Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T07:49:53.989Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Prototypicality and Intensity of Emotional Faces using an Anchor-Point Method

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 June 2013

Álvaro Sánchez
Affiliation:
Universidad Complutense (Spain)
Carmelo Vázquez*
Affiliation:
Universidad Complutense (Spain)
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Carmelo Vázquez. Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Campus de Somosaguas. Madrid (Spain). 28223. Phone:+34-913943131. FAX: +34-913943189. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

Emotional faces are commonly used as stimuli in a wide number of research fields. The present study provides values of 198 pictures from one of the amplest available face databases, the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces (KDEF). We used a new validation strategy that consisted of presenting pairs of faces which included an emotional face (i.e., angry, happy, sad) and its corresponding neutral face from the same model. This design allowed participants to keep a comparison face (i.e., neutral) as a constant anchor point to evaluate parameters on each emotional expression presented. Raters were asked to judge both the prototypicality of the emotional expressions (i.e., the degree to which they represent their corresponding emotional prototypes) as well as their emotional intensity. We finally discuss the potential advantages of this anchor-point method as a system to elicit judgments on facial emotional expressions.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Madrid 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This research was, in part, supported by grants PSI2008-02889-E and PSI2009-13922 to second author. We thank Luis Aguado, Gonzalo Hervás and Carmen Valiente for their collaboration and support in different stages of the study.

