Roll 'em! The effects of picture motion on emotional responses

An experiment investigated the effects of picture motion on individuals' emotional reactions to images. Participants in the study viewed moving and still versions of 27 different images extracted from a variety of film and television programs. Subjective measures (self-reports) and physiological data (skin conductance and heart rate) were obtained to provide convergent data on affective responses. Results indicate that picture motion significantly increased arousal, particularly when the image was already arousing. Both skin conductance and self-report data supported this finding. Picture motion also tended to prompt more heart-rate deceleration, most likely reflecting a greater allocation of attention to the more arousing images. In this study, the influence of picture motion on affective valence was evident only in the self-report measures; positive images were experienced as more positive and negative images as more negative when the image contained motion.