Eliciting Negative Affects Using Film Clips and Real-Life Methods

Abstract

Although audio-visual stimuli are among the most frequently used methods to elicit emotional reactions in experimental conditions, real-life manipulations have increasingly been used in different countries. However, the applicability of such protocols has not yet been tested in Brazilian Portuguese speakers. Thus, we conducted two experiments to investigate the effectiveness of both methods. In the first experiment, we used film clips to induce negative emotions (i.e., anger, fear, or sadness) or an emotionally neutral condition in 321 undergraduate students. After watching one of the online videos, volunteers completed an emotional assessment. As expected, there were significant differences in all groups. Our results corroborate the relatively discrete patterns in emotion elicitation using films. In the second experiment, anger was elicited in 18 male undergraduates through a hostile social interaction with a confederate and measured by the corrugator muscle activity and cortisol responses. Indeed, there was an increase in corrugator activity in the group exposed to anger induction, even after a few minutes from the end of the experimental manipulation. Implications for experiments on the negative emotions are discussed.

LATEMO-E: A Film Database to Elicit Discrete Emotions and Evaluate Emotional Dimensions in Latin-Americans

“…is refl ected by singular cognitive and behavioral patterns (Ferrer, Maclay, Litvak, & Lerner, 2016;Michelini et al, 2016). Nevertheless, in some cases, the discreteness of emotions is relative (Cabral et al, 2017;Gross & Levenson, 1995). Consequently, some emotions can overlap, which might hinder studies of the eff ects of diff erent emotions.…”

“…Therefore, some fi lm clips likely provoked sadness that was associated with accurate evaluative judgments. For example, some studies reported that an anger stimulus also induced sadness (Cabral et al, 2017;Gross & Levenson, 1995). Sadness can also be distinguished from anger and amusement in more complex ways.…”

Effect of emotions on risk taking, dishonesty and social cognition in college emerging adults

“…Coherentemente con estos resultados, en otro estudio también se obtuvo que la experiencia emocional de los adultos emergentes al final del experimento decreció respecto de la reportada después de la inducción emocional, aunque no fue tan disminuida como al inicio del experimento (Jeon y Zhang, 2013). Por su parte, y en consonancia con la literatura precedente (Aguado et al, 2016;Centurion Cabral et al, 2018;Gabert-Quillen et al, 2014;Zupan y Babbage, 2016), es de destacar que el grupo bajo la condición emocional neutral no reportó variaciones significativas en los niveles de valencia, activación e intensidad a lo largo de la sesión experimental.…”

Towards a better understanding of emotion blends: The case of anger-related emotion blends elicited via film clips

“…For instance, Fernández et al (2012) investigated the objective physiological responses (skin conductance level and heart rate) and subjective emotional responses elicited through a set of emotional film clips capable to induce anger, fear, sadness, disgust amusement tenderness and a neutral state. In the same vein, the Schaefer's database (2010) has been used to compare different types of real-life emotional elicitations: film clips eliciting anger, fear or sadness and a hostile social interaction (Cabral, Tavares, Weydmann, das Neves, & de Almeida, 2018). However; no study focused on the ability for the film clips belonging to this database to elicit different intensities of a same emotion.…”