Assessing the Emotional Affordance of Brand Image and Foreign Image Based on a Physiological Method Using Examples from Dubai: Exploratory Study

Abstract

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a country with few restrictions on architectural styles. The main aim of this paper was to investigate a group of participants’ unconscious emotional responses to images of traditional and modern architectural styles in the UAE. All images were from the city of Dubai, but participants were from elsewhere to avoid the influence of familiarity. A physiological method was used to measure the unconscious emotional responses to the images’ visual contexts, specifically the emotions of stress, engagement, interest, focus, excitement, and relaxation. Six architects working in the UAE were then interviewed for their interpretations of both the images themselves and the participants’ emotional responses. A sample of 29 male laypeople (aged 18–45) participated in this study, divided into locals from Al Ain city, locals from the northern emirates, and nonlocals. The results showed that the brand image provided observers with better emotional quality than the foreign image for local participants from Al Ain, and that nonlocal participants showed strong emotional responses to the traditional architecture, but the northern Emiratis remained neutral. The findings of this study contribute to emotion studies in the field of meaning in architecture. It also validates the effectiveness of a physiological method of investigating the emotional responses to architectural styles.