Identification of emotional facial expressions in a lab and over the internet

This dataset includes the data used for the analyses presented in the paper published (under the same title as this dataset) in the journal Psychology, Journal of the Higher School of Economics. Abstract of the publication: Collecting data over the internet is an approach that allows researchers to vastly expand the possible sample sizes of their studies, and enables the study of populations that may otherwise be difficult to access. However, to ensure that data collected over the internet is of the same level of quality as data collected in a lab, the comparability of internet-collected data with lab-collected data must first be assessed for individual areas of research and experimental approaches. To answer the question of whether internet data collection is suitable for experiments involving facial expressions, we conducted a deliberately difficult facial emotion-identification experiment where participants completed the same task either under supervision in our lab, or at an unsupervised location over the internet. Stimuli consisted of sad faces that participants were asked to identify as resembling either anger, fear, or disgust. Regardless of belonging to either the group tested in the lab or over the internet, participants showed highly similar response distributions, while differences between the groups were non-significant and of very low magnitude. We can therefore conclude from our findings that internet data collection is a viable method for experiments requiring the identification of emotional facial expressions, being able to produce similar results to those which can be obtained in a lab.

本数据集包含了发表于《高等经济学院学报：心理学》（Psychology, Journal of the Higher School of Economics）、与本数据集同名的学术论文中所采用的全部分析数据。该研究的摘要如下：互联网数据采集是一种可令研究者大幅拓展研究样本量，并得以研究传统途径难以触达的人群的研究方法。但为确保互联网采集的数据与实验室采集的数据质量相当，需针对具体研究领域与实验范式逐一评估两类数据的可比性。为解答互联网数据采集是否适用于面部表情相关实验这一问题，我们开展了一项特意设置高难度的面部情绪识别实验：参与者需在实验室有监督环境或互联网无监督环境下完成完全一致的实验任务。实验刺激材料为悲伤面孔，要求参与者将所呈现的悲伤面孔分别归类为愤怒、恐惧或厌恶三种情绪。结果显示，无论隶属于实验室测试组还是互联网测试组，参与者的反应分布均高度相似，组间差异无统计学意义且效应量极低。据此我们可以得出结论：互联网数据采集是一种适用于面部情绪识别实验的可行方法，可产出与实验室实验相近的研究结果。