Development and validation of an Argentine set of facial expressions of emotion

ABSTRACT

Pictures of facial expressions of emotion are used in a wide range of experiments. The last decade has seen an increase in the number of studies presenting local sets of emotion stimuli. However, only a few existing sets contain pictures of Latin Americans, despite the growing attention emotion research is receiving in this region. Here we present the development and validation of the Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Expresiones de Emociones Faciales (UNCEEF), a Facial Action Coding System (FACS)-verified set of pictures of Argentineans expressing the six basic emotions, plus neutral expressions. FACS scores, recognition rates, Hu scores, and discrimination indices are reported. Evidence of convergent validity was obtained using the Pictures of Facial Affect in an Argentine sample. However, recognition accuracy was greater for UNCEEF. The importance of local sets of emotion pictures is discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Facial expressions of emotion
• stimulus set
• FACS
• validation
• Argentina

Notes

¹The FACS coding was carried out by the Zurich Interaction and Expression Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Switzerland.

²Options were presented in Spanish as enojo, asco, miedo, alegría, tristeza, sorpresa, ninguna, and otro, respectively. These labels were chosen following prior studies finding them optimal (Vaiman et al., 2011).