Discriminating drivers’ emotions through the dimension of power: Evidence from facial infrared thermography and peripheral physiological measurements

Abstract

The goal of this study was to investigate changes in body temperature as indicators for the emotional dimension of power during driving. Therefore, a driving simulator experiment with 18 participants was conducted, in which two emotions (Fear and noFear) with different characteristics in the dimension of power (low power and high power), which is described as power or weakness feelings of control, were induced using threat and challenge events in the driving scenarios. Infrared thermography video and automatic facial feature recognition were implemented to assess participants' facial temperature. It was revealed that forehead temperature, which is supposed to represent emotional dimension of power, decreased significantly more after threat than after challenge events (t(17) = -1.83, p = .04, Cohen's d = 0.54). These results suggest that forehead temperature as an indicator for the emotional dimension of power can help to measure drivers' fear and thus aid reliable in-vehicle emotion recognition.

Can a Low-Cost Eye Tracker Assess the Impact of a Valent Stimulus? A Study Replicating the Visual Backward Masking Paradigm

“…The use of eye-tracking in user experience studies has been well documented, with most researchers focusing on gaze-based A/B testing and heatmap analysis. There is a growing body of literature, however, that argues in favour of using eye-tracking to capture user affect data (e.g., Hudlicka, 2003;Krämer, Kopp, Becker-Asano, & Sommer, 2013;Tuch et al, 2009;Zhai & Barreto, 2006;Zhang, Ihme, & Drewitz, 2019). Affective responses to valent stimuli modulate cognition (see Dominguez-Borras & Vuilleumier, 2013;Pourtois, Schettino, & Vuilleumier, 2013;Todd, Cunningham, Anderson, & Thompson, 2012) due to threat-relevant information activating the amygdala in the brain.…”

“…Since affective response to particularly negative valent stimuli can modulate cognition and impact both user experience and performance (Hudlicka, 2003), the capture and analysis of cognitive and emotional response, by using eye-tracking, is a useful tool within user experience studies. For example, the capture of response data is particularly important in areas such as transportation, where a fearful response by the driver could alert a vehicle system that something is wrong (Zhang, Ihme, & Drewitz, 2019).…”

Where Do We Stand in the Domestic Dog (Canis familiaris) Positive-Emotion Assessment: A State-of-the-Art Review and Future Directions

“…Implementation of infrared thermography (IRT) is an effective way to accurately quantify the smallest superficial temperature changes in response to environmental and psychological stimuli, both in humans ( Pavlidis et al, 2000 , 2002 ; Pollina et al, 2006 ; Goulart et al, 2019 ; Panasiti et al, 2019 ; Zhang et al, 2019 ) and animals ( Mccafferty, 2007 ; McManus et al, 2016 ; Telkanranta et al, 2018 ). IRT is a noninvasive imaging technique that detects the infrared wavelengths emitted by all objects with a temperature above absolute zero ( Vollmer and Möllmann, 2017 ).…”

Developments in Implicit Measurements

“…Implicit measurements are required for the in-vehicle affective computing. In previous studies, drivers' emotions have been assessed by using voice (Abdic et al, 2016) or facial temperature (Zhang et al, 2019). Besides, facial expressions were one of the commonly used implicit measurements of drivers' emotion (Malta et al, 2011;Abdic et al, 2016;Ihme et al, 2018).…”