We examined the validity of visual stimuli used to measure the general and the unique tendencies in emotional interpretations. The stimuli consisted of toddlers’ facial expressions. The “clear” stimuli portray valence that can be interpreted consistently across individuals, measuring the general tendency of emotional interpretations. The “ambiguous” stimuli portray valence that can be interpreted differently across individuals, measuring individual differences in emotional interpretations. In Experiment 1, we showed a preliminary set of stimuli—6 clear and 8 ambiguous expressions—to two samples of college students and a sample of mothers, and asked them to interpret whether each stimulus looked happy, sad, angry, disgusted, scared, or surprised. In Experiment 2, we tested 70 mothers with 9 clear and 8 ambiguous expressions. Results in these experiments confirmed the internal validity and the external validity of our stimulus sets: All samples interpreted the clear expressions consistently while they

interpreted the ambiguous expressions inconsistently.