The Inclusive Emotional Whole-Body Stimulus Set

PI: Marta Calbi

In the last decades, the research community in affective neuroscience showed renewed interest for whole-body expressions, pointing out that bodily expressions are as important as facial ones for conveying emotions, understanding others’ emotional states, and adapting our behavior (e.g., de Gelder 2006; 2009; de Gelder et al., 2010; Calbi et al., 2017; 2019). However, two highly critical aspects still weaken the current research: 1) Poor quality of stimuli employed to investigate neural and behavioral mechanisms of emotional body postures perception. 2) All the available stimuli set are biased, not being representative of the spectrum of human bodily traits, especially in terms of gender and race.

The aims of this project are twofold: 1) to build up for the first time an original, high-quality and inclusive set of emotional facial and whole-body expressions, and 2) to experimentally validate these stimuli investigating the modulation of behavioral responses they evoke. Hence, following criteria of integration and inclusivity together with a methodological rigor, EmBoSS’ aims will be addressed by producing photographs and videos of healthy young adults, recruited based on Gender (men; women; transgender Male to Female [transwomen]; transgender Female to Male [transmen]) and Race (Caucasian; African; Eastern), while expressing emotions and neutral conditions with whole-body (with both visible and covered faces) and faces. To validate the stimuli, two behavioral experiments will be built asking adult healthy participants to evaluate each expression in terms of arousal, valence and emotional category. Furthermore, to communicate and disseminate EmBoSS outcomes in a timely and widespread manner, three different actions will be implemented.

For the first time, EmBoSS will provide the neuroscientific community working on emotions a complete set of high-quality stimuli for conducting experiments, thus facilitating the development of international research networks and fostering an in-depth theoretical reflection on inclusivity issues that will have an impact on the experimental practice too. In this way, EmBoSS will contribute to remedy a scientific and methodological lack in current affective and cognitive neuroscience, which are far behind manifold fields that have investigated human emotional expressiveness since their very beginning (e.g., aesthetics, visual studies, and visual and performance arts). Besides serving significant scientific purposes, EmBoSS will also perfectly fit into the current cultural debate on issues of inclusiveness in an original and innovative way.

The project will fit into the Progetto d’Eccellenza 2023-2027 “Techne” (see the CRC PhiLab – Experimental Philosophy Center; https://sites.unimi.it/philab/) of the Dept. of Philosophy “Piero Martinetti” and it is settled into the fertile bed promoted by the fruitful discussions among members of PIS – Performing Identities Studies and FUEL – Feminist and Queer Philosophy (https://fuellab.unimi.it/). The project has also the support of SWIP Italia (Society for women in philosophy; https://swip-italia.org/), and of the Museo della Filosofia (https://museodellafilosofia.unimi.it/).