References

Aguado, L., García-Gutierrez, A., & Serrano-Pedraza, I. (2009). Symmetrical interaction of sex and expression in face classification tasks. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 71, 925. http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/APP.71.1.9 Google Scholar
Bar-Haim, Y., Lamy, D., Pergamin, L., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., & van Ijzendoorn, M. H. (2007). Threat-related attentional bias in anxious and nonanxious individuals: A meta-analytic study. Psychological Bulletin 133, 124. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.133.1.1 Google Scholar
Beaupré, M. G., Cheung, N., & Hess, U. (2000). The Montreal Set of Facial Displays of Emotion [Slides]. Montreal, Canada: Department of Psychology, University of Quebec. Google Scholar
Bimler, D., & Kirkland, J. (2001). Categorical perception of facial expressions of emotion: Evidence from a multidimensional scaling. Cognition and Emotion, 15, 633658. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02699930143000077 Google Scholar
Bradley, M. M., Codispoti, M., Cuthbert, B. N., & Lang, P. J. (2001). Emotion and motivation I: Defensive and appetitive reactions in picture processing. Emotion, 1, 276298. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037//1528-3542.1.3.276 Google Scholar
Bradley, M. M., & Lang, P. J. (1999a). Affective norms for English words (ANEW): Instruction manual and affective ratings. Gainesville, FL: The Center for Research in Psychophysiology, University of Florida.Google Scholar
Bradley, M. M., & Lang, P. J. (1999b). International affective digitized sounds (IADS): Stimuli, instruction manual and affective ratings. Gainesville, FL: The Center for Research in Psychophysiology, University of Florida.Google Scholar
Calvo, M. G., & Lundqvist, D. (2008). Facial expression of emotion (KDEF): Identification under different display-duration conditions. Behavior Research Methods, 40, 109115. http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/BRM.40.1.109 Google Scholar
Carroll, J. M., & Russell, J. A. (1996). Do facial expressions signal specific emotions? Judging emotion from the face in context. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 205218. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.70.2.205 Google Scholar
Ekman, P. (1993). Facial expression and emotion. American Psychologist, 48, 384392. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037//0003-066X.48.4.384 Google Scholar
Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1976). Pictures of facial affect. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.Google Scholar
Ekman, P., Friesen, W. V., & Hager, J. C. (2002). Facial Action Coding System. Salt Lake City, UT: A Human Face.Google Scholar
Etcoff, N. L., & Magee, J. J. (1992). Categorical perception of facial expressions. Cognition, 44, 227240. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(92)90002-Y Google Scholar
Fernández-Dols, J. M., Carrera, P., & Russell, J. A. (2002). Are facial displays social? Situational influences in the attribution of emotion to facial expressions. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 5, 119124.Google Scholar
Goeleven, E., De Raedt, R., Leyman, L., & Verschuere, B. (2008). The Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces: A validation study. Cognition and Emotion, 22, 10941118. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02699930701626582 Google Scholar
Greenwald, A. G., Poehlman, T. A., Uhlman, E. L., & Banaji, M. R. (2009). Understanding and using the Implicit Association Test: III. Meta-analysis of predictive validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 1741. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0015575 Google Scholar
Gross, J. J., & Levenson, R. W. (1995). Emotion elicitation using films. Cognition and Emotion, 9, 87108. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02699939508408966 Google Scholar
Halberstadt, J. B., & Niedenthal, P. M. (2001). Effects of emotion concepts on perceptual memory for emotional expressions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 587598. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.81.4.587 Google Scholar
Horstmann, G. (2002). Facial expressions of emotion: Does the prototype represent central tendency, frequency of instantion, or an ideal? Emotion, 2, 297305. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037//1528-3542.2.3.297 Google Scholar
Joormann, J., & Gotlib, I. H. (2007). Selective attention to emotional faces following recovery from depression. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 116, 8085. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.116.1.80 Google Scholar
Juth, P., Lundqvist, D., Karlsson, A., & Öhman, A. (2005). Looking for foes and friends: Perceptual and emotional factors when finding a face in the crowd. Emotion, 5, 379395. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.5.4.379 Google Scholar
Lang, P. J., Bradley, M. M., & Cuthbert, B. N. (1999). The international affective pictures system (IAPS). Technical manual and affective ratings. Gainsville, FL: University of Florida.Google Scholar
Langner, O., Dotsch, R., Bijlstra, G., Wigboldus, D. H. J., Hawk, S. T., & van Knippenberg, A. (2010). Presentation and validation of the Radboud Faces Database. Cognition and Emotion, 24, 13771388. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02699930903485076 Google Scholar
LeMoult, J., Joormann, J., Sherdell, L., Wright, Y., & Gotlib, I. H. (2009). Identification of emotional facial expressions following recovery from depression. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 118, 828833. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0016944 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Li, H., Chan, R. C. K., McAlonan, G. M., & Gong, Q. (2010). Facial emotion processing in schizophrenia: A meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging data. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 36, 10291039. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbn190 Google Scholar
Lundqvist, D., Flykt, A., & Öhman, A. (1998). The Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces (KDEF). Stockholm, Sweden: Department of Neurosciences Karolinska Hospital.Google Scholar
Matthews, A., & Mackintosh, B. (1998). A cognitive model of selective processing in anxiety. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 22, 539560. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023//A:1018738019346 Google Scholar
Matsumoto, D., & Ekman, P. (1988). Japanese and Caucasian Facial Expressions of Emotion (JACFEE) [Slides]. San Francisco, CA: Intercultural and Emotion Research Laboratory, Department of Psychology, San Francisco State University.Google Scholar
Matsumoto, D., & Ekman, P. (1989). American-Japanese cultural differences in intensity ratings of facial expressions of emotion. Motivation and Emotion, 13, 143157. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00992959 Google Scholar
Nummenmaa, T. (1992). Pure and blended emotion in the human face. Helsinki, Finland: Suomaleinen Tiedakatemia.Google Scholar
Provencio, M., Vázquez, C., Valiente, C., & Hervás, G. (2012). Depressive primes stimulate initial avoidance of angry faces: An eye-tracking study of paranoid ideation. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 36, 483492. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10608-011-9388-5 Google Scholar
Redondo, J., Fraga, I., Comesaña, M., & Perea, M. (2005). Estudio normativo del valor afectivo de 478 palabras españolas. [Affective assessment of 478 Spanish words.] Psicológica, 26, 317326.Google Scholar
Russell, J. A. (1991). The contempt expression and the relativity thesis. Motivation and Emotion, 15, 149168. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00995675 Google Scholar
Russell, J. A. (1997). Reading emotions from and into faces: Resurrecting a dimensional contextual perspective . In Russell, J. A. & Fernandez-Dols, J. M. (Eds.), The psychology of facial expressions (pp. 295320). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Russell, J. A., & Fehr, B. (1987). Relativity in the perception of emotion in facial expressions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 116, 223237. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037//0096-3445.116.3.223 Google Scholar
Tottenham, N., Tanaka, J. W., Leon, A. C., McCarry, T., Nurse, M., Hare, T. A., … Nelson, C. (2009). The NimStim set of facial expressions: Judgments from untrained research participants. Psychiatry Research, 168, 242249. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2008.05.006 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Watson, S. G. (1972). Judgment of emotion from facial and contextual cue combinations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 24, 334342. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0033730 Google Scholar
Williams, M. A., Moss, S. A., Bradshaw, J. L., & Mattingley, J. B. (2005). Look at me, I’m smiling: Visual search for threatening and nonthreatening facial expressions. Visual Cognition, 12, 2950. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13506280444000193 Google Scholar
Yrizarry, N., Matsumoto, D., & Wilson-Cohn, C. (1998). American-Japanese differences in a multiscalar intensity rating of universal facial expressions of emotion. Motivation and Emotion, 22, 315327. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1021304407227 Google Scholar