cite Bradley & Lang (1999).

Please see the copyright notice at the bottom of this page before using the software....

My ORIGINAL wordlist and program to use it (circ. 1995)

Before the ANEW list was around we still had to do research using emotional words. In 1995 I compiled a smaller, less robust list from a few sources, which are still available to those who are interested. You can still read about and get the original wordlist along with a program to use it for primarily historical reasons (or if you don't want to use the ANEW list for some reason). Please know that list is no longer in development.

Caveats

I have put in under 2 hours writing this program. It's not a professional thing. It has some minor glitches (e.g., returning too many words for very low numbers of words in a list, not handling numbers of words that are not multiples of 3 or 4 gracefully, etc.). That will all be changed in future versions when I have some time. Feel free to edit it, distribute it, etc. but if you do, please include ALL the files in this directory. You can reach me with any comments or questions by e-mail at gsiegle+@pitt.edu or by surface mail at: Greg Siegle, Biometrics Research 151R, 7180 Highland Dr., VA Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA, 15206.

Copyright

Finally, the following copyright notice is begrudgingly included for the sake of beurocratic completeness. The copyright notice applies only to the wordlist program and not to the words.prn file which is entirely public domain. Copyright (c) 1994 by Greg Siegle and the San Diego State University/University of California, San Diego Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology Permission to use this software is granted subject to the following restrictions and understandings: 1) There is no warantee or statement that the operation of this software will be error free. Greg Siegle and the SDSU/UCSD JDP in Clinical Psychology are under no obligation to provide any services by way of maintainence, update or otherwise. 2) Any user of such software agrees to indemnify and hold harmless Greg Siegle and the SDSU/UCSD JDP in Clinical Psychology from all claims arising out of the use of this software or arising out of any accident, injury or damage and from all costs, counsel fees, and liabilities incurred in or about any such claim, action, or proceeding brought thereon 3) Users are requested but not required to inform Greg Siegle of noteworthy uses of this software
Comments or problems with this page can be mailed to Greg Siegle:
gsiegle+@pitt.edu