A NEW SERIES OF SLIDES DEPICTING FACIAL EXPRESSIONS OF AFFECT - A COMPARISON WITH THE PICTURES OF FACIAL AFFECT SERIES

Experiment 1 describes a series of slides developed to depict various facial expressions of emotion. Pictures were taken of models (head and shoulders only) directly facing the camera, as well as rotated 30 degrees to the left, exhibiting no expression (neutral), anger, disgust, happiness, fear, sadness, and surprise. Groups of 90 to 100 first-year university students rated the slides by selecting the emotion expressed, its intensity and their certainty in their answer. Slides from five male and five female adults (ages 18 to 40), and three male and three female children (ages 9 to 12) are reported where more than 50% of the raters agreed on the intended emotion, or 35% agreed for the neutral expression. A detailed summary of the normative results of those slides is provided. Experiment 2 attempted to directly compare the present slides to the Pictures of facial affect (Ekman & Friesen, 1976) by rating those slides using the same rating technique as in Experiment 1. The results demonstrated that generally, the Australian norms were similar to those of the original set; however, 20 of their 110 slides had less than 70% rater agreement. The results from these studies allow the reader to compare the judgments of the emotions depicted in each slide in both the slide series. It is hoped that the new series of slides will be useful for other researchers examining phenomena related to facial affect.