Emotion elicitation effect of films in a Japanese sample

Films are effective stimuli to elicit emotions. A set of films to elicit specific emotions was developed in a previous study (Gross & Levenson, 1995), and emotional reactions to them were investigated in Western participants. In this study, we investigated whether these films have a similar capacity to elicit emotions in a Japanese sample. Thirty-one Japanese participants viewed 8 films selected to elicit specific emotions (amusement, anger, contentment, disgust, fear, neutral, sadness, and surprise) and evaluated their emotional experiences using 16 discrete and 2 dimensional emotion scales. The discrete scales indicated that all of the films evidently elicited the target emotions, as well as some nontarget emotions. The dimensional emotion scales showed that almost all of the films elicited theoretically reasonable emotions in terms of valence. These results suggest that the films may have a universal capacity to elicit emotions.