A new short version of the Facial expressions of emotion: Stimuli and tests (FEEST) including prototype and morphed emotional stimuli

Abstract

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The ability to recognize emotions from facial expressions plays an important role in social interaction. This study aimed to develop a short version of the FEEST as a brief instrument to measure emotion recognition ability by applying prototype and morphed emotional stimuli. Morphed emotional stimuli include mixed emotions. Overall, 68 prototypes and 32 morphed emotional expressions were presented to 138 participants for 1 s. A retest with 76 participants was conducted after 6 months. The results showed sufficient variance for the measurement of individual differences in emotion recognition ability. Accuracy varied between emotions and was highest for anger and happiness. Cronbach's α was, on average, 0.70 for prototypes and 0.67 for morphed stimuli. Test-retest reliability was 0.60 for prototypes and 0.62 for morphed stimuli. The new short version of the FEEST is a reliable test to measure emotion recognition.

Keywords

• emotion recognition
• prototype
• morphed
• short version
• differences between emotions