Emotional Affordances Research Articles

Exploring the affordances of service robots and the effects on frontline employees in China: a qualitative research in hotels

Purpose This study aims to investigate the affordances of service robots (SRs) in hotels and their effects on frontline employees (FLEs). Design/methodology/approach Purposive and referral samplings methods were used to conduct 28 semistructured interviews with hotel FLEs, and the transcribed manuscript was analyzed based on grounded theory. Findings The study identifies six dimensions of SR affordances: physical, sensory, task, safety, social and emotional affordances. The main effects of SR affordances on FLEs involve reducing work stress and mental fatigue and increasing positive emotions in the psychological aspects of FLEs. In terms of behavioral aspects, shifts in task priorities and enhancements in SR usage behaviors were observed. Accordingly, a mechanistic framework was revealed through which SR affordances influence FLEs via direct and indirect interactions between FLEs and SRs. Originality/value This paper expands robotics research from a supply-side perspective and is one of the few studies to investigate SR affordances in the field of hospitality research. Findings of this study provide practical guidelines for designing and implementing SRs to support hotel FLEs in their daily work.

Bodily-Affective Aspects of Phenomen in Malevich’s Suprematism

The study addresses some aspects of Suprematist theory of perception, allowing to investigate the structure of Suprematist phenomenon in the context of ontology, socio-political and religious-mystical works of K. Malevich. The aim of the paper is to present Malevich’s theory of perception in the framework of enactivism. Namely, the article focuses on the theory of social affordances, which today is widely used in design, game development and other everyday practices. The author refers to Malevich’s theoretical and sociopolitical essays, as well as to the commentary literature. Although Suprematism represents a well-researched tradition in art theory, the author stress the need for a follow-up study of Malevich’s theoretical essays in the contemporary context of philosophy of consciousness. The author also emphasizes the relevance of Suprematist philosophy for today’s way of thinking. For the most authentic presentation of Malevich’s ideas I use the phenomenological and hermeneutical method on a par with elements of the ecological approach in psychology and enactivism in the philosophy of consciousness. Consequently, the theory of affordances an effective and natural unification of all the aspects discussed above. The study shows the affinity of Malevich’s ideas to this theory. The author focused on the thesis of feeling as the goal of the expressive act of art. As one could see, Kazemir Malevich always emphasized the bodily-affective dimension of art, and in this sense he participated in a global cultural-historical shift in our conception of the essence of art. Since then, art has ceased to be elitist, but has instead inherited everyday practices. Thus, Malevich speaks of a new art that suits the man of the new world, the Soviet citizen. In this context, I relate the idea of affordance, which means the creation of a feeling-opportunity for subjective action (agency), to the artistic act whose goal, according to Malevich, is the creation of an emotional body-affective feeling. I defend the theory of social affordances, explaining the mechanism of social interaction, as the most adequate model for explaining Suprematism. As a result, based on the already developed concept of bodily-affective dynamics, I show how visionary and creative Malevich was, and how his ideas contribute to the development of a theory of social, emotional affordances.

Primary school students’ experiences of immersive virtual reality use in the classroom

The purpose of the present study was to examine primary school students’ learning experiences with immersive virtual reality (I-VR). Traditional education practices are failing to inspire new cohorts of young people who have grown up with digital culture based on active participation. Given this development, the pedagogic use of I-VR systems represents a promising way of fostering students’ learning engagement. This study involved engaging three groups of 10–12-year-old students with an I-VR system as part of an environmental studies project. Data were collected from the students before, during, and after the project via surveys that included structured and open-ended items. Through qualitative content analysis, we analysed the students’ experiences, comprehension of virtual reality, assessment of learning impact, and desire for educational I-VRs. In general, we aimed to contribute to more learner-driven development for the technology. The students’ experiences were primarily positive and revealed various actualised physical, cognitive, and emotional affordances. Their comprehension of virtual reality was influenced by the devices used, mental immersion, and aspects of the current project. Furthermore, I-VR was experienced as having influenced learning motivation, methods, and content. Finally, the students imagined various I-VRs for learning, most of which included time travel to imaginary spaces.

