Abstract
The concept of emotion is a complex neural and psychological phenomenon, central to the organization of human social behavior. As the result of subjective experience, emotions involve bottom-up cognitive styles responsible for efficient adaptation of human behavior to the environment based on salient goals. Indeed, bottom-up cognitive processes are mandatory for clarifying emotion-cognition interactions. Accordingly, a huge number of studies and standardized affective stimuli databases have been developed (i.e., International Affective Picture System (IAPS), Geneva Affective Picture Database (GAPED), and Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS)). However, these neither accurately reflect the complex neural system underlying emotional responses nor do they offer a comprehensive framework for researchers. The present article aims to provide an additional bottom-up validation of affective stimuli that are independent from cognitive processing and control mechanisms, related to the implicit relevance and evolutionistic significance of stimuli. A subset of 360 images from the original NAPS, GAPED, and IAPS datasets was selected in order to proportionally cover the whole dimensional affective space. Among these, using a two-step analysis strategy, we identified three clusters (“good performance”, “poor performance”, and “false alarm”) of stimuli with similar cognitive response profiles. Results showed that the three clusters differed in terms of arousal and database membership, but not in terms of valence. The new database, with accompanying ratings and image parameters, allows researchers to select visual stimuli independent from dimensional/discrete-categories, and provides information on the implicit effects triggered by such stimuli.
Highlights
There is unanimous agreement that the complexity of human feelings and the concept of emotion are complex neural and psychological phenomena, central to the organization of human behavior
This study aims to classify emotion stimuli according to their effects in terms of hits, false alarms, and reaction times (RTs) on attention performance
We evaluated personality traits with the short form of the “Big Five Questionnaire” (BFQ; Caprara et al, 1993) with five general domain scales
Summary
There is unanimous agreement that the complexity of human feelings and the concept of emotion are complex neural and psychological phenomena, central to the organization of human behavior. A Bottom-Up Validation of the Affective Picture Databases (Izard, 2010) focusing on the commonalities among the diverse definitions, defined emotion as the result of subjective experience, variations in physiological state and behavioral outcomes, and strengthening the idea that emotion prompts an organism to act in response to and consistent with environmental demands (Inzlicht et al, 2015) This definition clearly links emotion to cognition and cognitive control (i.e., the mental processes responsible for efficient adaptation of human behavior to the environment based on salient goals), suggesting that emotion and cognition are integrated and can have reciprocal selective effects (Gray, 2004). Spatial attention can be attracted by salient and/ or potentially dangerous events via bottom-up mechanisms in response to unexpected but important events
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