Magic Curiosity Arousing Tricks (MagicCATs): A novel stimulus collection to induce epistemic emotions

• Published in: Behavior research methods Vol. 53; no. 1; pp. 188 - 215
• Main Authors: Ozono, Hiroki, Komiya, Asuka, Kuratomi, Kei, Hatano, Aya, Fastrich, Greta, Raw, Jasmine April Louise, Haffey, Anthony, Meliss, Stefanie, Lau, Johnny King L., Murayama, Kou
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.02.2021; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Behavioral Science and Psychology; Cognitive ability; Cognitive Psychology; Emotions; Epistemology; Exploratory Behavior; Humans; Knowledge; Psychology; Psychometrics; Wakefulness; epistemic emotions; intrinsic motivation; curiosity; science of magic
• ISSN: 1554-3528; 1554-351X; 1554-3528
• DOI: 10.3758/s13428-020-01431-2

There has been considerable interest in empirical research on epistemic emotions, i.e., emotions related to knowledge-generating qualities of cognitive tasks and activities such as curiosity, interest, and surprise. One big challenge when studying epistemic emotions is systematically inducting these emotions in restricted experimental settings. The current study created a novel stimulus set called Magic Curiosity Arousing Tricks (MagicCATs): a collection of 166 short magic trick video clips that aim to induce a variety of epistemic emotions. MagicCATs are freely available for research and can be used in a variety of ways to examine epistemic emotions. Rating data also support that the magic tricks elicit a variety of epistemic emotions with sufficient inter-stimulus variability, demonstrating good psychometric properties for their use in psychological experiments.