Have you ever wondered why sometimes when you touch someone it’s electric and other times it is just, well, touching someone? Past research shows that the chemical senses do typically have altered perception when different emotional states are induced by video (Chen & Dalton 2005) (Platte, Herbet et al. 2013). Additionally our expectations in other senses such as hearing have been found to be affected by emotional priming (Timmers & Crook 2014). This paper expands on this idea by proposing a study that uses video clips to induce emotions and tests if these emotional states have an effect on haptic perception thresholds. The emotions being investigated are anger, disgust, fear, sadness, amusement, and love. It will also account for the fact …show more content…
that different body parts may have different changes in thresholds so seven body parts will be measured (forearm, palm, finger, leg, forehead, cheek, and lower lip). It will control for baseline emotional state, personality, and psychological disorders by administering questionnaires for each before participants begin then accounting for these factors in latent analyses. The effect of emotional priming on haptic perception Have you ever hear someone describe their first kiss as “electric”? Or perhaps you have noticed that when you’re sad, nothing else (even something as treacherous as stubbing your toe) can take your mind off it. Everyday life shows us that affective state has a distinct effect on sensation and perception, and there seems to be ample research on how this alters chemical senses like taste and smell, but what about the tactic sensations we take for granted every day? It seems we only acknowledge our tactic sense when it is perceived as fairly novel (for example: being tickled), is it possible our distinct emotions at these times may attribute to the intensity of some physical experiences? Investigating this would not only add to the limited research on haptic perception and emotion but also has applications in everything from commercial product design to sexual therapies, and it is what I am proposing we investigate with this study. Literature Review The study of how different factors such as emotional state affect sensation and perception is one that has been reviewed by psychologists in many different ways. For example, Denise Chen and Pamela Dalton (2005) investigated how emotionally toned stimuli (in this case videos) induced mood in individuals and how these different moods affected olfactory perception. First they issued participants tests to scale their baseline emotional state and personality. Using this data they controlled for baseline emotional state and personality when inducing emotion. They then induced various emotions by having subjects watch either a happy, sad, hostile, or neutral video clip and report about the emotions they felt after. Then they exposed participants to either a pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral odorant and recorded how long it took for the participant to detect the odorant and how intense they thought it was. They found that women detected pleasant odorants faster, and individuals with anxious and neurotic personalities had lower thresholds. As a result, in our study we will make sure to control for these confounding factors as well. More importantly though, they found induced emotion did modulate olfactory intensity reports in men, and detection time in both genders. This indicates that affective state does play a role in how we perceive stimuli and especially in how we sense stimuli. (Chen & Dalton 2005) This finding is in line with studies that examine other sensations as well. For example Platte, Herbet, et al. (2013) examined the effect of happy, sad and neutral video priming on taste discrimination and rating of five essential flavors. They did this by taking an orosensory baseline then showing 80 participants one of three different video clips (happy, sad, and neutral) to induce mood. They then gave each participant five different oral stimuli (sweet, umami, sour, bitter, and fatty) at five different concentrations. Their results regarding depressed and anxious individuals are in line with the finding of Chen & Dalton, depressed and anxious individuals rated flavors as more intense than others in any mood state. They also found significant results indicating that depressed and anxious individuals rate fatty concentrations as being the same when in low and high concentrations which may be evidence towards how eating disorders develop. Although they did find that inducing mood caused people to perceive citrus at higher concentrations than it actually was, they found no effects like this with any of the other flavors (Platte, Herbet, et al. 2013). Similar studies exist that examine how affective states can alter our expectations and therefore our perceptions.
A study by Renee Timmers and Harriet Crook (2014) tested the hypothesis that emotional priming altered the expectations of subjects in music. They did this by having subjects look at happy, sad, and neutral pictures then listen to neutral melodies and determine what they expected different aspects of the continuation of the melody to be. They also had an additional experiment where subjects rated the quality of the different melodic continuations. Analyzing this data together they found that the effect of emotion on expectation of melodies was only significant when rating the quality of the tune (as was done in their additional experiment). It was also significant when the subjects were expecting wide intervals (Timmers & Crook 2014). Although this experiment does not relate directly to how affective states can alter perceptions it does give insight into how affective states change our expectations which play a major role in our perceptions. This, in hand with the results of the proposed study, could be used to investigate the constructs that play into our perceptions and their inner …show more content…
workings. Most of these studies use films and videos to induce emotion, and I am proposing we do the same in this study.
