Affective norms for French words (FAN).

The present study provides affective norms for a large corpus of French words (N = 1,031) that were rated on emotional valence and emotional arousal by 469 French young adults. Ratings were made using the Self-Assessment Manikin (Lang, 1980). By combining evaluations of valence and arousal, and including ratings provided by male and female young adults, this database complements and extends existing French-language databases. The response reliability for the two affective dimensions was good, and the consistency between the present and previous ratings was high. We found a strong quadratic relationship between the valence and arousal ratings. Perceptions of the affective content of a word were partly linked to sex. This new affective database (FAN) will enable French-speaking researchers to select suitable materials for studies of how the character of affective words influences their cognitive processing. FAN is available as an online supplement downloadable with this article.