mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Anatomy of a Feeling: Narrating Embodied Emotions via Large Vision-Language Models

arXiv 2509.19595 ↗First posted 23 Sep 2025cs.CL cs.CVcited by 2

On the map: Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models → Multimodal emotion understanding

Abstract (arXiv)

The embodiment of emotional reactions from body parts contains rich information about our affective experiences. We propose a framework that utilizes state-of-the-art large vision-language models (LVLMs) to generate Embodied LVLM Emotion Narratives (ELENA). These are well-defined, multi-layered text outputs, primarily comprising descriptions that focus on the salient body parts involved in emotional reactions. We also employ attention maps and observe that contemporary models exhibit a persistent bias towards the facial region. Despite this limitation, we observe that our employed framework can effectively recognize embodied emotions in face-masked images, outperforming baselines without any fine-tuning. ELENA opens a new trajectory for embodied emotion analysis across the modality of vision and enriches modeling in an affect-aware setting.

Key facts. Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Multimodal emotion understanding, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models. Builds on 15 of its 39 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 23 Sep 2025.

Builds on

15 of 39 references.

Closest ancestors · 1

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Evaluating Vision-Language Models for Emotion Recognition8 Feb

Other references · 14

  1. 2018BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understandingcited by 40,204
  2. 2024The Llama 3 Herd of Modelscited by 14,192
  3. 2023Improved Baselines with Visual Instruction Tuningcited by 4,362
  4. 2024Qwen2-VL: Enhancing Vision-Language Model's Perception of the World at Any Resolutioncited by 4,151
  5. 2025Janus-Pro: Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generation with Data and Model Scalingcited by 787
  6. 2020Context Based Emotion Recognition using EMOTIC Datasetcited by 73
  7. 2017End-to-End Multimodal Emotion Recognition using Deep Neural Networkscited by 69
  8. 2024EmoLLMs: A Series of Emotional Large Language Models and Annotation Tools for Comprehensive Affective Analysiscited by 62
  9. 2018Survey on Emotional Body Gesture Recognitioncited by 47
  10. 2024VLLMs Provide Better Context for Emotion Understanding Through Common Sense Reasoningcited by 15
  11. 2024A Survey on Facial Expression Recognition of Static and Dynamic Emotionscited by 14
  12. 2021Emotion Recognition under Consideration of the Emotion Component Process Modelcited by 12
2 more
  1. 2024Visual Prompting in LLMs for Enhancing Emotion Recognitioncited by 12
  2. 2019An Analysis of Emotion Communication Channels in Fan Fiction: Towards Emotional Storytellingcited by 9

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 2.

2 papers.

  1. 2026Do Emotions Influence Moral Judgment in Large Language Models?cited by 2
  2. 2026Emotional Labor Strategy Preferences in LLM Personascited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026Do Emotion Concepts Generalize Across Sources, Modalities, and Architectures in Vision-Language Models?
  2. 2024Contextual Emotion Recognition using Large Vision Language Models
  3. 2026Interpreting and Enhancing Emotional Circuits in Large Vision-Language Models via Cross-Modal Information Flow
  4. 2026Visual Affect Analysis: Predicting Emotions of Image Viewers with Vision-Language Models
  5. 2025Customizing Visual Emotion Evaluation for MLLMs: An Open-vocabulary, Multifaceted, and Scalable Approach
  6. 2025Beyond Vision: How Large Language Models Interpret Facial Expressions from Valence-Arousal Values
  7. 2023Emotional Theory of Mind: Bridging Fast Visual Processing with Slow Linguistic Reasoning
  8. 2024EmoLLM: Multimodal Emotional Understanding Meets Large Language Models