Virtual Reality for Awe and Imagination.

Empirical research has explored the potential of the emotion of awe to shape creativity, while theoretical work has sought to understand the link between this emotion and transformation in terms of imagining new possible worlds. This branch of study relies on the transformative potential of virtual reality (VR) to examine and invite cognitive and emotional components of transformative experiences (TEs) within the interdisciplinary model of Transformative Experience Design (TED) and the Appraisal-Tendency Framework (ATF). TED suggests using the epistemic and emotional affordances of interactive technologies, such as VR, to invite TEs. The ATF can provide insight into the nature of these affordances and their relationship. This line of research draws on empirical evidence of the awe-creativity link to broaden the discourse and consider the potential impact of this emotion on core beliefs about the world. The combination of VR with these theoretical and design-oriented approaches may enable a new generation of potentially transformative experiences that remind people that they can aspire to more and inspire them to work toward imagining and creating a new possible world.

Associations between adolescent mental health and pedestrian- and transit-oriented urban design qualities: Evidence from a national-level online Canadian survey

Different types of environment stimuli (e.g. noise, aesthetics) in urban environments are becoming better understood as determinants of the mental health of urban dwellers. Research on the impacts of urban exposures, especially those related to urban designs, and their potential impacts on the mental health of adolescents specifically, however, is currently lacking. In this study, we examine the relationships between five pedestrian- and transit-oriented design (PTOD) concepts – imageability, enclosure, human scale, transparency and complexity – and adolescent emotional responses to six settings of varied PTOD quality, and discuss potential design-related emotional affordances within Gibson’s Theory of Affordances (ToA). Using an online survey method with videos of each setting, a nationally representative sample of Canadian adolescents viewed the videos and indicated responses to six mental health indicators (positive affect, negative affect, calmness, anxiousness, perceived restorativeness and mental demand). Adjusted linear mixed models (LMMs) were constructed to examine the association between different urban settings and each outcome. Results indicated that, generally, as the quality of five PTOD concepts increased, as reflected in the scores of the different settings, positive emotional responses tended to increase while negative responses decreased (excluding mental demand). Within the frame of the ToA, multiple emotional response outcomes were significantly associated with settings high in aggregate PTOD quality (e.g. Plaza-Positive Affect: β = 0.116, 95% CI: 0.010–0.222, p = 0.033; Bluespace-Mental Demand: β = −1.634, 95% CI: −1.770 to −1.498, p = <0.000), suggesting such spaces may be perceived by adolescents as possessing greater emotional richness with respect to affordances. Future studies should further explore these relationships with other means (e.g. objective methods).

Engaging With Objects and Feelings: The Making of Live Music Space in Shanghai’s Livehouses

Livehouse is a small venue for live music performance, a term commonly used in the Asian context. This article adopts an insider’s perspective to look at the connections between livehouse and its audiences. Instead of treating spaces and objects as silent textures of live music experiences, we regard livehouse as an active site filled with ideas and feelings. The meaning of livehouse is made by audiences through both human and non-human agents and extends to the broader social and cultural context of Shanghai. By highlighting the power of things and networking in between, this article combines the affordance theory to illustrate the experiential dimensions and interpretive processes of livehouse audiences in Shanghai. Drawing on ethnographic data from 26 in-depth interviews and participant observation, we conclude the social, cultural, and emotional affordances of livehouses perceived through tangible and intangible objects and settings.

#Wasian Check: Remixing ‘Asian + White’ Multiraciality on TikTok

TikTok is the fastest growing short video application and immensely popular with younger generations to express their thoughts, ideas, and most relevant to this issue, their identities including mixed-race identity. This paper asks: How did young mixed-race people choose to express their identity on TikTok in the #wasian trend and how does the app shape these mixed-race identity expressions? The answer lies in how the emotional affordances of TikTok app itself shape how it is used by creators in mimicking and mimetic ways and how people respond, through video and text. The article argues that the #wasian trends reinforce the racial and genealogical legacy of mixedness, often through showing parents or blood relatives, which is in creative tension with simultaneously remixing and asserting racial multiplicity. The claim to wasianess moves the private sphere (bedroom culture, family and notions of race) into the public and in so doing creates new potentialities for the creation of a global #wasian community on TikTok.

