The Role of Language in Processing Basic and Complex Emotions in Bilinguals

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: This study examined how emotion language influences the processing of basic and complex emotions in bilinguals. Specifically, it explored how manipulating access to emotion meanings impacts the perceptual judgments of emotional faces in late Persian-English bilinguals. Design/Methodology/Approach: Forty Persian-English bilinguals completed an emotion judgment task involving basic and complex emotions in both languages. Two experimental conditions were used: satiation (30 repetitions) and priming (3 repetitions). Participants judged the congruence between facial stimuli and emotion words presented after repetition aloud. Data and Analysis: Accuracy and response latency were calculated across each trial condition. Analyses included repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) and paired t -tests, as well as Wilcoxon signed-rank tests. To assess the robustness of the effects while accounting for covariates and individual variability, linear mixed models were also employed. Findings/Conclusions: The findings revealed that emotion complexity exerted a stable effect across languages, with basic emotions being processed more efficiently than complex emotions. Language modulated the processing of emotional complexity. Temporarily interfering with access to emotion words reduced the efficiency of subsequent perceptual judgments of emotional faces in the dominant language. Originality: This study is one of the first to explore how bilinguals process basic and complex emotions when access to the semantics of emotion words is manipulated. It expands on previous studies by incorporating bilingualism, complex emotions, and the Persian language, which is rarely represented in the existing literature. Significance/Implications: The findings provide insights into the relationship between language and emotions in bilinguals, highlighting how language dominance, emotion complexity, and semantic accessibility influence the processing of emotional stimuli. These results may have broader implications for educational, clinical, and research practices in bilingual contexts, particularly by highlighting the decisive role of language dominance in the processing of complex emotions and the importance of carefully controlling emotional prototypicality and affective stimulus characteristics.