The Effect of Thermal Stimuli on the Emotional Perception of Images

Abstract

Thermal stimulation is a feedback channel that has the potential to influence the emotional response of people to media such as images. While previous work has demonstrated that thermal stimuli might have an effect on the emotional perception of images, little is understood about the exact emotional responses different thermal properties and presentation techniques can elicit towards images. This paper presents two user studies that investigate the effect thermal stimuli parameters (e.g. intensity) and timing of thermal stimuli presentation have on the emotional perception of images. We found that thermal stimulation increased valence and arousal in images with low valence and neutral to low arousal. Thermal augmentation of images also reduced valence and arousal in high valence and arousal images. We discovered that depending on when thermal augmentation is presented, it can either be used to create anticipation or enhance the inherent emotion an image is capable of evoking.

Multi-moji

“…Qualitative research has observed that participants consistently attribute opposite meaning to warm and cold: positive experiences and emotions are attributed to warm stimuli and unpleasant ones are attributed to cool [24,39,40,48]. Thermal feedback can also influence the emotional response to images, increasing the subjective enjoyment [25] or increasing (through warmth)/decreasing (through cold) the valence of images [2,16]. Research has also taken V-A ratings of thermal stimuli, to precisely measure emotional content/responses.…”

“…Some research has studied the modulation of an emotional response to one modality, through the simultaneous presentation of another [2,3,16,32]. However, these studies only ask participants to focus on and rate the one modality, with those ratings potentially altered by the second.…”

Using thermal stimuli to influence affect in different picture display sizes

“…To the best of our knowledge, no research has been conducted to investigate whether there is a difference in the effect thermal stimulation has on images displayed in different sizes. Therefore, it is not known whether the affective attributes of thermal stimuli on images documented in previous work [1,16,28] will hold true for images of different display sizes, presented on different device types. This paper presents two user studies that extends previous research [1,16,28] by addressing this research gap.…”

“…has shown thermal stimulation as having the inherent ability to evoke affect when presented on its own [19,33]. Using thermal stimuli for media (sounds and images) augmentation has also been shown to have a significant effect on emotions [1,2,16,27,28]. Augmenting images on smaller-screened mobile devices with thermal stimuli could therefore potentially improve how engaging they are, thus resulting in an improved media experience.…”

“…Some of the possibilities that can be afforded by using thermal stimuli to augment media include the potential for movie producers to enhance or reduce affect in media through thermal stimuli augmentation [1]. To the best of our knowledge, no research has been conducted to investigate whether there is a difference in the effect thermal stimulation has on images displayed in different sizes.…”