About KDEF
The Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces (KDEF) is a set of totally 4900 pictures of human facial expressions of emotion. The material was developed in 1998 by Daniel Lundqvist, Anders Flykt and Professor Arne Öhman at Karolinska Institutet, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Section of Psychology, Stockholm, Sweden.
The material was originally developed to be used for psychological and medical research purposes. More specifically material was made to be particularly suitable for perception, attention, emotion, memory and backward masking experiments. Hence, particular attention was for instance paid to create a soft, even light, shooting expressions in multiple angles, use of uniform T-shirt colors, and use of a grid to center participants face during shooting, and positioning of eyes and mouths in fixed image coordinates during scanning.
The set contains 70 individuals, each displaying 7 different emotional expressions, each expression being photographed (twice) from 5 different angles. For more info, see the document About KDEF.pdf.
Terms of use
The KDEF stimuli may be used without charge for non-commercial research purposes only. All and any (re-)distribution and publishing without the written consent of the copyright holders is forbidden. Copyright holder is Karolinska Institutet, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Section of Psychology, Stockholm, Sweden.
How to refer to KDEF
Lundqvist, D., Flykt, A., & Öhman, A. (1998). The Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces – KDEF, CD ROM from Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Psychology section, Karolinska Institutet, ISBN 91-630-7164-9.
Download KDEF
The KDEF stimuli consists of a ZIP archive containing the 4900 pictures, and a PDF with general information and usage terms.
The KDEF stimuli may be used without charge for non-commercial research purposes only. All and any (re-)distribution and publishing without the written consent of the copyright holders is forbidden. Copyright holder is Karolinska Institutet, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Section of Psychology, Stockholm, Sweden.
To read more and to download KDEF, please go to kdef.se