Recent work has proposed sliders as a useful way to measure self-reported emotion continuously. My dissertation extends this work to ask: what are relevant properties of affective self-report on sliders and variations? How reliable are affective self-reports? How do they relate to physiological data? What are individual and cultural differences? How can this method be applied to ehealth? Three emotion self-report tools (one-slider, two-slider, a touchscreen) were developed and evaluated in four experiments. The first experiment was within-subjects. Participants viewed short videos, with four self-report conditions (including no reporting) and physiological capture (heart rate variability and skin conductance). In a re-rating task, the sliders models were found to be more reliable than the touchscreen (Lottridge & Chignell, 2009a). The second and third experiments were between-subjects, and examined individual and cultural differences. Canadian and Japanese participants watched a nature video, while rating emotions and answering questions. Analyses were carried out within and across the datasets. Larger operation span displayed a minor benefit. Valence and arousal ratings were not strongly related to skin conductance. The Japanese performed on par with Canadians but reported worse performance. Based on the results, the recommendation was made that a single slider be used to rate valence, that arousal be estimated with skin conductance, and that slider psychometrics be used to assess cognitive load over time. In the fourth experiment, diabetic participants watched Diabetes-related videos. They clustered into usage patterns: some moved the slider very little during videos and more afterward, some hardly moved the slider, and some used it as expected. Two novel metrics facilitated these analyses: Emotional Bandwidth, an application of information entropy that characterizes the granularity of the self reports (Lottridge & Chignell, 2009b) and Emotional Majority Agreement, the amount of agreement relative to a sample’s self-reports (Lottridge & Chignell, 2009c). In summary, this dissertation contributes a method of measuring emotion through sliders and skin conductance that has been evaluated in a number of experimental studies. It contributes the empirical results, design recommendations, and two novel metrics of emotional response. Limitations and implications for future research and practice are also discussed.

It is widely thought that emotional stimuli receive privileged neural status compared to their non-affective counterparts. This prioritization, however, comes at a cost, as the neural capacity of the human brain is finite; the prioritization of any one object comes at the expense of other concurrent objects in the visual array competing for awareness (Desimone & Duncan, 1995). Despite this reality, little work has examined the functional benefit derived from the perceptual prioritization of affective information. Why do we preferentially attend to emotional faces? According to evolutionary accounts, emotions originated as adaptations towards action, helping to prepare the organism for movement (Darwin, 1872; Frijda, 1986). The current dissertation examines this from the perceptive of visual neuroscience and motor cognition. Chapters 1 and 2 examine the mechanisms involved during the perceptual prioritization of emotional content in the context of action system modulation. Chapters 3 and 4 then directly examine emotions effect on oculomotor action output. Results across the studies are discussed in the context of evolutionary theories related to biological origins of emotional expression.

The concept of emotion and how to regulate it is a central aspect of modern psychology. Within the process model of emotion regulation (Gross, 1998), one issue is how attentional deployment affects emotion regulation and how this can be measured. In task 1, pictures of positive or negative valence were showed in two conditions, either attend or decrease emotional reaction, while participants’ eye movements were followed with an eye tracker. Ratings of arousal and valence were significantly affected by instruction, but dwell times were only significant for positive pictures. In task 2, participants were directed either to emotional or non-emotional parts of emotional pictures while skin conductance was recorded. Arousal and valence ratings decreased significantly in non-emotional areas, but no effect could be found for skin conductance data. Results were generally weak in regards to the effectiveness of measuring gaze to indicate emotion regulation in the form of attentional deployment. For future studies, research of individual differences in habitual usage of attentional deployment for emotion regulation was suggested.

Philosophers have traditionally attempted to solve metaethical disputes about the nature of moral judgment through reasoned argument alone. Empirical evidence about how we do make moral judgments is often overlooked in these debates. In the wake of recent discoveries in cognitive neuroscience and experimental psychology, however, some empirically-minded philosophers are beginning to use neural findings in support of their theories of moral judgment. The intent of this thesis is to explore how this empirical evidence can be integrated effectively into philosophical discussions about moral judgment. In the first chapter of my thesis, I review the moral judgment debate in both philosophy and moral psychology, focusing specifically on contemporary sentimentalist solutions to this problem. This review sets the stage for my critique of Prinz’s sentimentalist account of moral judgment in the second chapter. I argue that Prinz uses neural evidence to support his sentimentalist thesis inappropriately, altering the evidence to fit his theory, rather than using the evidence to inform his theory. In the third chapter, I examine Prinz’s somatic theory of emotion and how this is related to his theory of moral judgment. I argue that neural evidence indicates that a theory of emotion that incorporates aspects of both cognitive appraisal and somatic theories is more empirically accurate than either view in isolation. Finally, I discuss the implications that a neural account of emotion could have on future debates about the nature of moral judgment.

