title: Warsaw set of emotional facial expression pictures: a validation study of facial display photographs.
abstract: Emotional facial expressions play a critical role in theories of emotion and figure prominently in research on almost every aspect of emotion. This article provides a background for a new database of basic emotional expressions. The goal in creating this set was to provide high quality photographs of genuine facial expressions. Thus, after proper training, participants were inclined to express "felt" emotions. The novel approach taken in this study was also used to establish whether a given expression was perceived as intended by untrained judges. The judgment task for perceivers was designed to be sensitive to subtle changes in meaning caused by the way an emotional display was evoked and expressed. Consequently, this allowed us to measure the purity and intensity of emotional displays, which are parameters that validation methods used by other researchers do not capture. The final set is comprised of those pictures that received the highest recognition marks (e.g., accuracy with intended display) from independent judges, totaling 210 high quality photographs of 30 individuals. Descriptions of the accuracy, intensity, and purity of displayed emotion as well as FACS AU's codes are provided for each picture. Given the unique methodology applied to gathering and validating this set of pictures, it may be a useful tool for research using face stimuli. The Warsaw Set of Emotional Facial Expression Pictures (WSEFEP) is freely accessible to the scientific community for non-commercial use by request at http://www.emotional-face.org.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Social Sciences and Humanities Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: Michal
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Olszanowski
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: Grzegorz
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Pochwatko
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Social Sciences and Humanities Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: Krzysztof
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kuklinski
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Social Sciences and Humanities Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: Michal
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Scibor-Rylski
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Lewinski
authors.affiliation: Faculty in Wroclaw, University of Social Sciences and Humanities Wroclaw, Poland.
authors.forename: Rafal K
authors.initials: RK
authors.lastname: Ohme
keywords: basic emotions; emotion; emotion recognition; face perception; facial expression recognition; facial expressions of emotion; pictures; validation