Haptic Responses to Emotional Stimulation

Haptic (the sense of touch) technology is evolving rapidly and prevalent in our modern world; so it is only natural to use haptic technology to better understand and influence emotions in human beings. The purpose of this study is to understand if and how facial expressions such as anger and happiness affect haptic responses and how haptic technology can be used to capture the response. The main research question for this study was to find if different facial expressions affect the force and duration of touch exerted by participants and if there were any significant differences between gender? In this study, a haptic device were used to sense and measure applied force (in Newton) and duration of touch (in milliseconds). A pilot test was conducted to study if there was any significant effect on the force and duration of touch when facial stimuli of anger and happiness were displayed. The calculated mean results were promising and so the experiment was repeated with new set of 20 participants. The ratings for each facial stimulus were also collected from participants. The mean values from the main experiment also yielded similar results as in the pilot test. The results from the statistical analysis suggest that the force of touch for anger expression is significantly stronger than happy expression. There were no statistically significant effect on the force and duration of touch across gender. The differences between mean ratings of the facial expressions for valence and arousal were all statistically significant except between the ratings of arousal for happy and neutral expressions. There were no statistically significant differences of ratings for arousal and valence across gender. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that facial expressions of anger and happiness could influence the force of touch and that there is no significant variation between genders. This information would be used in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to measure or detect user s emotional responses inconspicuously