A significant amount of research exists testing the efficacy of certain clips in inducing certain emotions. Hewig et al. (2005) have found a set of clips that can effectively induce feelings of anger, disgust, fear, sadness and amusement. This was done by having 38 participants view 16 different clips thought to induce different emotions and then having them take a 21 emotion range inventory scale. The results indicated that a handful of these clips did in fact induce anger, disgust, fear, sadness, and amusement. (Hewig et al. 2005) In the proposed experiment one of each of the clips that induce these different emotions will be used in addition to a romantic
clip. Although I had no trouble finding research on how emotions affect chemical senses like taste and olfaction, there is less research in the other senses. Perhaps the most understudied sense in this case is the haptic sense, which is why it is also the sense I propose we investigate. Emotions and physical interaction are two things that heavily rely on each other in our culture, so it makes sense and is pertinent to our interests to investigate their relationship. Hypothesis The first independent variable I propose we manipulate in this study is the emotion primed in the subject. The levels of this variable are anger, disgust, fear, sadness, amusement, and love. The second independent variable I propose we manipulate is the body part of the subject that the haptic perception threshold test is on. The levels of this variable are forearm, palm, finger, leg, forehead, cheek, and lower lip. The dependent variable I propose we measure is the absolute haptic threshold of the different body parts as a measure of tactile perception. The proposed study has two hypotheses: The first hypothesis is that participants emotionally primed with positive emotions such as love and amusement will have a decreased absolute threshold (increased sensitivity). The second hypothesis is that participants emotionally primed with negative emotions such as anger, disgust, fear, and sadness will have an increased absolute threshold (decreased sensitivity). This study will attempt to control for individual differences in haptic perception by performing a baseline before mood induction. It will also attempt to control for personality and baseline emotional state by issuing a personality assessment (for example, the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised-Short) and a survey assessing current emotional state before and after the mood induction. Method I am proposing that we use video clips to induce emotions in participants and seeing if these emotions cause changes in absolute haptic sensation thresholds on different parts of the body. This would be done in the form of a 6x7 experimental design where factors like individual differences in base thresholds, personality, and emotional state are controlled for. The baseline and after-priming sensation thresholds will then be statistically compared to see if significant differences exist. A psychological disorder survey will be issued before subjects are ran so anyone who scores in the range of a diagnosable disorder can be excluded from analyses. Participants. Subjects should be randomly selected from a general population. Ideally there should be an equal number of male and female participants, aged 18-70 (to control for extreme developmental differences), without any pre-existing emotional or haptic sensory disorders. Recruiting participants by advertising on craigslist or local magazines/newspapers will probably be the best way to get a representative population. Depending on funding there could be monetary compensation, or perhaps compensation with credit hours through some student program (which could also offer as an additional way to recruit participants). Materials. • One of each emotion inducing video clips from Hewig et al’s (2005) study • A video clip of people falling in romantic love: to induce feelings of love • A caliper: for doing two point discrimination tests of haptic sensation • Pencil: for data collection • Notebook: for data collection • A survey asking questions about participants current emotional state: for baseline and after-priming measurements of emotion • A personality survey (For example: Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised-Short): to control for personality factors • TVs or computers for each participant to view their video clips privately Procedure. First participants will be issued a psychological disorder, emotional state, and personality survey. Any participants who score high enough on the psychological disorder survey to be in the range for possible diagnosis of a disorder will be run in the experiment but analyzed in a separate ANOVA. Next, participants will be given a two point discrimination haptic perception test on their forearm, palm, finger, leg, forehead, cheek, and lower lip to form an absolute haptic sensation baseline. Then participants will then be randomly assigned to one of the six emotion conditions: anger, disgust, fear, sadness, amusement, or love. Participants will be separated and left alone to watch their respective video clips then fill out their emotional state surveys again. Immediately following the survey participants will be given another two point discrimination test in each of the same spots. Participants will then be compensated and dismissed. Initial and post-priming thresholds will be recorded and then compared separately and holistically using ANOVA. Conclusion Essentially the study I am proposing will examine if an array of emotions like love or sadness can alter haptic perception. It will control for pre-existing emotional state, personality, and psychological disorders. This will hopefully open the door to future studies about haptic perception and how our minds alter sensation based on what is happening in our environment. The human body is constantly running backend processes between our sensing of a stimuli and our perceptual interpretation of it, so hopefully this study will help bridge that ever-expanding gap that we call the difference between sensation and perception.
