Spanish adaptation of the "International Affective Picture System" (IAPS). Third part.

Abstract

The Spanish norms for pictures in shows 15 to 20 of the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) are reported in this paper. Participants were 811 undergraduate university students (521 women), who rated the valence, arousal, and dominance of 358 pictures. The correlations between the North-American and the Spanish ratings were all highly significant and, like in the United States, the picture distribution in the bidimensional affective space, defined by the ratings on affective valence and arousal, displayed the typical boomerang shape. Our data also corroborated gender differences in aversive pictures found in North-Americans. These results are fully consistent with those obtained in the first and second part of the Spanish adaptation, and demonstrate that the standardization of IAPS in our country has been successful. Finally, our data confirmed the cross-cultural differences found in arousal and dominance ratings: Spanish participants tended to assign higher arousal and lower dominance scores to the pictures, as a whole, than North-Americans. These data support the general cultural stereotypes that exist for these countries and suggest that the IAPS might be a reliably index of cultural differences in emotional disposition.