The Animal Affective Picture System (AAPS): A Standardized 800-Picture Database for Cuteness and Kawaii Study

Psychological and neuroscientific research on emotions requires publicly available stimulus materials with normative ratings. However, the necessary rating values for certain dimensions may be lacking when conducting research for specific purposes. In this study, we developed a new affective picture collection, the Animal Affective Picture System (AAPS, pronounced ay-apps), intended for use in research on cuteness or kawaii in Japanese and on human–animal relationships. While cuteness is considered a stimulus attribute with positive valence, kawaii also refers to the feeling people experience when perceiving cuteness. A total of 800 animal images in the public domain or licensed under CC0 (1,000 x 1,000 pixels) were rated by 914 Japanese adults on a 9-point scale for four dimensions: valence, arousal, motivational direction (approach–avoidance), and cuteness/kawaii. Each image was rated by an average of 57 participants. Cuteness ratings were highly correlated with both valence and motivational direction (rs = .97), and the positive correlation remained moderate even when one variable was partialed out (rs = .62 and .64, respectively). These results support the idea that kawaii is a positive emotion associated with approach motivation. The AAPS images, mean rating values, and raw data are freely available for download.