Vocabularies for EmotionML

Abstract

This document provides a list of emotion vocabularies that can be used with EmotionML to represent emotions and related states. EmotionML provides mechanisms to represent emotions in terms of scientifically valid descriptors: categories, dimensions, appraisals, and action tendencies. Given the lack of agreement in the community, EmotionML does not provide a single vocabulary of emotion terms, but gives users a choice to select the most suitable emotion vocabulary in their annotations. In order to promote interoperability, publicly defined vocabularies should be used where possible and reasonable from the point of view of the target application. The present document provides a number of emotion vocabularies that can be used for this purpose.

Status of this document

This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at http://www.w3.org/TR/.

This is the First Public Working Draft of "Vocabularies for EmotionML", published on 7 April 2011.

This document represents an important complement to the Emotion Markup Language specification [EmotionML], i.e., a public collection of emotion vocabularies that can be used with EmotionML. It was originally part of an earlier draft of the EmotionML specification, but was moved out of it because of the quasi-static nature of Recommendation Track documents. Publishing the vocabularies as a separate document allows us to provide updates, extensions and corrections of the list of vocabularies as required, without having to follow the multiple steps involved in releasing a new version of a Recommendation.

The work described here reflects an evolving state of the art on Emotion vocabularies. The Working Group believes it is premature to propose a normative Recommendation on Vocabularies at this time. The Working Group also expects to update this document less frequently than the three-month heartbeat target for Recommendation-track Working Drafts.

This document was developed by the Multimodal Interaction Working Group. It represents consensus in the group's EmotionML subgroup. The group is likely to produce new versions of this document, but will strive to maintain syntactic compatibility with the current version. In particular the XML identifiers of vocabularies and the items in each vocabulary can be expected to remain valid with future versions of this Note. It is expected that any updates to this document will mostly add new vocabularies, or add explanations to existing vocabularies and/or vocabulary items.

Please send comments about this document to www-multimodal@w3.org (with public archive).

Publication as a Working Draft does not imply endorsement by the W3C Membership. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress.

This document was produced by a group operating under the 5 February 2004 W3C Patent Policy. The group does not expect this document to become a W3C Recommendation. W3C maintains a public list of any patent disclosures made in connection with the deliverables of the group; that page also includes instructions for disclosing a patent. An individual who has actual knowledge of a patent which the individual believes contains Essential Claim(s) must disclose the information in accordance with section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction

This document provides a list of emotion vocabularies that can be used with EmotionML to represent emotions and related states. EmotionML provides mechanisms to represent emotions in terms of scientifically valid descriptors: categories, dimensions, appraisals, and action tendencies. Given the lack of agreement in the community, EmotionML does not provide a single vocabulary of emotion terms, but gives users a choice to select the most suitable emotion vocabulary in their annotations. In order to promote interoperability, publicly defined vocabularies should be used where possible and reasonable from the point of view of the target application. The present document provides a number of emotion vocabularies that can be used for this purpose.

The guiding principle for selecting emotion vocabularies for inclusion in this document has been to list vocabularies that are either:

• commonly used in technological contexts, or
• represent current emotion models from the scientific literature.

In addition, given the difficulty to define mappings between emotion categories, dimensions, appraisals and action tendencies, we have included pairs or groups of vocabularies where these mappings are rather well defined. Future versions of EmotionML can use these vocabularies as a starting point to define mappings between different emotion descriptions.

The selection of emotion vocabularies in this document is necessarily incomplete; users are likely to find emotion vocabularies to be missing. There are two ways how a user can address this situation. First, users can easily write a definition for a custom emotion vocabulary as described in the EmotionML specification's section on Defining vocabularies. Secondly, feedback on the selection of emotion vocabularies in this document is highly appreciated. Future versions of this document can include corrections and more thorough explanations for the existing vocabularies, and add additional vocabularies which may be of interest to a wider audience. Please send comments to www-multimodal@w3.org (with public archive).

