PICSA: A Pictorial Stimulus Set of (In)Congruent Sexual and Affective Cues in Women

Within a set of 384 standardized full-body photographs featuring 64 female models, two visual cues—(1) facial expressions (flirtatious/interested, rejecting/dismissive, neutral) and (2) clothing styles (casual/unobtrusive, revealing/provocative)—were systematically varied. Each image was evaluated by N = 150 raters from an age-stratified sample on three dimensions: (1) the effect of facial expression, (2) the effect of clothing style, and (3) perceived sexual attractiveness. The images included in the present database exhibit high ecological validity, as all models provided their own attire (including authentic clothing, accessories, and makeup), i.e., outfits they would actually wear in real-life social situations that were carefully predefined and communicated prior to the photo shoots. Moreover, models were allowed to display facial expressions with varying degrees of intensity, as affective cues in real-world settings are often subtle rather than perfectly unambiguous. Images from PICSA have already been used in two empirical studies in which the intended cue effects were experimentally validated. This article introduces the PICSA database and makes it available for future research, particularly in the areas of cue detection, memory processes, and social categorization.