The Limpopo facial emotion stimulus set: Locally validated stimuli for emotion research in sub-Saharan Africa.

Abstract

Most research on facial emotion recognition has focused on participants from a narrow range of Western cultures, thereby limiting its applicability to diverse populations. The present study aimed to validate a culturally relevant set of facial emotion photographs for use in regions of sub-Saharan Africa. We selected 206 facial expressions posed by models of Black African descent from the Racially Diverse Affective Expression data set (Conley et al., 2018). Fifty-four students from the University of Limpopo, South Africa, rated these stimuli in 2020. Using a 75% rater agreement threshold, we refined the rated images to a recommended set of 131 images, termed the Limpopo facial emotion stimulus set. These images demonstrated high recognition of the intended facial expressions and strong consistency between raters. We present psychometric results describing these open-access stimuli, intended to be informative for other researchers. Our validation process underscores the importance of adapting materials to match the cultural and social contexts of the target population. The Limpopo facial emotion stimulus set provides a locally validated set of emotional expression stimuli, filling a gap in the availability of culturally appropriate cognitive and emotional assessment tools, which we hope can enhance the ecological validity of emotion research in sub-Saharan Africa. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).