The umeå university database of facial expressions: A validation study

Background: a set of face stimuli,called the umeå university database of facial expressions,is described. the set consists of 30 female and 30 male models aged 17-67 years (m = 30.19,sd = 10.66). each model shows seven different facial expressions (angry,surprised,happy,sad,neutral,afraid,and disgusted). most models are ethnic swedes but models of central european,arabic,and asian origin are also included. objective: creating and validating a new database of facial expressions that can be used for scientific experiments. methods: the images,presented in random order one at a time,were validated by 526 volunteers rating on average 125 images on seven 10-point likert-type scales ranging from completely disagree to completely agree for each emotion. results: the proportion of the aggregated results that were correctly classified was considered to be high (m = 88%). conclusions: the results lend empirical support for the validity of this set of facial expressions. the set can be used freely by the scientific community.