Environmental risks to humans, the first database of valence and arousal ratings for images of natural hazards

Abstract

Due to their relevance for the entire society, environmental hazards have largely been investigated in terms of their psychological effects. However, a complete image database comprising different categories of catastrophes has not been proposed yet. We selected 200 photographs of the most frequent natural disasters with the aim to collect the emotional reactions of observers. In particular, 20 stimuli were selected for each of the following 10 categories: earthquake, volcanic activity, lightning, hailstorm, drought, fire, landslide, epidemic, and neutral and positive images as control categories. A sample of 605 participants completed an online survey, in which they were asked to rate either the valence or the arousal of each stimulus, by using a Self-Assessment Manikin. The Environmental Risk to Humans database associates the emotional reactions to these visual stimuli, together with the demographics of the sample (e.g., gender, age, marital status, income, previous experience of natural disasters). The database constitutes a tool to explore human reactions to natural hazards, providing a controlled set of stimuli for different types of catastrophes.