Characterization of the Nencki Affective Picture System by discrete emotional categories (NAPS BE)

Monika Riegel , Łukasz Zurawski , Małgorzata Wierzba , Abnoss Moslehi , Łukasz Klocek , Marko Horvat , Anna Grabowska , Jarosław Michałowski , Katarzyna Jednoróg , Artur Marchewka

Abstract

The Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS; Marchewka, Zurawski, Jednoróg, & Grabowska, Behavior Research Methods, 2014) is a standardized set of 1,356 realistic, high-quality photographs divided into five categories (people, faces, animals, objects, and landscapes). NAPS has been primarily standardized along the affective dimensions of valence, arousal, and approach--avoidance, yet the characteristics of discrete emotions expressed by the images have not been investigated thus far. The aim of the present study was to collect normative ratings according to categorical models of emotions. A subset of 510 images from the original NAPS set was selected in order to proportionally cover the whole dimensional affective space. Among these, using three available classification methods, we identified images eliciting distinguishable discrete emotions. We introduce the basic-emotion normative ratings for the Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS BE), which will allow researchers to control and manipulate stimulus properties specifically for their experimental questions of interest. The NAPS BE system is freely accessible to the scientific community for noncommercial use as supplementary materials to this article.