2 Emotion category vocabularies

This section provides vocabularies for use with the EmotionML <category> element.

2.1 Ekman's "big six" basic emotions

These six terms are proposed by Paul Ekman (Ekman, 1972, p. 251-252) as basic emotions with universal facial expressions -- emotions that are recognized and produced in all human cultures.

The computer-readable definition of this vocabulary can be used in EmotionML as indicated in the following example.

<emotion category-set="http://www.w3.org/TR/emotion-voc/xml#big6">
    <category name="anger"/>
</emotion>

2.2 Everyday emotion vocabulary

These 17 terms are the result of a study by Cowie et al. (Cowie et al., 1999) investigating emotions that frequently occur in everyday life.

The computer-readable definition of this vocabulary can be used in EmotionML as indicated in the following example.

<emotion category-set="http://www.w3.org/TR/emotion-voc/xml#everyday-categories">
    <category name="affectionate"/>
</emotion>

2.3 OCC categories

The 22 OCC categories are proposed by Ortony, Clore and Collins (Ortony et al., 1988, p. 19) as part of their appraisal model. See also OCC appraisals below.

The computer-readable definition of this vocabulary can be used in EmotionML as indicated in the following example.

<emotion category-set="http://www.w3.org/TR/emotion-voc/xml#occ-categories">
    <category name="admiration"/>
</emotion>

2.4 FSRE categories

The 24 FSRE categories are used in the study by Fontaine, Scherer, Roesch and Ellsworth (Fontaine et al., 2007, p. 1055) investigating the dimensionality of emotion space. See also FSRE dimensions below.

The computer-readable definition of this vocabulary can be used in EmotionML as indicated in the following example.

<emotion category-set="http://www.w3.org/TR/emotion-voc/xml#fsre-categories">
    <category name="anger"/>
</emotion>

2.5 Frijda's categories

This category set is included because according to Nico Frijda's proposal of action tendencies (Frijda, 1986), these categories are related to action tendencies. See Frijda's action tendencies, below.

The computer-readable definition of this vocabulary can be used in EmotionML as indicated in the following example.

<emotion category-set="http://www.w3.org/TR/emotion-voc/xml#frijda-categories">
    <category name="anger"/>
</emotion>

3 Emotion dimension vocabularies

This section provides vocabularies for use with the EmotionML <dimension> element.

3.1 Mehrabian's PAD dimensions

Mehrabian proposed a three-dimensional description of emotion in terms of Pleasure, Arousal, and Dominance (PAD; Mehrabian, 1996, p. 264).

The computer-readable definition of this vocabulary can be used in EmotionML as indicated in the following example.

<emotion dimension-set="http://www.w3.org/TR/emotion-voc/xml#pad-dimensions">
    <dimension name="pleasure" value="0.5"/>
</emotion>

3.2 FSRE dimensions

The four emotion dimensions obtained in the study by Fontaine, Scherer, Roesch and Ellsworth (Fontaine et al., 2007, p. 1051 and 1055) investigating the dimensionality of emotion space. See also FSRE categories above.

The computer-readable definition of this vocabulary can be used in EmotionML as indicated in the following example.

<emotion dimension-set="http://www.w3.org/TR/emotion-voc/xml#fsre-dimensions">
    <dimension name="valence" value="0.5"/>
</emotion>

3.3 The intensity dimension

Sometimes it is necessary to represent the mere fact that an emotion of some undefined nature is present with a certain intensity. This can be achieved using the dimension vocabulary consisting of the single dimension "intensity".

The computer-readable definition of this vocabulary can be used in EmotionML as indicated in the following example.

<emotion dimension-set="http://www.w3.org/TR/emotion-voc/xml#intensity-dimension">
    <dimension name="intensity" value="0.5"/>
</emotion>

4 Appraisal vocabularies

This section provides vocabularies for use with the EmotionML <appraisal> element.

