Facial expression images for emotion research in South Africa

What is it about?

Researchers use photographs of facial expressions in many kinds of psychological research. However, many commonly used image sets were developed and tested mainly in Western populations, so it is not always clear whether they work as intended elsewhere. We tested 206 photographs of models of Black African descent from the existing RADIATE collection with 54 students at the University of Limpopo, South Africa. Participants were asked to identify the emotion shown in each face. Of the 206 images, 131 were recognised consistently enough to meet our threshold for research use, while 75 were not, despite having performed well in the original US validation. The resulting Limpopo Facial Emotion Stimulus Set provides researchers with locally tested information about these images. Our ratings for every individual image are openly available online, and the photographs can be accessed through the original RADIATE collection.

Featured Image

Photo by Олег Мороз on Unsplash

Photo by Олег Мороз on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Few facial-expression resources used in sub-Saharan African research have been tested with local participants. Our results show why this matters: 75 of the 206 images did not meet our recognition threshold in our South African sample, despite having performed well in the original US validation. Testing images with local participants can help researchers choose stimuli that are interpreted more consistently. This can strengthen research on emotion, mental health and development in the region.