Music connects to the emotions present
To begin, I will give a brief overview on the effect emotions have on our media viewing experience. In particular, I will be examining the work of Noem Carroll and Carl Plantinga. Second, I will give a brief overview of the research that connects political humor viewing to positive outcomes including increased political knowledge, and the ability to learn various view points as well as greater understanding of one’s own viewpoint. Though, I understand that their is a raging debate between cognitivist and non-cognitivist. My goal is not to take a position on the debate, but I am merely going to give a brief overview of the literature on film and emotion. On one hand, Carl Plantinga argues that emotions can be defined as "Concern Based Construals.” To highlight this meaning, let us imagine that as I am writing this paper, I hear loud noises, as this is going on, unconsciously, my heart rate increases and respiration increase and I begin to develop the emotion of fear. This is similar to Noel Carroll’s theory of emotion, if not complimentary to Plantinga’s view. Carroll would say that emotions act as searchlights to help us focus on the perceptions necessary to deal with the current experience. Plantinga would concede that many of the affects associated with emotions occur in the cognitive unconscious. So, Plantinga is not saying that, “Emotions are mere judgements,” As Robert Solomon would claim, but emotions are driven by experience based on one’s personal perception. In other words, Plantinga is saying the these construals are based on one’s personal experiences, whether conscious or not. However, something should be said about Construals in of itself, th...
There are multiple feelings, moods, and senses that people use every day. Two of the primary feelings used is
Nonverbal communication contributed a large part in creating relational uncertainty within Tom and Summer’s relationship. There were multiple occasions within the film when Summer’s behavior may have led Tom to believe that she wanted more than the platonic relationship she established. For example, Summer kissed Tom in the copy room of the greeting card company after she discovered that he had feelings for her at a workplace karaoke night. “A kiss…can mean anything from a polite but superficial greeting to the most intense arousal” (205) states the communications textbook, Looking Out Looking In. In other words, a kiss is very dependent on contextual factors in order to gauge its significance. Haptics, the study of touching, can be applied to this situation to better understand Tom’s interpretation of the event. At this point, Tom and Summer’s
Curiosity is a concept that has lingered in people’s minds for centuries. Defined as “a strong desire to know or learn something,” curiosity often leads people to question concepts and ideas that are bestowed upon them (Oxford Dictionary, 2017). Music is a subject that people often strive to learn more about. In the realm of composing music, there are certain thoughts that go through the composer's mind that they want to showcase in their piece. When a composer writes, one can assume that their mood is often portrayed in their song, giving that song a distinct emotion. For example, love songs are usually written in two different tones: happy or sad. It is up to the listener to determine which tone it is being portrayed. The act of performing
Plutchik, Robert (1980), Emotion: Theory, research, and experience: Vol. 1. Theories of emotion, 1, New York: Academic
I want to discuss the function of music to combine intention and perception. I believe in the prehistoric, people sing or beat on the tough surface because they want to express their emotions, otherwise they have no reason to sing. Similarly, the composers also write the songs to express their feelings. Nevertheless, a piece of music which cannot trigger the change of feeling to audience cannot regarded as a musical sound. According to Thomas Schafer, "When people listen to music they usually try to attain specific goals. Those related to self-awareness and the regulation of mood and arousal are relatively important to them and those related to social relatedness less so"(12). From the research, Schafer get a conclusion that the music which can let people attain goals related to self-awareness and the regulation of mood and arousal will increase the strength of music preference(12). Hence, the function of music is to express the emotion and then influence the audience to let them have the same feeling as composers or performers. For example, Beethoven composed the famous Fate Symphony, or called Symphony No.5 in C major to show his determination to fight with the fate, for Beethoven the fate is the loss of his lover. While it is not the only purpose to write this symphony. The final goal is to move the
This study demonstrated that pop music influences happiness mood. As hypothesized participants in the pop music category were influence by the music and seem happier. The analysis revealed that participants in the rock and classical music categories didn’t have an effect in their mood. The results for rock and classical music did not supported the hypothesis, which rock music causes a person to have an aggressive mood, and classical music will lead to a calmer mood. The data support the primacy effect pop music results supported the hypothesis that pop music leads to a happier mood. The results from this data support from previous literature research such as the pop category. The results could also interpret as support for (Hargreaves, 1999). People make their music preferences based on the emotional state they are in (Hargreaves, 1999). The analysis revealed that pop music scored higher than students who had rock or classical. The implications for this study are to examine if music influence mood in a negative or positive aspect). As an outcome happiness mood correlated with pop music . There wasn’t no effect between rock music and aggressive mood. Classical music didn’t have a relationship between classic music and calm mood. The results of this study wouldn’t be able to support (Jordana Mena, 2007). This consists of classical music being composed with different emotions based on the key and time signature it is on. If the classical piece is written in a higher key then they saw different mood responses than the classical pieces written in a low key (Jordan Mena, 2007). This study has provided that music is more than just a piece, of a lyric, beat, or instrument it has been proven that music can help people ...
