# MER-Bench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Multimodal Meme Reappraisal

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.15020 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.15020/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 43 of its 64 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Mar 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 43)

- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [InstructPix2Pix: Learning to Follow Image Editing Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09800/) (2022)
- [IP-Adapter: Text Compatible Image Prompt Adapter for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.06721/) (2023)
- [T2I-Adapter: Learning Adapters to Dig out More Controllable Ability for Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.08453/) (2023)
- [Qwen-Image Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.02324/) (2025)
- [Emerging Properties in Unified Multimodal Pretraining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14683/) (2025)
- [Diffusion Model Alignment Using Direct Preference Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12908/) (2023)
- [The Hateful Memes Challenge: Detecting Hate Speech in Multimodal Memes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.04790/) (2020)
- [Step1X-Edit: A Practical Framework for General Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.17761/) (2025)
- [MLLM-as-a-Judge: Assessing Multimodal LLM-as-a-Judge with Vision-Language Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.04788/) (2024)
- [Z-Image: An Efficient Image Generation Foundation Model with Single-Stream Diffusion Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.22699/) (2025)
- [OmniGen2: Towards Instruction-Aligned Multimodal Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.18871/) (2025)
- [AnyText: Multilingual Visual Text Generation And Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.03054/) (2023)
- [TextDiffuser-2: Unleashing the Power of Language Models for Text Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16465/) (2023)
- [GoT: Unleashing Reasoning Capability of Multimodal Large Language Model for Visual Generation and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10639/) (2025)
- [LongCat-Image Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.07584/) (2025)
- [Emotionally Numb or Empathetic? Evaluating How LLMs Feel Using EmotionBench](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03656/) (2023)
- [EmoBench: Evaluating the Emotional Intelligence of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.12071/) (2024)
- [GOAT-Bench: Safety Insights to Large Multimodal Models through Meme-Based Social Abuse](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.01523/) (2024)
- [MemeCap: A Dataset for Captioning and Interpreting Memes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13703/) (2023)
- [DreamOmni2: Multimodal Instruction-based Editing and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.06679/) (2025)
- [EmoGen: Emotional Image Content Generation with Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.04608/) (2024)
- [EmoEdit: Evoking Emotions through Image Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.12661/) (2024)
- [Frequency Decoupling for Motion Magnification via Multi-Level Isomorphic Architecture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07347/) (2024)
- [XMeCap: Meme Caption Generation with Sub-Image Adaptability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17152/) (2024)
- [Toxic Memes: A Survey of Computational Perspectives on the Detection and Explanation of Meme Toxicities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07353/) (2024)
- [Memotion 3: Dataset on Sentiment and Emotion Analysis of Codemixed Hindi-English Memes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09892/) (2023)
- [MM-InstructEval: Zero-Shot Evaluation of (Multimodal) Large Language Models on Multimodal Reasoning Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.07229/) (2024)
- [MemeCraft: Contextual and Stance-Driven Multimodal Meme Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14652/) (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, 1 of 1)

- [Beyond Shortcuts: Mitigating Visual Illusions in Frozen VLMs via Qualitative Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.26250/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Memes represent a tightly coupled, multimodal form of social expression, in which visual context and overlaid text jointly convey nuanced affect and commentary. Inspired by cognitive reappraisal in psychology, we introduce Meme Reappraisal, a novel multimodal generation task that aims to transform negatively framed memes into constructive ones while preserving their underlying scenario, entities, and structural layout. Unlike prior works on meme understanding or generation, Meme Reappraisal requires emotion-controllable, structure-preserving multimodal transformation under multiple semantic and stylistic constraints. To support this task, we construct MER-Bench, a benchmark of real-world memes with fine-grained multimodal annotations, including source and target emotions, positively rewritten meme text, visual editing specifications, and taxonomy labels covering visual type, sentiment polarity, and layout structure. We further propose a structured evaluation framework based on a multimodal large language model (MLLM)-as-a-Judge paradigm, decomposing performance into modality-level generation quality, affect controllability, structural fidelity, and global affective alignment. Extensive experiments across representative image-editing and multimodal-generation systems reveal substantial gaps in satisfying the constraints of structural preservation, semantic consistency, and affective transformation. We believe MER-Bench establishes a foundation for research on controllable meme editing and emotion-aware multimodal generation. Our code is available at: https://github.com/one-seven17/MER-Bench.