In order to ensure no lasting effects of negative mood induction, we had
participants watch a video clip that elicited positive affect.
Not exact matches
After
watching the
video clip, the
participants were then shown 48 consecutive, desaturated color patches and were asked to indicate whether each patch was red, yellow, green, or blue.
In a second test, they scanned the brains of
participants in an MRI machine while the subjects
watched a series of short
video clips of unfamiliar faces, famous faces, common objects and navigational scenes, such as a
clip of the Earth from outer space; and in a separate task as they recognized specific faces.
Immediately after
watching the
video clip,
participants in all three groups completed the emotion rating scales.
Rather than using undifferentiated positively - and negatively - valenced stimuli, we created
video clips depicting each of the primary emotions, and we also asked
participants to rate their own feelings after
watching the
video clips.
This task was designed to assess whether
participants could: a) track changes in the intensity of the target's emotion (empathic accuracy; EA); and b) recognise the emotion displayed by the target after
watching the full
video clip (emotion recognition).