According to socioemotional selectivity theory (SST), old age is associated with a greater emphasis on self-regulation of emotional states, a focus that fosters a bias in processing positively valenced material in older adults. There is disagreement, however, about whether the “positivity bias” suggested by SST influences performance on memory tasks. Some studies suggest that older adults remember more positive than negative information, or simply less negative information, relative to younger adults, whereas other studies report no such differences. This thesis examined (1) whether variations across studies in encoding instructions or in personal relevance of study materials could account for these inconsistencies, and (2) whether differences in attention at encoding to positive, negative, and neutral stimuli could account for the positivity bias in older adults’ later memory for the stimuli. In Experiment 1, younger and older adults were instructed either to passively view positive, negative, and neutral pictures or to actively categorize them by valence. On a subsequent incidental recall test, older adults recalled equal numbers of positive and negative pictures, whereas younger adults recalled negative pictures best. There was no effect of encoding instructions. Crucially, when pictures were grouped into high and low personal relevance according to participants’ ratings, a positivity bias emerged only for low relevance pictures. In Experiment 2, attention to pictures at encoding was directly manipulated through use of a divided attention paradigm. Although divided attention lowered recall in both age groups, attention did not interact with age and valence. Taken together, the results suggest that variability in the personal relevance of study pictures may be the factor underlying cross-study differences in whether a positivity bias is observed in older adults’ memory.

In his 1757 essay “Of Tragedy”, Hume reflected on a curious puzzle about emotions. Sometimes people seek out emotions or experiences that are typically negative and associated with displeasure or pain. People often desire to watch horror films that will make them scared or listen to music that will make them sad. Some people even engage in the pursuit of negative emotions on a regular basis such as in the case of thrill-seeking. In this paper my goal is to update Hume’s puzzle with empirical evidence from the affective sciences and argue for two conclusions. First I will argue that Hume’s puzzle still runs deep. Though some recent scientific and philosophical accounts of emotions have tried to solve it, they have thus far failed. Second I attempt to construct a psychological account that solves the puzzle. Instead of focusing on how emotions are generated as previous theories have done, I argue that what is important is how emotions are regulated.

Philosophers have traditionally attempted to solve metaethical disputes about the nature of moral judgment through reasoned argument alone. Empirical evidence about how we do make moral judgments is often overlooked in these debates. In the wake of recent discoveries in cognitive neuroscience and experimental psychology, however, some empirically-minded philosophers are beginning to use neural findings in support of their theories of moral judgment. The intent of this thesis is to explore how this empirical evidence can be integrated effectively into philosophical discussions about moral judgment. In the first chapter of my thesis, I review the moral judgment debate in both philosophy and moral psychology, focusing specifically on contemporary sentimentalist solutions to this problem. This review sets the stage for my critique of Prinz’s sentimentalist account of moral judgment in the second chapter. I argue that Prinz uses neural evidence to support his sentimentalist thesis inappropriately, altering the evidence to fit his theory, rather than using the evidence to inform his theory. In the third chapter, I examine Prinz’s somatic theory of emotion and how this is related to his theory of moral judgment. I argue that neural evidence indicates that a theory of emotion that incorporates aspects of both cognitive appraisal and somatic theories is more empirically accurate than either view in isolation. Finally, I discuss the implications that a neural account of emotion could have on future debates about the nature of moral judgment.

