The EU-Emotion Stimulus Set: A validation study

Abstract

The EU-Emotion Stimulus Set is a newly developed collection of dynamic multimodal emotion and mental state representations. A total of 20 emotions and mental states are represented through facial expressions, vocal expressions, body gestures and contextual social scenes. This emotion set is portrayed by a multi-ethnic group of child and adult actors. Here we present the validation results, as well as participant ratings of the emotional valence, arousal and intensity of the visual stimuli from this emotion stimulus set. The EU-Emotion Stimulus Set is available for use by the scientific community and the validation data are provided as a supplement available for download.

The many faces of a face: Comparing stills and videos of facial expressions in eight dimensions (SAVE database)

“…Despite being a complex process, the capacity for processing face information is of utmost importance for social interaction (O'Reilly et al, 2016) and seems to be relatively universal (Cigna et al, 2015).…”

“…These videos were evaluated regarding emotion recognition and model ethnicity, but also in other dimensions such as overall valence, arousal as well as perceived directedness, perceived causation of the emotion, liking and approach-avoidance. Another example is the EU-Emotion Stimulus Set (O'Reilly et al, 2016), which includes videos (2-52 s long) of a broader set of 20 emotions/mental states (e.g., afraid, happy, sad, bored, jealous, and sneaky), and also body gestures and contextual social scenes. The videos were assessed regarding emotional display (forced choice task), valence and intensity of the expression, and the arousal felt by the participants upon exposure to a given video.…”

“…However, the extensive use of these types of stimuli has recently been questioned (e.g., Horstmann & Ansorge, 2009;Roark, Barrett, Spence, Abdi, & O'Toole, 2003). Specifically, the critiques refer to the low ecological validity of static stimuli, namely because they lack in temporal aspects of facial motion that are relevant for the recognition of facial expressions (e.g., Alves, 2013;O'Reilly et al, 2016). Presentation format might thus affect the amount of information that is retrieved from a given stimulus (e.g., Langlois et al, 2000).…”

“…For example, eyebrow frowning (produced by contracting the corrugator supercilii) is associated with unpleasant experiences, and raised lip corners (produced by contracting the zygomaticus major) are associated with pleasant ones (for a review, see Colombetti, 2005). The valence of facial stimuli has been assessed in a few validation studies (e.g., Adolph & Alpers, 2010;Langner et al, 2010;McEwan et al, 2014;O'Reilly et al, 2016;. In the present study, we asked participants to indicate the extent to which the expression displayed by the target was negative-positive (1 = Very negative, 7 = Very positive; e.g., Langner et al, 2010;McEwan et al, 2014;O'Reilly et al, 2016).…”

Perceived emotion genuineness: normative ratings for popular facial expression stimuli and the development of perceived-as-genuine and perceived-as-fake sets

“…1c). We aimed to have intensity values around, or above, the midpoint of the scale, given that low intensity is known to reduce labeling accuracy (O'Reilly et al, 2016), and might also be expected to reduce observers' ability to detect whether or not an expression is showing genuine emotion (e.g., because there might be insufficient physical information in the face).…”