Sentiment is an Attitude not a Feeling

Sentiment analysis' attempts to measure the strength of the relationship between a person and an object, sometimes a concrete object such as a product and sometimes an abstract object such as a brand. There is considerable confusion about the form of this relationship - it is typically assumed to be a feeling (and so connected to emotions and moods). Here we argue, and demonstrate, that the relationship is better modelled as a cognitive one, and so connected to attitudes. We demonstrate that the more a lexicon avoids mood and emotion words, the greater its prediction accuracy for reviews of Amazon products.