The ability to reliably and ethically elicit affective states in the laboratory is critical when studying and developing systems that can detect, interpret, and adapt to human affect. Many methods for eliciting emotions have been developed. In general, they involve presenting a stimulus to evoke a response from one or more emotion response systems. The nature of the stimulus varies widely. Passive methods include the presentation of images, film clips, and music. Active methods can involve social or dyadic interactions with other people, or behavior manipulations in which an individual is instructed to adopt facial expressions, postures, or other emotionally-relevant behaviors. This chapter discusses exemplar methods of each type, discusses advantages and disadvantages of each method, and briefly summarizes some additional methods.Keywords/keyphrases affect elicitation, emotional images, emotional film clips, emotional music, backward masking, behavior manipulation, social interaction, dyadic interaction Glossary Affect elicitation: Methods used to evoke (or induce) affective responses in individuals. These methods generally involve presenting a stimulus or immersing the subject in a situation to evoke a response from one or more emotion response systems.The nature of the stimulus varies and could include the presentation of images, film, or music; adopting facial expressions or postures; and social or dyadic interactions, among others.Emotional images: Digital images or photographs that have been carefully selected and evaluated for their potential to evoke affective states in the viewer.Emotional film clips: Short movie segments, usually including both images and sound, which have been selected and evaluated for their potential to evoke affective states in the viewer.Emotional music: A recorded musical piece that has been selected and evaluated for its ability to evoke affective states in the listener.Backward masking: A method used to block conscious awareness of a visual stimulus. The target stimulus is shown to an individual very briefly (such as 15-60ms), followed immediately by a "mask" stimulus shown for a longer time (such as 500ms).Individuals report being consciously aware of only the mask.Behavior manipulation: A method in which individuals are instructed to adopt particular behaviorssuch as body postures or facial expressionsin order to induce particular affective states.Social interaction: A relationship between two or more individuals, that may be fleeting or enduring, in which an individual's actions and behavior are responsive to the actions and behavior of the other individuals. In one affect elicitation method, researchers try to create realistic social interaction scenarios that might evoke emotions in a more naturalistic context.
Dyadic interaction: A social interaction specifically between two individuals (seeSocial Interaction). One affect elicitation method focuses on bringing pairs of individuals together to engage in an unrehearsed, minimally structured conversation in order to evoke aff...