Standardized mood induction with happy and sad facial expressions.
The feasibility of applying ecologically valid and socially relevant emotional stimuli in a standardized fashion to obtain reliable mood changes in healthy subjects was examined. The stimuli consisted of happy and sad facial expressions varying in intensity. Two mood-induction procedures (happy and sad, each consisting of 40 slides) were administered to 24 young healthy subjects, who were instructed to look at each slide (self-paced) and try to feel the happy or sad mood expressed by the person in the picture. On an emotional self-rating scale, subjects rated themselves as relatively happier during the happy mood-induction condition and as relatively sadder during the sad mood-induction condition. Conversely, they reported that they were less happy during the sad mood-induction condition and less sad during the happy mood-induction condition. The effects were generalized to positive and negative affect as measured by the Positive and Negative Affect Scale. The intraindividual variability in the effect was very small. In a retest study after 1 month, the mood-induction effects showed good stability over time. The results encourage the use of this mood-induction procedure as a neurobehavioral probe in physiologic neuroimaging studies for investigating the neural substrates of emotional experience.
Schneider
F
F
Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
Gur
R C
RC
Gur
R E
RE
Muenz
L R
LR
D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect / Q000502:physiology; D001346:Autosuggestion; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005149:Facial Expression; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D008297:Male; D010555:Personality Inventory; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D014796:Visual Perception