A data-driven classification of feelings

We define ‘feeling’ as the subjective, affective experience of an emotion or a mood. People seek out feelings that are positive because it is rewarding for them to do so. It follows that manufacturers of branded goods should be concerned about the feelings that predispose consumers to buy their products and also about the feelings that their products help consumers to attain, perpetuate, enhance, diminish or dissipate, in pursuit of reward. Towards this end, practical procedures are required that will allow researchers to capture the prevailing feelings that individuals are experiencing at a particular moment in time and to track the transitions induced by products, brands, advertising etc. In order to develop and apply such research tools, researchers need an appropriate and well-focused lexicon through which they can access and explore feelings.This study describes a data-driven classification of feelings. An initial word list comprising 544 terms, of which 209 were notionally positive and 335 were notionally negative, was developed in English, French, German and Italian. In Phase 1 of the study, approximately 350 respondents were recruited in each of France, Germany, Italy and the UK to participate in a self-report feelings questionnaire. This yielded 55 feeling clusters of which 23 were notionally positive and 32 were notionally negative. In Phase 2 of the study, 60 exemplar terms in English were extracted from the previous cluster analysis and subjected to a similarity sorting exercise using 70 UK respondents. This yielded 25 lower-level clusters and 12 higher-level clusters, all of which were intuitively interpretable, along with a map derived using MDS that resembled a circumplex with the usual dimensions of affect and arousal.Frequency counts based on respondents’ self-reported feelings revealed that 64% of endorsements were of notionally positive and 36% notionally negative terms. This supports previous findings that the majority of people seem to exist in a generally positive state of mind. Findings were consistent across the four countries.The key outputs from this research are a lexicon of feelings comprising 59 terms in English, French, German and Italian along with a highly intuitive classification of these terms into 25 lower-order and 12 higher-order clusters. It is envisaged that the lexicon and the classification scheme will find application in consumer research and in brand and product development.