Eliciting Emotion with Vibrotactile Stimuli Evocative of Real-World Sensations

Abstract

This paper describes a novel category of affective vibrotactile stimuli which evoke real-world sensations and details a study into emotional responses to them. The affective properties of short and abstract vibrotactile waveforms have previously been studied and shown to have a narrow emotional range. By contrast this paper investigated emotional responses to longer waveforms and to emotionally resonant vibrotactile stimuli, stimuli which are evocative of real-world sensations such as animal purring or running water. Two studies were conducted. The first recorded emotional responses to Tactons with a duration of 20 seconds. The second investigated emotional responses to novel emotionally resonant stimuli. Stimuli that users found more emotionally resonant were more pleasant, particularly if they had prior emotional connections to the sensation represented. Results suggest that future designers could use emotional resonance to expand the affective response range of vibrotactile cues by utilising stimuli with which users bear an emotional association.