A standardised database of Chinese emotional film clips

Film clips are widely used in emotion research due to their relatively high ecological validity. Although researchers have established various film clip sets for different cultures, the few that exist related to Chinese culture do not adequately address positive emotions. The main purposes of the present study were to establish a standardised database of Chinese emotional film clips that could elicit more categories of reported positive emotions compared to the existing databases and to expand the available film clips that can be used as neutral materials. Two experiments were conducted to construct the database. In experiment 1, 111 film clips were selected from more than one thousand Chinese movies for preliminary screening. After 315 participants viewed and evaluated these film clips, 39 excerpts were selected for further validation. In experiment 2, 147 participants watched and rated these 39 film clips, as well as another 8 excerpts chosen from the existing databases, to compare their validity. Eventually, 22 film excerpts that successfully evoked three positive emotions (joy, amusement, and tenderness), four negative emotions (moral disgust, anger, fear, and sadness), and neutrality formed the standardised database of Chinese emotional film clips.