Background. A study has shown that the development of words produced was gained through one’s experience. This development process influences how someone expresses and conveys their emotions. It is also shown that people with various range of age express their emotions through written words differently. However, empirical evidence of this issue remains scarce especially in Indonesia. To address the issue, this present study was conducted in order to identify the comparison of Indonesian emotion words production between adolescents and adults.

Methods. This qualitative research examined 349 subjects (106 males and 243 females), comprised of 283 adolescents (13-21 year old), 34 young adults (22-39 year old), and 32 middle adults (40-65 year old). The data was obtained through questionnaire. Subjects were asked to write down all of emotion words they could think of. Thematic analysis was used to categorize the words based on Plutchik’s emotion theory. The data was run in QDA Miner Lite software.

Results. Results showed the emotion words adolescents produced from the most frequent to the least frequent were joy, anger, sadness, love, disgust, fear, surprise, awe, optimism, anticipation, contempt, remorse, and aggressiveness. The three emotions most mentioned of joy were “senang”,” “gembira”, “ceria”, of anger were “marah”, “kesal”, “benci”, of sadness were “sedih”, “galau”, “nyesek”, of love were “bahagia”, “cinta”, “sayang”, of disgust were “jijik”, “bosan”, “jenuh”, of fear were “takut”, “seram”, “menyeramkan”, of surprise were “kaget”, “terkejut”, “syok”, of awe were (“kagum”, “terpesona”, “terpukau”, of optimism were “optimis”, “antusias”, “ambisius”, of anticipation were “tertarik”, “waspada”, “antisipatif”), of contempt was “muak”, of remorse were “menyesal”, “penyesalan”, “sesal”, and of aggressiveness was “panik”. Meanwhile, the words young adults produced from the most frequent to the least frequent were anger, joy, sadness, love, fear, disgust, awe, surprise, anticipation, remorse, and optimism. The three emotions most mentioned of anger were  “marah”, “kesal”, “benci”, of joy were “senang”,” “gembira”, “tenang”, of sadness were “sedih”, “galau”, “duka”, of love were “bahagia”, “cinta”, “sayang”, of fear was “takut”, of disgust were “bosan”, “jijik”, of awe were “kagum”, “takjub”, “terkesima”, of surprise were “kaget”, “terkejut”, of anticipation was “tertarik”, of remorse was “bersalah”, and of optimism was “optimis”. Lastly, the words middle adults produced from the most frequent to the least frequent were joy, anger, love, sadness, fear, awe, surprise, and disgust. The three emotions most mentioned of joy were “senang”, “gembira”, “ceria”, of anger were “marah”, “kesal”, “benci”, of love were “bahagia”, “nyaman”, “sayang”, of sadness were “sedih”, “galau”, “nangis”, of fear were “takut”, “seram”, of awe were “kagum”, “Masya Allah”, “takjub”, of surprise was “wow”, and of disgust were “bosan”, “jenuh”. Subjects did not mention any submission and disapproval words.

Conclusion. This study provides several conclusions that the production of fear, sadness, submission, and disapproval words is relatively the same between adolescents and adults. However, as people age, the more joy, love, and awe words they produce, but the less trust, disgust, anticipation, contempt, aggressiveness, and optimism words. Finally, young adults produce surprise, anger, and remorse words the most. The difference of emotion words production between adolescents and adults in this research is in accordance with previous study that one’s development and experience influence their development of words produced.

Added value. This study provides evidence about the production of emotion words between adolescents and adults using Plutchik’s emotion theory. Besides, there is still limited number of researches about emotion words production conducted in Indonesia.