Abstract
The need for a validated set of emotional clips to elicit emotions in more ecological experiments is increasing. Here we present the validation of a new database of emotional films, named E-MOVIE, which includes, in this first validation phase, 39 excerpts arranged in six categories, three negative (Fear, Sadness and Compassion), two positive (Erotic and Scenery) and a Neutral category. Notably, Compassion and Scenery are new in the field as they were not included in other databases. The clips in E-MOVIE are characterized by homogenous durations of approximately two minutes, which make them suitable for psychophysiological research. In order to study the affective profile prompted by each category 174 participants (112 women) rated the movies on multiple dimensions, namely valence and arousal, intensity and discreteness of the induction of one of the six basic emotions and, finally, intensity of the experience of the emotional states defined by a series of emotional adjectives. Erotic clips were effective in the elicitation of a positive emotional state, characterized by high levels of arousal and excitement. On the other hand, Fear clips (selected without blood to avoid disgust reaction) prompted an affect characterized by high arousal, low valence and high levels of reported fear and anxiety. Women reported greater unpleasantness, distress, anxiety and jittery than men to the three negative categories. Compassion clips, characterized by the depiction of crying characters, were able to induce an affective state dominated by sadness and feeling touched, consistent with an empathic reaction to emotional sufferance. Sadness clips, instead, elicited an affective state characterized by sadness together with distress and angst. We also demonstrated that clips depicting natural environments (i.e. Scenery) prompted in the viewer a surprised, inspired affective state, characterized by high valence and arousal (especially in males), a result which suggests that their past categorization as neutral stimuli was inaccurate and problematic.
Highlights
The induction of an emotional state in the lab represents a long-standing issue in the investigations of human emotions [1]
It is important to acknowledge that the great diffusion of pictures as a mean of emotion elicitation is due to the great availability of validated databases of pictorial stimuli, such as the universally acknowledged International Affective Pictures System [4], POFA [8], KDEF [9], NAPS [10]
The clips were selected from commercial movies with an available English audio version, in order to make easy for English-speaking researchers to re-edit in English the clips included in E-MOVIE
Summary
The induction of an emotional state in the lab represents a long-standing issue in the investigations of human emotions [1]. Pictures are a class of stimuli very easy to implement in an experiment, providing the experimenter with the flexibility to switch between different presentation paradigms They can be used in a great variety of experimental designs, from simple passive viewing to more complex designs, in which slide presentation is mixed with other tasks. They put low demand to participants, making easy their use with different populations (i.e. children, clinical samples). Another useful feature of pictures is that they provide to experimenters the ability of controlling the perceptual characteristics of the stimuli, and even to experimentally manipulate them [7], allowing a great overall control. It is important to acknowledge that the great diffusion of pictures as a mean of emotion elicitation is due to the great availability of validated databases of pictorial stimuli, such as the universally acknowledged International Affective Pictures System [4], POFA [8], KDEF [9], NAPS [10]
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