# EEmo-Bench: A Benchmark for Multi-modal Large Language Models on Image Evoked Emotion Assessment

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.16405 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.16405/

## Key facts

- Cited by 15 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Multimodal emotion understanding, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models.
- Builds on 23 of its 71 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Apr 2025.

## Placed in

- Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models / [Multimodal emotion understanding](https://mlsanity.com/mllm/multimodal-emotion-understanding/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 23 of 23)

- [Gemini 1.5: Unlocking multimodal understanding across millions of tokens of context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05530/) (2024)
- [LLaVA-OneVision: Easy Visual Task Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03326/) (2024)
- [Janus-Pro: Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generation with Data and Model Scaling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.17811/) (2025)
- [DeepSeek-VL: Towards Real-World Vision-Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05525/) (2024)
- [Visual ChatGPT: Talking, Drawing and Editing with Visual Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04671/) (2023)
- [DeepSeek-VL2: Mixture-of-Experts Vision-Language Models for Advanced Multimodal Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.10302/) (2024)
- [mPLUG-Owl2: Revolutionizing Multi-modal Large Language Model with Modality Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.04257/) (2023)
- [AffectNet: A Database for Facial Expression, Valence, and Arousal Computing in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.03985/) (2017)
- [GoEmotions: A Dataset of Fine-Grained Emotions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.00547/) (2020)
- [mPLUG-Owl3: Towards Long Image-Sequence Understanding in Multi-Modal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.04840/) (2024)
- [Deep Facial Expression Recognition: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.08348/) (2018)
- [Sentiment Analysis in the Era of Large Language Models: A Reality Check](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15005/) (2023)
- [Q-Bench: A Benchmark for General-Purpose Foundation Models on Low-level Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.14181/) (2023)
- [Q-Instruct: Improving Low-level Visual Abilities for Multi-modality Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.06783/) (2023)
- [ArtEmis: Affective Language for Visual Art](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.07396/) (2021)
- [EmoSet: A Large-scale Visual Emotion Dataset with Rich Attributes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.07961/) (2023)
- [AesBench: An Expert Benchmark for Multimodal Large Language Models on Image Aesthetics Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.08276/) (2024)
- [AesExpert: Towards Multi-modality Foundation Model for Image Aesthetics Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09624/) (2024)
- [Robust Image Sentiment Analysis Using Progressively Trained and Domain Transferred Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1509.06041/) (2015)
- [UNIAA: A Unified Multi-modal Image Aesthetic Assessment Baseline and Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09619/) (2024)
- [Affection: Learning Affective Explanations for Real-World Visual Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.01946/) (2022)
- [MEMO-Bench: A Multiple Benchmark for Text-to-Image and Multimodal Large Language Models on Human Emotion Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.11235/) (2024)
- [MOSABench: Multi-Object Sentiment Analysis Benchmark for Evaluating Multimodal Large Language Models Understanding of Complex Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00060/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [EmoCaliber: Advancing Reliable Visual Emotion Comprehension via Confidence Verbalization and Calibration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15528/) (2025)
- [EEmo-Logic: A Unified Dataset and Multi-Stage Framework for Comprehensive Image-Evoked Emotion Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.01173/) (2026)
- [Multimodal Large Language Models for End-to-End Affective Computing: Benchmarking and Boosting with Generative Knowledge Prompting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.02429/) (2025)
- [Customizing Visual Emotion Evaluation for MLLMs: An Open-vocabulary, Multifaceted, and Scalable Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.21950/) (2025)
- [AICA-Bench: Holistically Examining the Capabilities of VLMs in Affective Image Content Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.05900/) (2026)
- [VCU-Bridge: Hierarchical Visual Connotation Understanding via Semantic Bridging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.18121/) (2025)
- [Emotional intelligence in large language models is fragmented across perception, cognition, and interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.24686/) (2026)
- [MVEI & EmObserver: Empowering MLLM-Oriented Visual Emotional Intelligence via Emotion Statement Judgement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.21061/) (2026)
- [E3mo-Bench: A Scalable Benchmark for Multimodal Evoked and Expressed Emotion Understanding via Bayesian Pairwise Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.10796/) (2026)
- [Why We Need a New Framework for Emotional Intelligence in AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.23163/) (2025)
- [MultiEmo-Bench: Multi-label Visual Emotion Analysis for Multi-modal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.14635/) (2026)
- [Dimensional Distribution Emotion State: Leveraging Valence and Arousal as a Common Embedding Space for Visual Emotion Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.26262/) (2026)
- [InsightVQA: High-Dimensional Emotion-Cognitive Visual Question Answering Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.02171/) (2026)
- [AffectWorld: Benchmarking Emotion-Driven Future World Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.18305/) (2026)
- [EmoGenie: Benchmarking and Evaluating Expressed and Evoked Emotion in T2I Generation with MLLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.18455/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The furnishing of multi-modal large language models (MLLMs) has led to the emergence of numerous benchmark studies, particularly those evaluating their perception and understanding capabilities. Among these, understanding image-evoked emotions aims to enhance MLLMs' empathy, with significant applications such as human-machine interaction and advertising recommendations. However, current evaluations of this MLLM capability remain coarse-grained, and a systematic and comprehensive assessment is still lacking. To this end, we introduce EEmo-Bench, a novel benchmark dedicated to the analysis of the evoked emotions in images across diverse content categories. Our core contributions include: 1) Regarding the diversity of the evoked emotions, we adopt an emotion ranking strategy and employ the Valence-Arousal-Dominance (VAD) as emotional attributes for emotional assessment. In line with this methodology, 1,960 images are collected and manually annotated. 2) We design four tasks to evaluate MLLMs' ability to capture the evoked emotions by single images and their associated attributes: Perception, Ranking, Description, and Assessment. Additionally, image-pairwise analysis is introduced to investigate the model's proficiency in performing joint and comparative analysis. In total, we collect 6,773 question-answer pairs and perform a thorough assessment on 19 commonly-used MLLMs. The results indicate that while some proprietary and large-scale open-source MLLMs achieve promising overall performance, the analytical capabilities in certain evaluation dimensions remain suboptimal. Our EEmo-Bench paves the path for further research aimed at enhancing the comprehensive perceiving and understanding capabilities of MLLMs concerning image-evoked emotions, which is crucial for machine-centric emotion perception and understanding.