Emotion science relies upon both facial and scene stimuli that evoke targeted emotions with regard to hedonic valence (i.e., pleasant or unpleasant) and emotional arousal or intensity. While both stimulus types have well established normative ratings via pleasantness and activation/arousal ratings, there are few direct comparisons of these stimuli. Using an auditory probe reaction time paradigm (probe RT), emotional scenes (i.e., the IAPS) were found to be more emotionally engaging compared to facial stimuli (i.e., KDEF). However, some facial sets are more engaging than others--namely the NimStim evokes significantly greater emotional arousal than the KDEF. Here, we plan to compare facial stimuli and scenes from the IAPS using the probe RT paradigm. We plan to compare the two stimulus types (faces vs. scenes) and compare the two facial stimulus sets (KDEF vs. NimStim) with the scenes from the IAPS. We predict that the NimStim will be significantly more emotionally engaging than the KDEF stimuli and that the emotional scenes will be significantly more engaging than both facial stimulus sets. While emotional scenes may be more emotionally engaging than emotional facial stimuli, the current study will extend the literature by demonstrating that certain facial stimuli (e.g., the NimStim) are more emotionally engaging than others (i.e., the KDEF). These findings, for instance, may inform social anxiety research, which relies heavily on facial stimulus sets, by providing a reaction time index of emotional engagement that compliments self-report emotional judgments to guide the emotion researcher in stimulus selection.