Abstract
A major obstacle for the design of rigorous, reproducible studies in moral psychology is the lack of suitable stimulus sets. Here, we present the Socio-Moral Image Database (SMID), the largest standardized moral stimulus set assembled to date, containing 2,941 freely available photographic images, representing a wide range of morally (and affectively) positive, negative and neutral content. The SMID was validated with over 820,525 individual judgments from 2,716 participants, with normative ratings currently available for all images on affective valence and arousal, moral wrongness, and relevance to each of the five moral values posited by Moral Foundations Theory. We present a thorough analysis of the SMID regarding (1) inter-rater consensus, (2) rating precision, and (3) breadth and variability of moral content. Additionally, we provide recommendations for use aimed at efficient study design and reproducibility, and outline planned extensions to the database. We anticipate that the SMID will serve as a useful resource for psychological, neuroscientific and computational (e.g., natural language processing or computer vision) investigations of social, moral and affective processes. The SMID images, along with associated normative data and additional resources are available at https://osf.io/2rqad/.
Highlights
In fields such as affective science, large, diverse and systematically validated stimulus sets (e.g., [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]) have facilitated substantial scientific progress [11,12]
Dimension Valence Arousal Morality Harm Fairness Ingroup Authority Purity. Label This image is . . . This image is . . . This image portrays something . . . This image makes me think about the concept of CARE / HARM This image makes me think about the concept of FAIRNESS / CHEATING This image makes me think about the concept of LOYALTY / BETRAYAL This image makes me think about the concept of RESPECT / SUBVERSION This image makes me think about the concept of SANCTITY / DEGRADATION
Using the irr package for R [138], we first computed intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC)(A,1) for each batch, where (1) target and rater were both treated as random effects, (2) coefficients were calculated based on absolute agreement, and (3) the coefficient reflects the reliability of a single rating
Summary
In fields such as affective science, large, diverse and systematically validated stimulus sets (e.g., [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]) have facilitated substantial scientific progress [11,12]. In the field of moral psychology, there is a clear shortage of standardized stimulus sets This shortage places substantial constraints both on the kinds of paradigms that can feasibly be implemented, and on the reliability and validity of the conclusions researchers reach. Motivated by this gap in the literature, we present the development and validation of a new picture set, the Socio-Moral Image Database (SMID).
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