Publication Tag: Affective Computing

We report an experiment to study the effect of defaults on charitable giving. In three different treatments, participants face varying default levels of donation. In three other treatments that are paired with the first three, they receive the same defaults, but are informed that defaults are thought to have an effect on their donation decisions. The emotional state of all individuals is monitored throughout the sessions using Facereading software, and some participants are required to report their emotional state after the donation decision. We find that the level at which a default is set has no effect on donations, and informing individuals of the possible impact of defaults also has no effect. Individuals who are happier and in a more positive overall emotional state donate more. Donors experience a negative change in the valence of their emotional state subsequent to donating, when valence is measured with Facereading software. This contrasts with the self-report data, in which donating correlates with a more positive reported subsequent emotional state.

Concerns associated with sugar-sweetened beverages have led to an increased consumer demand for sweetener alternatives that are functionally equivalent to sucrose without the associated health risks. Measuring consumer emotions has the potential to aid the industry in subsequent ingredient decision-making. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship of consumer acceptability and emotional response of sweeteners in tea using a 9-point hedonic scale, an emotion term questionnaire , and a facial expression response . Participants evaluated a water sample , two sucrose-tea samples , and four equi-sweet alternative sweetener-tea samples , divided by category . Sessions were divided by category and emotional response tool in a cross-over design. Facial expression responses were recorded in the first session of both days using FaceReader 5.0 and individual participant videos were analyzed per sample for 5-s post-consumption in the continuous analysis setting using automated facial expression analysis software. Emotional term responses were collected in the second session of each day and count frequencies of each term per sample were tabulated and analyzed. Hedonic acceptability was rated in all sessions on a 9-point scale. Alternative sweeteners were all rated ‘acceptable’ , except for honey in one session. Only one alternative in each category was statistically different in liking from sucrose. Facial analysis showed minimal differences in emotion elicited across sweetener categories. Time series analysis was more robust in showing differences than baseline comparisons. Emotional term selection using a CATA questionnaire showed four unique terms for natural sweeteners and two unique terms for artificial sweeteners. More research exploration related to emotions and food is needed in order to accrue a more accurate picture of consumer product preferences.