Kim's Convenience Scene
H≈2.8510 readers tagged 8 emotions. Most landed on Proud (30%), with Contempt / scorn (20%) close behind. AI read it as Proud — same as the human modal.
See full breakdown →
Phase 1 · dataset · final snapshot
Phase 1 · Part 1 collection closed on 14 Aug 2026 and the dataset is frozen (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0). 518 readings from 7 countries shape the patterns below — constellations of emotion, moments where readers diverged most, and clips where one AI saw something different from most humans. Per-clip breakdowns appear once a clip has at least 5 responses. Phase 2 (Multi-AI Calibration) is now running against this same dataset; its live counter sits on the home page, with the plan on the pre-registration.
518
Readings
64
Participants
7
Countries
Reading from
Collected Apr–Aug 2026 · dataset frozen 14 Aug 2026 · CC BY 4.0 on Zenodo.
Constellation gallery
Each card below is one clip. The night-sky shows how readers split across the emotions.
A constellation here is a way of showing that the same moment can be read in many different ways at once — not as noise to clean up, but as the actual finding.
Each star is one of the emotions. Its size and brightness scale with how many readers picked that emotion: bigger and brighter = more readers chose it. Empty/dim stars are options that no one (or almost no one) picked.
The peach-glow star is the most-picked emotion — the modal reading. The mint-glow star is how one AI (Claude) read the same moment. When peach and mint sit far apart, the AI saw something humans largely didn't — that's a finding worth reading.
Kim's Convenience Scene
H≈2.8510 readers tagged 8 emotions. Most landed on Proud (30%), with Contempt / scorn (20%) close behind. AI read it as Proud — same as the human modal.
See full breakdown →
Love Actually
H≈2.8324 readers tagged 9 emotions. Most landed on Disappointed (38%), with Embarrassed / awkward (33%) close behind. AI read it as Disappointed — same as the human modal.
See full breakdown →
The Intern - Jules Apologizes
H≈2.7319 readers tagged 9 emotions. Most landed on Anxious / nervous (53%), with Sad / sorry (37%) close behind. AI read it as Embarrassed / awkward — chosen by only 26% of human readers.
See full breakdown →
Shrinking - TV drama
H≈2.7219 readers tagged 10 emotions. Most landed on Embarrassed / awkward (58%), with Affectionate / tender (21%) close behind. AI read it as Happy / amused — chosen by only 16% of human readers.
See full breakdown →
GOOD WILL HUNTING
H≈2.7112 readers tagged 8 emotions. Most landed on Sad / sorry (58%), with Moved / touched (33%) close behind. AI read it as Sad / sorry — same as the human modal.
See full breakdown →
La La Land
H≈2.6912 readers tagged 8 emotions. Most landed on Angry / frustrated (67%), with Sad / sorry (33%) close behind. AI read it as Disappointed — chosen by only 25% of human readers.
See full breakdown →
Cards are sorted by Shannon entropy (H) — higher = more plural reading. Only clips with ≥ 5 responses appear; new constellations join as more readers participate.
AI vs human readings
On these clips, one AI (Claude) read the moment as an emotion that few human readers agreed with. The divergence isn't the AI being “wrong” — in a plural-reading framework, no single answer is right. But it does suggest that AI and humans are weighting different cues, and that's the question the project is trying to map.
43% of readers landed on Angry / frustrated.
AI saw Sad / sorry — not landed on by any reader.
See full breakdown →
48% of readers landed on Surprised.
AI saw Proud — no one picked it as their primary, but 4% tagged it as part of their Mixed reading.
See full breakdown →
75% of readers landed on Embarrassed / awkward.
AI saw Disappointed — tagged by 13% of readers in some form.
See full breakdown →
58% of readers landed on Embarrassed / awkward.
AI saw Happy / amused — no one picked it as their primary, but 16% tagged it as part of their Mixed reading.
See full breakdown →
Ranked by how few humans agreed with the AI's reading — lowest agreement first. This is exactly the kind of pattern that a single-answer AI tool would smooth over and a plural dataset can surface.
About the methodology
Each reading captures two axes (emotion + cues) and is measured for plurality with Shannon entropy and Krippendorff's α. The full taxonomy, metrics, and pre-registered hypotheses live on the research pages.
Reader diversity
Optional details participants choose to share. Each card appears once at least 5 participants have answered that question. Distributions are descriptive — they show the texture of the dataset, not statistical findings.
Shared by 41 of 64 participants
23 of 64 participants did not share this
Shared by 41 of 64 participants
32%
13 of 41 who answered both questions
Shared by 41 of 64 participants
23 of 64 participants did not share this
Shared by 44 of 64 participants
20 of 64 participants did not share this
By collection
33 participants · 5 countries · 232 responses · open
Most varied reading
On “Love Actually”, readers tagged 9 different emotions across 24 readings.
18 participants · 6 countries · 136 responses · open
Most varied reading
On “GOOD WILL HUNTING”, readers tagged 8 different emotions across 12 readings.
20 participants · 5 countries · 139 responses · open
Most varied reading
On “Kim's Convenience Scene”, readers tagged 8 different emotions across 10 readings.
Where we are
Phase 1
Plural reading dataset
Phase 2
Validated study materials
Phase 3
Adaptive tools
Cite this dataset
APA
Kim, E. (2026). MindLens Lab: Plural Emotion Reading Dataset (Phase 1, v1.0) [Dataset]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22265192
@dataset{kim2026mindlens,
author = {Kim, Evelyn},
title = {MindLens Lab: Plural Emotion Reading Dataset (Phase 1)},
year = {2026},
version = {1.0 (frozen 14 Aug 2026)},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.22265192},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22265192},
note = {Frozen snapshot of plural human readings of social-emotional video clips, paired with cue annotations and one AI's reading of the same clips.}
}Phase 1 is an ongoing project — the dataset version above increments with each closed collection. For the full anonymized export (responses, distributions, AI annotations), email contact@mindlenslab.org.
✓ Phase 1 · Complete
Every constellation above is built from real participants' readings — 500+ of them across seven countries. The dataset was frozen on 14 August 2026 and is openly available on Zenodo; two preprints and one accepted paper build on it.
Methodology + transparency
The counts on this page reflect the frozen Phase 1 · Part 1 dataset (v1.0, cutoff 14 Aug 2026) — the exact snapshot used in the two 2026 preprints, deposited on Zenodo as a versioned dataset: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22265192.
Each row above is one anonymous response. Counts include only responses kept in analysis (excluded responses are removed). Internal test profiles are excluded from every aggregate.
Reproducible analysis code (Python) is public on GitHub (MIT license). The two 2026 preprints derived from the Part 1 dataset are on Zenodo (Paper 1 · Paper 2).
Want the full anonymized dataset? Email us.