The emotional experience of products can have enormous impact on the overall product experience: someone who is feeling positive is more likely to be accepting of novel products or to be more tolerant of unexpected or unusual interface behaviours. Being able to improve users’ emotions through product interaction has clear benefits and is currently the focus of designers all over the world. The extent to which touch-based information can affect a user’s experience and observable behaviour has been given relatively little attention in haptic technology or other touch-based products where research has tended to focus on psychophysics relating to technical development, in the case of the former, and usability in the case of the latter. The objective of this research was therefore to begin to explore generalizable and useful relationship(s) between design parameters specific to the sense of touch and the emotional response to tactile experiences. To this end, a theoretical ’touch-emotion model’ was developed that incorporates stages from existing information and emotion processing models, and a subset of pathways (the ‘Affective’, ‘Cognitive’, and ‘Behaviour Pathways’) was explored. Four experiments were performed to examine how changes in various touch factors, such as surface roughness and availability of haptic (that is, touch-based) information during exploration, impacted user emotional experience and behaviour in the context of the model’s framework. These experiments also manipulated factors related to the experience of touch in real-world situations, such as the availability of visual information and product context. Exploration of the different pathways of the touch-emotion model guided the analysis of the experiments. In exploring the Affective Pathway, a robust relationship was found between increasing roughness and decreasing emotional valence (n = 36, p < 0.005), regardless of the availability of haptic or visual information. This finding expands earlier research that focused on the effect of tactile stimuli on user preference. The impact of texture on the Cognitive Pathway was examined by priming participants to think of the stimuli as objects varying in emotional commitment, such as a common mug (lower) or a personal cell phone (higher). Emotional response again decreased as roughness increased, regardless of primed context (n = 27, p < 0.002) and the primed contexts marginally appeared to generally improve or reduce emotional response (n = 27, p < 0.08). Finally, the exploration of the Behaviour Pathway considered the ability of roughness-evoked emotion to act as a mediator between physical stimuli and observable behaviour, revealing that, contrary to the hypothesis that increased emotional valence would increase time spent reflecting on the stimuli, increased emotion magnitude (regardless of the positive or negative valence of the emotion) was associated with increased time spent in reflection (n = 33, p < 0.002). Results relating to the Behaviour Pathway suggested that the portion of the touch-emotion model that included the last stages of information processing, observable behaviour, may need to be revised. However, the insights of the Affective and Cognitive Pathway analyses are consistent with the information processing stages within those pathways and give support to the related portions of the touch-emotion model. The analysis of demographics data collected from all four experiments also revealed interesting findings which are anticipated to have application in customizing haptic technology for individual users. For example, correlations were found between self-reported tactual importance (measured with a questionnaire) and age (n = 79, r = 0.28, p < 0.03) and between self-reported tactual importance and sensitivity to increased roughness (n = 79, r = -0.27, p < 0.04). Higher response times were also observed with increased age (rIT = 0.49, rRT = 0.48; p < 0.01). This research contributes to the understanding of how emotion and emotionevoked behaviour may be impacted by changing touch factors using the exemplar of roughness as the touch factor of interest, experienced multimodally and in varying situations. If a design goal is to contribute to user emotional experience of a product, then the findings of this work have the potential to impact design decisions relating to surface texture components of hand-held products as well as for virtual surface textures generated by haptic technology. Further, the touchemotion model may provide a guide for the systematic exploration of the relationships between surface texture, cognitive processing, and emotional response.

Rumination has been shown to be an influential part of the depressive experience, impacting on various cognitive processes including memory and attention. However, there is a dearth of studies examining the relationship between rumination and emotion recognition, deficits or biases in which have been closely linked to a depressive mood state. In Study 1, participants (N = 89) received either a rumination or distraction induction prior to completing three variants of an emotion recognition task assessing decoding accuracy or biases. Results demonstrated that greater levels of dysphoria were associated with poorer facial emotion recognition accuracy, but only when participants were induced to ruminate (as opposed to being induced to distract). The aim of Study 2 (N = 172) was to examine a possible mechanism, namely cognitive load, by which rumination affects emotion recognition. Results from this study indicated that participants endorsing greater levels of dysphoria were less accurate on an emotion recognition task when they received either a rumination induction or a cognitive load task compared to their counterparts who received a distraction induction. Importantly, the performance of those in the cognitive load and rumination conditions did not differ from each other. In summary, these findings suggest that the confluence of dysphoria and rumination can influence individuals’ accuracy in identifying emotional content portrayed in facial expressions. Furthermore, rumination, by definition an effortful process, might negatively impact emotion recognition via the strain it places on cognitive resources.

