In this paper, we examine the perception of emotions as well as the characterization and the classification of emotional body expressions based on perceptual body cues ratings. Emilya (EMotional body expression In daILY Actions), a database of body expressions of 8 emotions (including Neutral) in 7 daily actions performed by 11 actors, is used for these purposes. A perceptual study is conducted to explore four issues: 1) how expressed emotions are perceived by humans, 2) how emotion recognition by humans differs across daily actions, 3) how expressed emotions are characterized by humans through body cues, and 4) how emotions are automatically classified based on human rating of body cues. Across all the actions, most of the expressed emotions were correctly identified, but some were confused (e.g. Shame and Sadness). Confusions occurring at the level of emotion perception may be due to a lack of contextual factors (Emilya contains body movement of daily actions without reference to a context), to a similarity of bodily expressions, but also to the lack of other modalities that may contribute to a better recognition of bodily expression of these emotions (e.g. facial expressions). In the paper, we detail and discuss the results from these different studies.