Selecting pure-emotion materials from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) by Chinese university students: A study based on intensity-ratings only

Abstract

There is a need to use selected pictures with pure emotion as stimulation or treatment media for basic and clinical research. Pictures from the widely-used International Affective Picture System (IAPS) contain rich emotions, but no study has clearly stated that an emotion is exclusively expressed in its putative IAPS picture to date. We hypothesize that the IAPS images contain at least pure vectors of disgust, erotism (or erotica), fear, happiness, sadness and neutral emotions. Accordingly, we have selected 108 IAPS images, each with a specific emotion, and invited 219 male and 274 female university students to rate only the intensity of the emotion conveyed in each picture. Their answers were analyzed using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Four first-order factors manifested as disgust-fear, happiness-sadness, erotism, and neutral. Later, ten second-order sub-factors manifested as mutilation-disgust, vomit-disgust, food-disgust, violence-fear, happiness, sadness, couple- erotism, female-erotism, male- erotism, and neutral. Fifty-nine pictures for the ten sub-factors, which had established good model-fit indices, satisfactory sub-factor internal reliabilities, and prominent gender-differences in the picture intensity ratings were ultimately retained. We thus have selected a series of pure-emotion IAPS pictures, which together displayed both satisfactorily convergent and discriminant structure-validities. We did not intend to evaluate all IAPS items, but instead selected some pictures conveying pure emotions, which might help both basic and clinical researches in the future.

Basic emotions expressed in music: factor analyses on intensity ratings by non-musical professional Chinese university students

“…Then, we constructed and validated the basic structures of musical emotion by conducting both EFA and CFA on the intensity ratings. Actually, in this way, the investigators have successfully delineated the structures of facial expressions of emotion24 and picture vectors of emotion 25. In the current study, we have hypothesized that musical emotion at least includes happiness, tenderness, sadness, anger, and anxiousness and these emotions have their discriminant and convergent validities, since previous documentation had indicated that these emotions are the basic ones related to music 17,26.…”

Complex Scenes From the International Affective Picture System (IAPS)

“…Although this observation was incidental to the main aims of the current study, this relative deficiency highlights the importance of better understanding the qualitative features that may make the emotional content of some social scenes less open to dispute. Researchers have previously cautioned that findings from experiments where complex scenes are assigned to emotion-eliciting conditions without procedures to validate their emotional content should be interpreted conservatively ( Barke et al, 2011 ; Moreno et al, 2016 ; Xu et al, 2017 ). Current findings suggest this caveat may apply in particular to social scenes.…”

“…However, while facial expressions of basic emotions are more likely to be categorized homogeneously among healthy individuals ( Wegrzyn, Vogt, Kireclioglu, Schneider, & Kissler, 2017 ), qualitative judgments of the same scene can vary markedly from one person to the next ( Mikels et al, 2005 ). To ensure more precise experimental manipulation, some investigators have highlighted the need for a panel of judges beyond the research team to validate the emotional content of experimental stimuli ( Barke, Stahl, & Kröner-Herwig, 2011 ; Moreno, Quezada, & Antivilo, 2016 ; Xu et al, 2017 ).…”

Ampliando los horizontes del neuromarketing: disminución de los problemas adictivos en la comunidad

“…Después de conocer estos estudios que describe los estímulos aversivos que son capaces de activar el SD, ¿cómo podemos transformar esta información en estrategias de marketing?, las aseguradoras sin conocer las bases neurales del miedo, por años han utilizado en su publicidad escenas de choques, catástrofes naturales, enfermedades, incendios, entre otros estímulos aversivos que, de acuerdo con el IAPS (Xu, et al, 2017), tienen una valencia emocional negativa alta y son capaces de activar el SD. En el transcurso de los anuncios o del discurso de los agentes de seguros, el SD se va activando, generando ansiedad, temor, y otras emociones negativas, sin embargo, la solución y la tranquilidad para que nada de eso pase, la tienen ellos, al comprar sus productos, nada pasará.…”