In a competitive market as supermarkets, hundreds of the same products fight for attention in the shops. Every day thousands of targeted advertising messages is given to us. As a natural result of all this, power is transferred to consumers. You can no longer differentiate yourself by only price and function, thus companies must play on the emotional aspects and create a relationship with consumers. A key to success is to understand people's emotional needs and then satisfying them. In various journals and papers you can find highlighted success stories of strong brands such as Harley-Davidson, Apple and Virgin Airlines. They have all grown strong passionate relationships with their customers. It describes the type of emotional loyalty that all companies strive to achieve. But what about the marketers who face the same challenge, though they will sell toilet paper rather than a motorcycle? Where consumers think that the product in question is boring but necessary evil? Can these products even achieve an emotional relationship with their customers? Low-engagement products often have many loyal customers. Since you do not put so much thought behind the purchase, you choose the same brand on a regular basis again and again. It is thus a loyal customer, but customers often have not reflected on why they are that. The client therefore has no emotional connection to the product. This type of behavior is classified as "false loyalty" and is often based on the customer buying the product of habit and by means of short memory rules. The opposite of this false loyalty is "true loyalty" and may also be termed as "emotional loyalty" where the customer purchases the product on a regular basis because of the perceived value, how much the customer likes the product and what positive feelings and associations the customer has to the product. People strive to experience positive emotions and want to avoid negative ones. This means that if a consumer is experiencing a positive feeling, it is expected that he would endeavor to repeat it, and thus become a loyal customer. This shows that one can connect emotion and loyalty to each other, which we will do in this paper. We have in our study used a qualitative method and with a positivistic approach. We have conducted interviews with two respondents from the company SCA; Camilla Svensson on Edet and Margareta von Renteln on Libresse. We have, through our investigation concluded that it is possible for low-engagement products to achieve emotional and true loyalty to customers, but it is very difficult when compared with a high-engagement product. One must also consider that even low-engagement products have varying degree of commitment. A feminine hygiene product implies a higher risk when compared to a toilet paper. Therefore promotional activities must be adjusted by type of asset. / Inom en konkurrensutsatt marknad som livsmedelshandeln slåss hundratals homogena produkter om uppmärksamheten i butikshyllorna. Varje dag riktas tusentals olika reklambudskap mot oss. Som en naturlig effekt av allt detta har makten överförts till konsumenterna. Man kan inte längre differentiera sig genom endast pris och funktion, därmed måste företagen spela på de emotionella aspekterna och skapa en relation till konsumenterna. En nyckel till framgång är att förstå människors emotionella behov och sedan tillfredsställa dessa. I olika tidskrifter och uppsatser lyfts framgångshistorier om starka varumärken såsom Harley-Davidson, Apple och Virgin Airlines fram, som alla har odlat starka passionerade band till sina kunder.  Det beskriver den typ av emotionell lojalitet som alla företag strävar efter att uppnå. Men hur går det för marknadsförare som ställs inför samma utmaning, fast de ska sälja toalettpapper snarare än en motorcykel? Där konsumenterna rent av tycker att produkten i fråga är tråkig men ett nödvändigt ont. Kan dessa produkter även uppnå en emotionell relation till sina kunder? Lågengagemangsprodukter har ofta många lojala kunder. Eftersom man inte lägger så mycket tankeverksamhet bakom köpet, så väljer man samma varumärke regelbundet om och om igen. Man är alltså en lojal kund, men kunden har ofta inte reflekterat över varför denne är det. Kunden har alltså ingen emotionell koppling till produkten. Denna typ av beteende klassificeras som ”falsk lojalitet” och bottnar ofta i att kunden köper produkten av gammal vana och med hjälp av korta minnesregler. Motsatsen till denna falska lojalitet kallas “sann lojalitet” och kan också benämnas som ”emotionell lojalitet” där kunden köper produkten regelbundet på grund av det upplevda värdet, hur mycket kunden gillar produkten samt vilka positiva känslor och associationer som produkten väcker. Människor strävar efter att uppleva positiva känslor och vill undvika negativa sådana. Detta innebär att om en konsument upplever en positiv känsla, kan det förväntas att denne skulle sträva efter att upprepa detta och därmed bli en lojal kund. Därmed så kan man koppla ihop emotion och lojalitet med varandra, vilket vi kommer att göra i den här uppsatsen. Vi har i vår undersökning använt oss av en kvalitativ metod och med ett positivistiskt synsätt. Vi har fört djupintervjuer med två respondenter från företaget SCA; Camilla Svensson på Edet och Margareta von Renteln på Libresse. Vi har genom vår undersökning kommit fram till att det är möjligt för lågengagemangsprodukter att uppnå emotionell och "sann lojalitet" gentemot kunderna, men att det är mycket svårare om man jämför med en högengagemangsprodukt. Man måste även beakta att även lågengagemangsprodukter har varierande engagemangsgrad. Ett menstruationsskydd innebär en högre risk om man jämför med ett toalettpapper. Därför måste marknadsföringsaktiviteterna anpassas efter varutyp.