4.1 OCC appraisals

The following appraisals were proposed by Ortony, Clore and Collins (Ortony et al., 1988) in their appraisal model. See also OCC categories above.

The computer-readable definition of this vocabulary can be used in EmotionML as indicated in the following example.

<emotion appraisal-set="http://www.w3.org/TR/emotion-voc/xml#occ-appraisals">
    <appraisal name="suddenness" value="0.5"/>
</emotion>

4.2 Scherer's appraisals

The following list of appraisals was proposed by Klaus Scherer as a sequence of Stimulus Evaluation Checks (SECs) in his Component Process Model of emotion (Scherer, 1984, p. 310; Scherer, 1999, p. 639).

The computer-readable definition of this vocabulary can be used in EmotionML as indicated in the following example.

<emotion appraisal-set="http://www.w3.org/TR/emotion-voc/xml#scherer-appraisals">
    <appraisal name="suddenness" value="0.5"/>
</emotion>

4.3 EMA appraisals

The following list of appraisals was compiled by Gratch and Marsella (Gratch & Marsella, 2004) for their EMA model.

The computer-readable definition of this vocabulary can be used in EmotionML as indicated in the following example.

<emotion appraisal-set="http://www.w3.org/TR/emotion-voc/xml#ema-appraisals">
    <appraisal name="relevance" value="0.5"/>
</emotion>

5 Action tendency vocabularies

This section provides vocabularies for use with the EmotionML <action-tendency> element.

5.1 Frijda's action tendencies

This set of action tendencies was proposed by Nico Frijda (Frijda, 1986), who also coined the term 'action tendency'. See also Frijda's category set, above.

The computer-readable definition of this vocabulary can be used in EmotionML as indicated in the following example.

<emotion action-tendency-set="http://www.w3.org/TR/emotion-voc/xml#frijda-action-tendencies">
    <action-tendency name="approach"/>
</emotion>

6 References

6.1 Technical references

EmotionML

Emotion Markup Language (EmotionML) 1.0 , M. Schröder, Editor. W3C Last Call Working Draft, 7 April 2011.

6.2 Scientific references

Cowie et al., 1999

Cowie, R., Douglas-Cowie, E., Appolloni, B., Taylor, J., Romano, A., & Fellenz, W. (1999). What a neural net needs to know about emotion words. In N. Mastorakis (Ed.), Computational Intelligence and Applications (pp. 109-114). World Scientific & Engineering Society Press.

Ekman, 1972

Ekman, P. (1972). Universals and Cultural Differences in Facial Expressions of Emotion. In J. Cole (Ed.), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation (Vol. 19, pp.207-282). University of Nebraska Press.

Fontaine et al., 2007

Fontaine, J. R., Scherer, K. R., Roesch, E. B., & Ellsworth, P. C.(2007). The World of Emotions Is Not Two-Dimensional. Psychological Science, 18(12), 1050-1057.

Frijda, 1986

Frijda, N. H. (1986). The Emotions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Gratch and Marsella, 2004

Gratch, J., & Marsella, S. (2004). A domain-independent framework for modeling emotion. Cognitive Systems Research, 5(4), 269-306.

Mehrabian, 1996

Mehrabian, A. (1996). Pleasure-arousal-dominance: A general framework for describing and measuring individual differences in Temperament. Current Psychology, 14(4), 261-292.

Ortony et al., 1988

Ortony, A., Clore, G. L., & Collins, A. (1988). The Cognitive Structure of Emotion. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Scherer, 1984

Scherer, K. R. (1984). On the nature and function of emotion: A component process approach. In K. R. Scherer & P. Ekman (Eds.), Approaches to emotion (p. 293-317). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Scherer, 1999

Scherer, K. R. (1999). Appraisal theory. In T. Dalgleish & M. J. Power (Eds.), Handbook of Cognition & Emotion (p. 637-663). New York: John Wiley.