The assessment of affective reactivity using films: Validity, reliability and sex differences

Researchers interested in individual differences of brain asymmetry and affective reactivity have recently used film clips to elicit emotions and provided some standardisation data of emotion ratings for English-speaking samples. The aim of the present study was to examine whether (1) a set of films which already proved to elicit different emotions in English-speaking samples would demonstrate a similar capacity to induce emotions in a German sample and (2) to explore the validity, reliability and sex differences of aggregated indices of affective reactivity. Based on two film sets which have been examined by other investigators in the field, we formed a set of 13 emotion-eliciting films and presented the films along with emotion rating scales to university students. Our findings indicate that most films had the capacity to elicit specific discrete target emotions and the emotions elicited by the negative clips were more distinct than the emotions due to the positive clips. The factor structure of the emotion rating scales indicated that a distinct positive and negative dimension was extracted. The indices of positive and negative affective reactivity demonstrated good reliability and internal consistency. Women reported on greater levels of affective reactivity than men, both for positive and negative affective reactivity.