Emotions and Digital Well-Being: on Social Media’s Emotional Affordances

Social media technologies (SMTs) are routinely identified as a strong and pervasive threat to digital well-being (DWB). Extended screen time sessions, chronic distractions via notifications, and fragmented workflows have all been blamed on how these technologies ruthlessly undermine our ability to exercise quintessential human faculties. One reason SMTs can do this is because they powerfully affect our emotions. Nevertheless, (1) how social media technology affects our emotional life and (2) how these emotions relate to our digital well-being remain unexplored. Remedying this is important because ethical insights into (1) and (2) open the possibility of designing for social media technologies in ways that actively reinforce our digital well-being. In this article, we examine the way social media technologies facilitate online emotions because of emotional affordances. This has important implications for evaluating the ethical implications of today’s social media platforms, as well as for how we design future ones.

The Emoji Spatial Stroop Task: Exploring the impact of vertical positioning of emoji on emotional processing

Despite emoji often being assumed to be a form of emotional communication, the emotional affordances of these are not yet fully established. The current study employed the Emoji Spatial Stroop Task to explore whether spatial iconicity affects semantic-relatedness judgments relating to emoji stimuli. Namely, emoji stimuli were displayed in various vertical positions and valence perceptions were measured. A 3 (emoji valence; positive, negative, neutral) x 3 (vertical position; upper, lower, central) within-participants design was used to determine the impacts on valence perceptions. Valence perceptions were obtained from ratings on how positive/negative participants perceived stimuli to be on an 11-point Likert scale (−5 negative, 0 neutral and +5 positive). Findings from 157 participants revealed that, after controlling for current mood, both emoji valence and their vertical positioning impacted significantly on valence ratings. The valence × positioning interaction effect was also significant, highlighting a congruence effect whereby positive emoji in higher vertical space were rated significantly more positively than when in central or lower space, and negative emoji were rated significantly more negatively when displayed in lower vertical space compared to central or upper space. These congruence effects suggest we may embody emoji as symbolic objects to represent abstract emotional concepts.

Capture the feeling: Memory practices in between the emotional affordances of heritage sites and digital media

This article develops the concept of emotional affordances, which is first used to describe the capacities of heritage sites to enable, prompt and restrict particular emotional experiences of their visitors. Secondly, the article asks how the emotional affordances of digital media, particularly those taking effect in digital photography and social media practices, allow visitors to mediate the emotional affordances of a particular heritage site. The argument builds on an ethnographic study of visitors’ digital image practices at the ‘Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe’ in Berlin and it demonstrates how visitors ‘capture the feeling’ of the memorial through such practices while also reshaping the experiences the place affords.

BODILY-AFFECTIVE ATTUNEMENT IN SOCIAL INTERACTION

The paper intends to supplement the studies of emotional affordances of BAA by elaborating on the conception of participatory sense-making as well as developmental studies on joint attention and interattentionality. I address different spheres of expertise from the experience-based phenomenological perspective, which allows exploring the problem both from the first-person and second-person perspectives. This research presents the conception of inter-selfness that carries on M. Merleau-Ponty’s idea of intercorporeality, T. Fuchs’ et al. analysis of intersubjectivity and phenomenologically oriented psychoanalysis by E. Z. Tronick et al., R. Stolorow et al. The mechanism of BAA is presented through the conception of participatory sense-making and the idea of minimal inter-attentionality in developmental studies. The paper presents an emotional affordances scheme that illustrates the emotional regulation of BAA. By examining this process of regulation one could see in what way the self becomes an inter-self in communication. The article also postulates correlation between cultural mediation of emotional affordances and their direct accessibility from the second-person perspective. In the last part of the paper, I examine social interaction from the viewpoint of developmental studies (C. Trevarthen, V. Reddy, M. Carpenter). The developmental perspective supplements the idea of emotional regulation in interaction, by focusing on primary such forms of BAA between a caregiver and a baby, as joint attention and mutual gaze. Herein, I demonstrate how the initial forms of the positive bodily-affective attunement develop into the interattentionality and self-representation practices of the subject. This point could contribute to the theory of personal identity by exploring the process of maturing of the sense of self in its different aspects. The results of the research could be useful for further study of BAA and its pathologies. The results could also be of use for the discussion on non-human or human-like affordance-based technological interaction theory.

