What and Where are the Primary Affects? Some Evidence for a Theory

Abstract

A set of 69 facial photographs of models simulating affective neutrality and the eight primary affects of interest, enjoyment, surprise, distress, fear, shame, contempt, and anger were presented to a group of 24 firemen whose task it was to identify the affect in the photograph. The hypotheses, tested and confirmed were that (a) all Ss would identify primary affects in the photographs with above chance accuracy, (b) groups of Ss would confuse some affects with others in a systematic fashion, and (c) some Ss would show individual biases in their judgments.