Over the past few years, the wearable segment has seen rapid advancement. We now have smartwatches capable of everything from ECG and blood pressure analysis to sleep apnea detection and stress monitoring. One day, they could gauge our emotions, too.
A team of experts from the Tokyo Metropolitan University recently published a paper detailing how they measured skin conductance to identify emotions. As part of their study, they analyzed the change in skin conductance response, which arises from different kinds of emotional experiences.
Volunteers were made to watch videos that could strongly elicit predominantly three kinds of responses: fear, family-bonding emotions, and fun. But what does skin conductance have to do with the emotions one is experiencing? Well, they are directly related to our body systems.
“When people feel different things, the electrical properties of their skin change drastically due to perspiration, with signals showing up within one to three seconds of the original stimulus,” the team explains. The variations in skin conductance were measured using probes attached to their fingers.
At the end of the tests, the researchers found that fear was the strongest emotional response, while feelings associated with family bonding rose gradually and delivered a combination of joy and sadness.
The experiment had its own share of limitations, but the measurements proved that changes in skin conductance could be used to discern between the different emotions a person is going through. Or at least a few of them.
Do keep in mind that the human emotional spectrum is much wider than just fear, sadness, and fun, so there’s that uncharted scientific territory left unexplored, as well. However, the researchers note that the skin conductance data could prove useful in making “statistically significant predictions of whether a subject was experiencing fear or feeling the warmth of a family bond.”
Now, skin conductance measurement is not an exercise that is exclusive to science labs. Take, for example, the Fitbit Sense smartwatch or the Charge 5 and 6 bands, which come equipped with an electrodermal activity (EDA) sensor. This sensor measures the “electrical changes in the sweat level of your skin,” which is essentially a reflection of the body’s response to certain stress agents.
This is a crucial metric, as the sweat level on the skin changes the skin conductance, and it is tied to the sympathetic nervous system. That means your body’s response to external factors can very well be gauged from your skin. In Fitbit’s case, the EDA sensor on its wearables senses high stress.
“Skin conductance is a measure of emotional arousal and shows changes in the electrical properties of individuals’ skin owing to sweating associated with arousal, such as fear, surprise, and pleasure,” explains the research paper, which has been published in the IEEE Access journal.
How soon are we going to see emotional analysis on smartwatches? Well, that would depend on the makers of devices that come with an EDA sensor onboard. But the team behind the latest research is fairly optimistic about the future.
“Combined with other signals, the team believe [sic] we are one step closer to devices knowing how we are feeling, with scope for a better understanding of human emotions,” says the research release. Since we’ve already seen EDA sensors on mass-market devices, it’s only a matter of time before a name like Apple, Google, or Samsung laps up the idea.
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