"It Got Likes, But I Don't Think People Understood": A Qualitative Study of Adolescent Experiences Discussing Type 1 Diabetes on Social Media.

The majority of adolescents with type 1 diabetes (T1D) integrate social media engagement into their daily lives. The aim of this study was to explore adolescents' experiences and perspectives discussing their T1D on social media. Semi-structured interviews with adolescents with T1D were conducted in person and via telephone. Questions focused on the participant's experiences utilizing social media to discuss T1D and factors that informed the nature of T1D-related social media engagement. Open coding and thematic content analysis were used to identify emergent themes that aligned with accepted domains of social media affordances. Participants included 35 adolescents with T1D. Adolescents' experiences related to discussing T1D on social media aligned with four affordances of social media: identity, cognitive, emotional, and social. The identity affordances of social media platforms allowed adolescents to curate online personas that selectively included their diagnosis of T1D, while managing the potential negative emotional and social implications linked to the stigma of T1D. Adolescents who decided to discuss T1D on social media leveraged cognitive affordances by providing and receiving diabetes management advice, emotional affordances by obtaining affirmation from peers, and social affordances by extending their network to include other individuals with T1D. Adolescents with T1D flexibly leverage the affordances offered by social media to access emotional support, information, and identity affirmation resources while navigating stigma-based social consequences. Our findings highlight the value of developing tools to support adolescents with T1D in comfortably discussing and receiving appropriate support about T1D on social media.

Apprenticing the jazz performer through ensemble collaboration: A qualitative enquiry

The one-to-one teacher–student relationship is a common learning configuration within jazz education. However, opportunities to learn through engagement in ensemble performances and industry-level recording opportunities with esteemed jazz performers are rare classroom environments the tertiary jazz music institutions offer. This qualitative study examines ‘real-world’ jazz performance contexts within an Australian tertiary music course, exploring students’ learning experience spanning three diverse collaborative projects. Bandura’s Social Cognition Theory is utilized to elucidate an ecological system of musical development, where learning occurs in a social context within dynamic, reciprocal interactions between learners, environment and students’ adaptive behaviours that are bounded by context, culture and learner history. Findings from pre- and post-participation interviews reveal student and educator perspectives of engaging in authentic experiential learning situations. A stratum of positive influences impacting students included metacognitive, behavioural, emotional affordances, as well as the cultivation of a wider social, environmental and cultural/creative confidence and an expanding collaborative community influencing individuals’ learning decisions. Students and educator participants expressed professional-level expectations, real-world outcomes, and a deeper musical connection and understanding by students of the guest artist/composers’ intention, musical aesthetic and expert band direction. The authors maintain that inclusion of experience-based education and embedding of authentic professional industry experience and creative music-making contexts within educational settings enhance the learning of students and potentially enculturate richer musicianship in students and their developing creative communities.

Doing Emotion through Digital Media: An Ethnographic Perspective on Media Practices and Emotional Affordances An Ethnographic Perspective on Media Practices and Emotional Affordances

<span lang="EN-US" style="">This article develops an ethnographic approach for analyzing the entanglements of digital media and emotions in everyday life. Using the practice of taking selfies at the “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe” in Berlin as an example, it engages in a discussion of practice and affordance theories as well as ethnographic approaches to the study of emotions. In three related sections, it offers a particular conceptualization of “media practices” which builds upon the concept of “affordances,” an introduction to the analysis of “emotional practices,” and a section proposing the ethnographic concept of “emotional affordances.” This concept, the article argues, can serve as a key link in understanding doing emotion through digital media.</span>

Design principles for improving emotional affordances in an online learning environment

