Emotion Elicitation EffEct of films in a JapanEsE samplE

Films are effective stimuli to elicit emotions. A set of films to elicit specific emotions was developed in a previous study (Gross & Levenson, 1995), and emotional reactions to them were investigated in Western participants. In this study, we investigated whether these films have a similar capacity to elicit emotions in a Japanese sample. Thirty-one Japanese participants viewed 8 films selected to elicit specific emotions (amusement, anger, contentment, disgust, fear, neutral, sadness, and surprise) and evaluated their emotional experiences using 16 discrete and 2 dimensional emotion scales. The discrete scales indicated that all of the films evidently elicited the target emotions, as well as some nontarget emotions. The dimensional emotion scales showed that almost all of the films elicited theoretically reasonable emotions in terms of valence. These results suggest that the films may have a universal capacity to elicit emotions.

[1]  B. Mesquita,et al.  Cultural variations in emotions: a review. , 1992, Psychological bulletin.

[2]  D. Matsumoto.  American-Japanese Cultural Differences in the Recognition of Universal Facial Expressions , 1992 .

[3]  Jacob Cohen.  Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences , 1969, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[4]  K. Scherer,et al.  Emotion Inferences from Vocal Expression Correlate Across Languages and Cultures , 2001 .

[5]  P. Philippot.  Inducing and assessing differentiated emotion-feeling states in the laboratory. , 1993, Cognition & emotion.

[6]  C. Darwin.  The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals , .

[7]  C. V. Witvliet,et al.  Psychophysiological responses as indices of affective dimensions. , 1995, Psychophysiology.

[8]  J. Gross,et al.  Emotion elicitation using films , 1995 .

[9]  P. Ekman,et al.  Unmasking the face : a guide to recognizing emotions from facial clues , 1975 .

[10]  G. A. Mendelsohn,et al.  Affect grid : A single-item scale of pleasure and arousal , 1989 .

[11]  Johannes Hewig,et al.  A revised film set for the induction of basic emotions. , 2005 .

[12]  P. Lachenbruch.  Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed.) , 1989 .

[13]  F. Hesse,et al.  Experimental inductions of emotional states and their effectiveness: A review , 1994 .

[14]  Klaus R. Scherer,et al.  Emotional experience in cultural context: A comparison between Europe, Japan, and the United States. , 1988 .

[15]  P. Ekman.  Universals and cultural differences in facial expressions of emotion. , 1972 .

[16]  P. Ekman,et al.  DIFFERENCES Universals and Cultural Differences in the Judgments of Facial Expressions of Emotion , 2004 .

[17]  F. Hesse,et al.  Relative effectiveness and validity of mood induction procedures : a meta-analysis , 1996 .

[18]  J. M. Carroll,et al.  On the bipolarity of positive and negative affect. , 1999, Psychological bulletin.

[19]  K. Shigemasu,et al.  Decline or improvement? Age-related differences in facial expression recognition , 2007, Biological Psychology.

[20]  Dirk Hagemann,et al.  The assessment of affective reactivity using films: Validity, reliability and sex differences , 1999 .

[21]  Flat affect in schizophrenia does not reflect diminished subjective experience of emotion. , 1993 .

[22]  Jeffrey B. Henriques,et al.  Resting frontal brain asymmetry predicts affective responses to films. , 1990, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[23]  Craig A. Smith,et al.  The structure of self-reports of emotional responses to film segments , 1982 .

[24]  E. Hatfield,et al.  Premarital sexual standards among U.S. college students: Comparison with Russian and Japanese students , 1996, Archives of sexual behavior.