Emotions and heart rate while sitting on a chair

ABSTRACT

New methods for unobtrusive monitoring of computer users' emotion psychophysiology are very much needed in human-computer interaction research. The present aim was to study heart rate changes during emotionally provocative stimulation. Six-second long auditory, visual, and audiovisual emotionally negative, neutral, and positive stimuli were presented to 24 participants. Heart rate responses were measured with a regular office chair embedded with electromechanical film (the EMFi chair) and with traditional earlobe photoplethysmography (PPG). Ratings of the stimuli were also collected. The results showed that the two heart rate measurements were significantly correlated, r = 0.99. In line with other studies the results showed that, in general, heart rate decelerated in response to emotional stimulation and it decelerated the most in response to negative stimuli as compared with responses to positive and neutral stimuli. Especially, emotional stimulation caused significant changes in heart rate at the 6th second from the stimulus onset. We suggest that the EMFi chair could be used in human-computer interaction for unobtrusive measurement of the user's emotional reactions.

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Index Terms

• Human-centered computing