Volunteers are Sought for an Online Experiment on Emotional Expressions

University of Granada researchers have designed a catalogue of pictures of individuals expressing specific emotions as joy, sadness, anger, disgust, surprise or fear. At present, the researchers are looking for volunteers for this project called “Emociónate” to assess to what extend individuals of different genders and ethnic groups can identify the expression of emotions by subjects of different gender and ethnic groups. 

Those who are interested in participating in this interesting online study can visit the web site http://wdb.ugr.es/~elecanadas/index.html to test their ability to identify emotions as expressed by other individuals. The observer will have to evaluate a series of face expressions in terms of gender, ethnic group, emotion, sex-appeal and reliability. In addition, University of Granada researchers have designed a version in English and French to allow people from other countries participate in the study. 

By Ethnic Group 

To design this catalogue of “emotional faces”, the authors collected a wide sample of facial and body expressions of the three major ethnic groups in Granada: Spanish, Gypsies and Moroccan. To induce facial expressions, the models were asked to watch a series of videos that caused basic emotions; joy, sadness, anger, disgust, surprise or fear. 

Then, under controlled light conditions, the researchers made pictures of the model’s expression. Additionally, they asked the models to spontaneously adopt different expressions as “I’m tired”, “I’m going to bed”, “something went wrong”, “OK”, etc.The final purpose of this Project is to serve as a meeting point to those interested in the study of emotions and intercultural relationships. Thus, this “catalogue of faces” can be used in future studies on emotions in any part of the world. In addition, this catalogue is available for studies on patients showing difficulty in identifying faces (prosopagnosia), and to study patients with inability to recognize others’ emotions (as schizophrenia). Finally, this catalogue can be used in the education sector in the field of emotional intelligence. 

The University of Granada researcher, Elena Cañadas, states that there is no international consensus on the universality of emotions. “Some authors state that there are shared expressions among all cultures and societies, while other researchers think that the expression of emotions is strongly influenced by the culture of the subject”. 

Non-Verbal Messages 

Emotional expressions are part of non-verbal communication. “Using these expressions we can express our emotions to others to cause specific reactions in them. Emotional expressions can induce behaviors in others, which can facilitate interpersonal relationships”, Pfr. Cañadas states. 
The Project “Emociónate” is being conducted by researchers at the University of Granada Departments of Experimental Psychology and Social Psychology Juan Lupiáñez, Rosa Rodríguez-Bailón, Alberto Acosta, Carolina Pérez Dueñas and Gloria Jiménez-Moya, and the web designer David Calmaestra. 

Contact: 

Elena Cañadas. Department of Experimental Psychology. University of Granada. Phone number:+34 958 2406 67. E-mail address: elecanadas@ugr.es 
Alberto Acosta. Social Psychology. University of Granada. Phone Number: +34 958 243772. E-mail address: acosta@ugr.es
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