Toward an Unobtrusive Measure of Emotion During Interaction: Thermal Imaging Techniques

Infrared thermal imaging: Positive and negative emotions modify the skin temperatures of monkey and ape faces

“…It is possible that an increased breathing rate additionally contributed to cooling the nose (Pavlidis et al, ), but it may have had a minor effect (Ioannou et al, ). A temperature rise in the peri‐orbital area was previously also found for positive contexts in humans (positive self‐sentiment: Robinson et al, ) and might have resulted from an increased heart rate (Cannon, ) and increased blood flow to extra‐ocular muscles (Ioannou et al, ). Moreover, blood may be redirected by other facial regions (Pavlidis et al, ).…”

“…Such differences may also help to explain the discrepancies across empirical studies on facial temperature changes. For positive emotions, humans showed, for instance, a decrease in the forehead temperature (Nakanishi & Imai‐Matsumura, ; Zajonc, Murphy, & Inglehart, ) and an increase in the eye area temperature (Robinson et al, ).…”

“…Regarding positive emotions, previous human studies revealed facial temperature changes in opposite directions; four studies found a decrease: (Cruz‐Albarran, Benitez‐Rangel, Osornio‐Rios, & Morales‐Hernandez, ; Nakanishi & Imai‐Matsumura, ; Salazar‐López et al, ; Zajonc et al, ) and three studies found an increase: (Robinson et al, ; Salazar‐López et al, ; Zenju, Nozawa, Tanaka, & Ide, ). Interestingly, one of the former studies showed a drop in laughing infants (Nakanishi & Imai‐Matsumura, ), which might be linked to a more rudimentary physiological process, and a slight decrease in the nose tip was observed in a previous study on children play, although no statistical significance was found (Ioannou et al, ).…”

Back to the Future: 25 Years of Research in Affect Control Theory

“…In an experiment crossing status with competitive outcomes, Civettini (2012) found support for one of these predictions when she reported that individuals in high deflection conditions (high-status losers, low-status winners), released more cortisol while both low-and high-status winners experienced more positive emotion than losers (consistent with affect control theory predictions). Robinson et al (2012) found support for more of these predictions À showing that warming in and around the eyes (as measured by infrared thermography) corresponded closely to deflection, while warming in the brow and cheeks corresponded more closely to positive and negative emotion.…”

“…The development of a new Bayesian affect control theory model (Hoey et al, 2013) is allowing us to incorporate some entirely new processes, not captured by earlier specifications of the theory. New measurement techniques are affording us more opportunities to test affect control theory predictions in the context of unfolding interactions, rather than retrospectively through the use of questionnaires (Civettini, 2012;Robinson et al, 2012). These technological and methodological advances are allowing us to reexamine questions from the past and find new ways forward À taking us back to the future.…”