Comparison of emotion elicitation methods: 3 methods, 3 emotions, 3 measures

Various emotion elicitation methods are used in many studies assessing the interaction of emotion and cognition. However, most of the experimental and meta-analysis studies comparing emotion elicitation methods have examined the success of emotion evoking in terms of valence and arousal. There are few experimental studies dealing with comparisons within discrete emotion approach. The present study was mainly aimed to determine the most effective emotion elicitation method for discrete emotions. Therefore, three emotion elicitation methods (film, IAPS, imagery) used to evoke three discrete emotions (fear, disgust, happiness) were examined in the framework of discrete, dimensional, and response component model of emotion. Within-subject design was used to examine the coherence of emotional response components such as subjective experience, facial expression, and physiological responses. The results suggested that film was the most effective among all emotion elicitation methods. All emotions elicited using the film method were accompanied not only by intense subjective experiences but also by physiological responses. IAPS and imagination methods successfully elicited subjective experiences of all emotions, except for fear - IAPS condition. Besides all, there was a lack of coherence between the components of emotional responses, and the most explicit results were obtained from subjective experiences.