Ten subjects made paired comparisons of fifty “emotional” words on two dimensions; pleasantness and activation. The pairs were presented by a computer sorting algorithm which permitted a complete ranking of the word list after a relatively small number of trials; an average of 31% of the number of comparisons which would be required using a complete pairing procedure. The rankings of the emotional words generated with this procedure were highly correlated with the mean scale ratings of the same words as determined in a previous study by Whissell.
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