Electronic Library for Commercially Usable Emotional Stimuli (EL-CUES): An Annotated Image Database for Emotion Induction Validated in a German Population

Inducing specific emotional states in participants is a critical step in many behavioral experiments. Researchers often rely on databases that provide validated stimuli, such as images, for emotional elicitation. However, many of these databases have significant limitations, such as outdated image sets, lack of generalizability across different participant demographics, and a restriction to basic research settings, which complicates their use in commercial research and applied sciences. Here, we introduce the Electronic Library for Commercially Usable Emotional Stimuli (EL-CUES) - a stimulus database comprising 210 images annotated for valence, arousal, and basic emotions by 532 German raters, resulting in an average of 116 ratings per image. Based on these annotations, we grouped the images from the EL-CUES database into eight emotional response groups using k-means clustering. We provide a tool for selecting images tailored to specific individual characteristics, such as gender and age, and the desired emotional response. EL-CUES is available for research and commercial licensing, offering a new option for emotion induction in both basic and applied research with enhanced functionality compared to existing databases.