title: The influence of neuroticism and psychological symptoms on the assessment of images in three-dimensional emotion space.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The present study investigated the influence of neuroticism (NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI)) and psychological symptoms (Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI)) on pleasure, arousal, and dominance (PAD) ratings of the International Affective Picture System (IAPS).
  
  
  METHODS
  The subjects (N=131) were presented with images from the IAPS (30 images) and new images (30 images). The influence of neuroticism and BSI (median split: high vs. low) on the assessment of pleasure, arousal and dominance of the images was examined. Correlations of pleasure, arousal and dominance were presented in a 3-D video animation.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Subjects with high scores (compared to subjects with low scores by median split) of neuroticism and psychological symptoms of the BSI rated the presented emotional images more negative in the valence dimension (pleasure), higher in arousal and less dominant.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Neuroticism and psychological symptoms influence the subjective emotional evaluation of emotional images. Therefore the location in the three-dimensional emotion space depends on individual differences. Such differences must be kept in mind, if correlations between emotion ratings and other variables like psychobiological measures are analyzed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, Medical Psychology, University of Ulm, Germany.
authors.forename: Steffen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Walter
authors.forename: Henrik
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kessler
authors.forename: Sascha
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gruss
authors.forename: Lucia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Jerg-Bretzke
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Scheck
authors.forename: Jochen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ströbel
authors.forename: Holger
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hoffmann
authors.forename: Harald C
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Traue