Introduction Music is an effective medium for eliciting and regulating emotions and has been increasingly applied in therapeutic contexts. Yet the absence of standardized and validated music stimulus databases limits reproducibility and application in psychological and clinical research. This study aimed to develop a culturally inclusive therapeutic music database and to examine its affective validity and reliability. Methods A total of 234 participants rated 87 instrumental excerpts from Chinese and Western traditions, spanning classical, traditional, and popular genres, along six dimensions: valence, arousal, expressiveness, familiarity, liking, and perceived tempo. Results Descriptive analyses indicated moderate to high ratings across dimensions, and reliability testing confirmed strong internal consistency across repeated evaluations (test–retest rs = 0.74–0.89, p s < 0.001). Correlation analyses demonstrated a coherent internal structure among the six dimensions. Exploratory factor analysis further supported a unidimensional affective–perceptual factor (KMO = 0.75, p  < 0.001), explaining 79.2% of the variance. Cluster analysis yielded three distinct categories: Positive–Energizing ( n  = 27), Neutral–Relaxing ( n  = 19), and Negative–Reflective ( n  = 14), which aligned significantly with expert-defined classifications [χ 2 (4) = 55.9, p  < 0.001, Cramér’s V = 0.57]. Discussion Based on these results, a final set of 60 validated excerpts was retained to form a standardized therapeutic music library. This resource offers a multidimensional, cross-culturally grounded, and empirically validated tool to advance emotion research, support cross-cultural comparisons, and guide the design of evidence-based music interventions in psychological and clinical practice.

Emotional visual stimuli presented in laboratory settings reliably elicit prototypical patterns of subjective and psychophysiological responses. These responses likely serve distinct functions and reflect the engagement of appetitive and defensive motivational systems, making them a valuable tool for examining emotional processing in both healthy individuals and those with mental disorders. Event-related potentials (ERPs), such as the Cue-P300, Stimulus Preceding Negativity (SPN), and Late Positive Potential (LPP), provide valuable temporal insight into anticipatory and elaborative stages of emotional processing. While these components have been extensively studied using the International Affective Picture System (IAPS), concerns about its dated content have prompted the development of alternative image sets, such as the Open Affective Standardized Image Set (OASIS). Yet, ERP responses to OASIS images remain underexplored. This study aimed to compare psychophysiological and subjective responses elicited by images from the IAPS and OASIS databases, matched for valence and arousal. Twenty-three participants completed two emotional S1-S2 tasks-one using IAPS images and the other using OASIS images-while undergoing EEG recording. In each task, a cue (S1) predicted the valence (pleasant, neutral, unpleasant) of an upcoming emotional image (S2). The SPN, Cue-P300, and the LPP components were analyzed. Results revealed that emotional (pleasant, unpleasant) OASIS images elicited larger Cue-P300 amplitudes than IAPS emotional images, whereas no SPN component was observed for either database. In addition, both IAPS and OASIS images elicited a robust LPP modulation, with this effect more pronounced for IAPS than OASIS unpleasant images. Together, these results indicate that both IAPS and OASIS images elicit the expected emotional responses. Self-reported ratings were similar across the two databases, alongside the LPP modulation by emotional content. Although further research is needed to clarify how image selection may influence emotional anticipation, the integration of the two databases appears to be a future viable approach.

Access to validated stimuli depicting children’s facial expressions is useful for different research domains (e.g., developmental, cognitive or social psychology). Yet, such databases are scarce in comparison to others portraying adult models, and validation procedures are typically restricted to emotional recognition accuracy. This work presents subjective ratings for a sub-set of 283 photographs selected from the Child Affective Facial Expression set (CAFE [1]). Extending beyond the original emotion recognition accuracy norms [2], our main goal was to validate this database across eight subj

Emotion elicitation through culturally relevant stimuli is crucial for psychological research that seeks to explore affective processes within specific populations. This study aimed to develop and validate a film-based emotion elicitation tool for Iranian culture. A comprehensive database of short video clips was selected to evoke distinct emotional states, including happiness, tenderness, fear, anger, sadness, and disgust, alongside neutral clips as controls. To validate the database, the emotional responses of 300 Iranian participants were assessed using key dimensions of arousal and valence, positive and negative affective states, gender differences, and mixed emotions. The results indicated that all emotional stimuli elicited significantly higher arousal levels compared to neutral clips, with fear-inducing clips generating the highest arousal levels. In terms of valence, positive emotional films, such as those inducing happiness and tenderness, were significantly associated with higher pleasantness, while anger elicited the lowest valence scores, indicating its strong negative impact. Additionally, the video clips effectively differentiated between positive and negative affective states, with clear statistical significance observed across all comparisons ([Formula: see text]), showing that videos designed to evoke positive emotions (e.g., happiness) and negative emotions (e.g., fear) successfully achieved these outcomes across the participant group. Gender differences were also examined, with women generally showing higher levels of emotional arousal than men, particularly in response to happiness, tenderness, sadness, and disgust, though the overall effect sizes were small. Finally, the study delved into the complexity of mixed emotions, where participants often experienced simultaneous conflicting emotions, such as happiness and sadness, challenging traditional discrete emotion frameworks. The findings affirm the cultural relevance and efficacy of the developed video clip database in eliciting a wide range of emotional responses, making it a valuable tool for future psychological studies in Iranian contexts. This study underscores the importance of culturally specific stimuli in emotion research and provides a robust resource for exploring the emotional landscape within Iranian culture.

A long-standing goal shared by researchers has been to design optimal experimental procedures, including the selection of appropriate stimuli. Pictures are commonly used in different research fields. However, until recently, researchers have relied mostly on line-drawings, which can have poor ecological validity. We developed a set of high quality standardized photographs of objects from six different categories, recorded under two camera viewpoints, and five presentation conditions (on its own, held by clean hands, and by hands covered with different substances: sauce, chocolate and mud). The