There is a growing body of work in the philosophy of music and musical aesthetics that has considered the various ways that music can be meaningful: music as representational (that is, musical depictions of persons, places, processes, or events); musical as quasi-linguistic reference (as when a musical figure underscores the presence of a character in a film or opera), and most especially, music as emotionally expressive. Here I will focus on the last topic, for I believe it will be useful for researchers in music perception and cognition to avail themselves of the distinctions that aestheticians have worked out regarding the musical expression of emotion.
Throughout the Baroque and Classical periods, composers developed specific designs with the intent of displaying emotions. Philosophical and artistic movements that occurred heavily influenced these methods of approach. It goes without saying that emotion, a highly revered attribution to music, has been shifted over time, and continues to adjust as the world and society transform.
Koelsch, S., Offermanns, K. & Franzke, P. (2010). Music in the treatment of affective disorders: an exploratory investigation of a new method for music-therapeutic research. JSTOR.
Husain, G, Schellenberg, G & Thompson, W. (2002). Effects of Musical Tempo and Mode on Arousal, Mood, and Spatial Abilities. Music Perception, 20(2), 151-171. Retrieved from http://www.erin.utoronto.ca/~w3psygs/Husain.pdf
Emotions are easily affected by outside forces. Music can provoke emotions of sadness, grief, joy, and even ecstasy. There are several different aspects of music that change how a song is interpreted. From these interpretations come emotions. Among them is the tempo, which is the speed of the song. If a song is sad, the tempo is often slower. If a song is meant to be happy, the tempo is quick and light. If the intention of a song is to bring about fear, it is either extremely slow and eerie or quick and adrenaline pumping. Another factor of interpretation is the key it is in. A key is, “a particular scale or system of tones” (Dictionary.com). There are 24 different keys that are separated into two categories. These categories are major and minor. The major are made up of more sharps, and the minor of more flats. The major key is used to express feelings of joy and happiness. The minor key however, is used to express feelings of sadness, depression, and regret. When the two are awkwardly combined, the key of the music changes to neither minor or major, and is referred to as a dissonance. A dissonance is defined as, “a simultaneous combination of tones conventionally accepted as being in a state of unrest and needing completion” (Dictionary.com). When a passage of music uses a dissonance, the ultimate goal is to create ...
Touch is one of our five main senses and important sense to be able to perceive reality. The way we as individuals touch things gives us a sense of connection whether it the thing we are touching is a hand of a friend or the prickly spines of a cactus. In the video Touch. it explores the different natures of touch in different movie clips the video provides. This video would attract viewers who are interested in the emotional atmosphere in films or for those who want to understand a deeper meaning of the term touch. Touch. communicates to the audience how touch can be perceived as a positive emotion, negative emotion or neutral emotion through the reactions of the actors and actresses in the movies. Note that this analysis will cover most clips
In conclusion towards the arguments and observations, musical expression consists in presenting emotion characteristics in appearance. It turns out people listen to music as having a purposeful nature and that it has an effect on psychological emotions. If there is a case in which music showing emotional qualities with no reference to feelings, there is a case of happy music that is not powerful of happiness.