Let's Not Be Indifferent About Neutrality: Neutral Ratings in the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) Mask Mixed Affective Responses

The International Affective Picture System (IAPS) is a picture set used by researchers to select pictures that have been prerated on valence. Researchers rely on the ratings in the IAPS to accurately reflect the degree to which the pictures elicit affective responses. Here we show that this may not always be a safe assumption. More specifically, the scale used to measure valence in the IAPS ranges from positive to negative, implying that positive and negative feelings are end-points of the same construct. This makes interpretation of midpoint, or neutral ratings, especially problematic because it is impossible to tell whether these ratings are the result of neutral, or of mixed feelings. In other words, neutral ratings may not be as neutral as researchers assume them to be. Investigating this, in this work we show that pictures that seem neutral according to the valence ratings in the IAPS indeed vary in levels of ambivalence they elicit. Furthermore, the experience of ambivalence in response to these pictures is predictive of the arousal that people report feeling when viewing these pictures. These findings are of particular importance because neutrality differs from ambivalence in its specific psychological consequences, and by relying on seemingly neutral valance ratings, researchers may unwillingly introduce these consequences into their research design, undermining their level of experimental control.