Multidimensional normative ratings for the body emotional stimulus set in Bochum Emotional Stimulus Set in Chinese samples.

The body serves as a vital medium for emotional expression. In this study, we aimed to extend the Bochum Emotional Stimulus Set (BESST), which comprises 565 body pictures depicting expressions of neutral emotions and six basic emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise). This study included two tasks. One hundred college students (M_age = 18.82; SD_age = 0.89) underwent the emotion recognition task of pictures (choose one out of seven emotions) and 103 college students (M_age = 19.83; SD_age = 0.84) underwent the rating task of emotional dimensions (motivation, valence, arousal, and dominance; rated on a scale of 1-9). The results showed that: (1) On average, neutrality had the highest recognition rate (94%), followed by sadness (89.04%) and happiness (81.26%), anger (74.03%), disgust (69.61%), fear (67.97%), and surprise (64.45%). (2) The main effects of emotional type in ratings of four dimensions were all significant. Specifically, fear, disgust, and sadness have similar emotional characteristics (withdrawal-motivation, high arousal, low pleasure, and low dominance), and emotions with higher biological relevance (such as disgust) have a greater degree of emotional characteristics. Happiness and anger share similar emotional characteristics, including approach motivation, high arousal, and dominance; however, they represent opposite ends of the valence dimension. (3) There were gender differences in motivation dimension ratings of surprised pictures and arousal dimension ratings of neutral pictures. We provided the recognition rate and rating values for each of the four dimensions for each picture. This set serves as a valuable resource for cross-cultural research and behavioral or clinical studies related to emotional disorders.