Opening the “black box” of electrodermal activity in consumer neuroscience research.

Abstract

For 30 years, the study of emotional reactions of consumers has been a topic of research based on electrophysiological indices. To date, more than 20 studies using the measurement of electrodermal activity (EDA) have been published in marketing. This recording method is experiencing a renewed interest with the emergence of consumer neuroscience and participates in investigative techniques of brain functions. Although the implementation of EDA measurement is an attainable technique, its signal analysis is nonetheless complex. Recently, researchers in psychophysiology have developed a new digital tool for EDA signal processing, thus optimizing the evaluation of the “activation” component of an emotional episode. A careful reading of the literature has identified several methods of collecting and processing the EDA signal which are discussed. Recommendations are proposed and illustrated in an exploratory study using seven TV commercials. The results show that the application of standards for signal processing by means of nonnegative deconvolution improves the robustness of measures thus contributing to the enhancement of consumer neuroscience research.

The influence of threatening visual warnings on tobacco packaging: Measuring the impact of threat level, image size, and type of pack through psychophysiological and self-report methods

“…Usually, the amplitude of the phasic activity is between 0.1 and 2μSiemens. Finally, EDA scores represent the Integrated Skin Conductance Responses (ISCR) of the phasic component, recorded over a duration of 4,500ms, beginning at the onset of the stimulus [ 48 – 50 ].…”

Current and potential methods for measuring emotion in tourism experiences: a review

“…The dimensional approach is believed to be more parsimonious compared with basic emotion approach (Mauss & Robinson, 2009), when considering that thousands of affective words classified using only a few dimensions. Most emotion studies involving psychophysiological instruments regard emotion as a multi-dimensional construct and assess it by valence and arousal dimension (Gakhal & Senior, 2008;Hutcherson, 2013;Kappeler-Setz, Gravenhorst, Schumm, Arnrich, & Tröster, 2013;Lajante, Droulers, Dondaine, & Amarantini, 2012;Wang & Minor, 2008). This is mainly due to the fact that emotion specificity has been hard to establish in the domain of physiology (Mauss & Robinson, 2009).…”

“…The major limitation of EDA is that it cannot determine the valence of the emotion (Gakhal & Senior, 2008;Hutcherson, 2013;Kappeler-Setz et al, 2013;Lajante et al, 2012;Poels & Dewitte, 2006;N. Ravaja, 2004;Wang & Minor, 2008).…”

Visualizing the Emotional Journey of a Museum

“…When an emotion is experienced, the autonomic nervous system activity causes a change in the skin's conductivity as a result of the activity of the sweat glands. This link between the GSR and the people emotional state was shown in various publications [8,1,7]. We have re-used this property and developed a dedicated algorithm to infer the emotional state from the GSR by means of the affective responses.…”

“…The filtered values are then derivated and truncated to positive values x(n) in order to highlight the relevant phasic changes according to [7]. After removing data out off the observation time interval, the signal is temporally filtered and subsampled using a variable time window based on the visitor observation duration ∆ t (x).…”