This study aims to develop and validate essential design principles for improving emotional affordances in an online learning environment by investigating theoretical and practical mechanisms of integrating emotions into the instructional design and technology. To achieve this goal, we applied design and development research methodology in accordance with the procedure of development by reviewing relevant extant literature and then performing validation through a three-round expert review and usability evaluation. For the first stage of development, ten design principles were derived after synthesizing and elaborating related variables through a literature review. For the next stage of validation, eight experts were asked to review these principles, and three instructional designers participated in testing the usability. The findings suggest that online learning environments should reflect the eight design principles of positivity, playfulness, humanity, self-disclosure, safety, personalization, affinity, and intimacy for enhancing visceral, behavioral, and reflective emotional affordances with regard to learning activities, learning support, learner interface (LI)/learner eXperience (LX), and learning screen. We discuss the results and practical implications of the findings for future research.

Allocentric Emotional Affordances in HRI: The Multimodal Binding

The concept of affordance perception is one of the distinctive traits of human cognition; and its application to robots can dramatically improve the quality of human-robot interaction (HRI). In this paper we explore and discuss the idea of “emotional affordances” by proposing a viable model for implementation into HRI; which considers allocentric and multimodal perception. We consider “2-ways” affordances: perceived object triggering an emotion; and perceived human emotion expression triggering an action. In order to make the implementation generic; the proposed model includes a library that can be customised depending on the specific robot and application scenario. We present the AAA (Affordance-Appraisal-Arousal) model; which incorporates Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions; and we outline some numerical examples of how it can be used in different scenarios.

The effect of flow and context on in-vivo positive mood in digital gaming

Abstract Although research extols the positive effects of social gaming, the dynamic processes underlying these effects remain unclear. In a hitherto unused approach in this field, we utilised a Smartphone App to model the effect of in-vivo flow and gaming context on positive mood. We also explored individual-level factors including demographic gaming variables (average hours per week playing, gamer-type, preferred type of play) and Big-5 personality traits. Data was obtained from 41 gamers producing a total of 2796 data-points. Multi-level modelling revealed positive mood was associated with in-vivo reports of flow in gameplay, current context and individual-level variance in the number of hours typically spent engaged in playing per week. Specifically, in-vivo positive mood was higher for players when playing online with friends (relative to those playing solo). Higher reports of flow were, nonetheless, associated with decreases in positive mood. Finally, players who indicated playing less frequently experienced higher positive mood, relative to those who played more. These findings support and extend previous work which explores the emotional affordances of gaming and highlight the importance of obtaining situated measures of experiences. They demonstrate that positive mood in gaming is not static, but changeable depending on one's current gaming environment and flow.

Ten questions concerning a new adolescent health urbanism

This article sets out an urban health model and conceptual framework for researching environments that support adolescent health and wellbeing. Our focus is on 10–19 year olds, an age group that has been neglected by researchers in the otherwise emerging and dynamic field of design and health over the past decade. The Ten Questions address adolescent urban lifestyles and their relation to health outcomes in Europe, adolescent perceptions of the built environment and age specific physical, social, digital and emotional affordances as well as, addressing how to increase participation of adolescents in health-oriented urban design processes. A model of adolescent health urbanism is introduced that integrates place and person characteristics in a dynamic model that addresses everyday practices across the adolescent age span. Based on a review of the evidence from urban planning and environmental psychology literature, this article emphasises the need for a more adolescent-responsive urban design process, the need for more research into age-specific urban affordances; integration of new technologies to forge mobility in and engagement with in the co-design of cities allowing stakeholders to make better-informed planning decisions.

Curating affect: exploring the historical geography–heritage studies nexus at Sovereign Hill

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the nexus of historical geography and heritage studies, using the case study of the Sovereign Hill outdoor museum in Ballarat, Australia. It reports on the application of more-than-representational thinking to spaces of heritage, and advances the argument that Sovereign Hill can be usefully understood as a semiotic landscape animated by the making, knowing and re-creation of the past, replete with both designed and incidental affective resonances and emotional affordances. The research upon which the paper is based aimed to capture the essences of encounters, engagements and moments of emergent meaning within a site that speaks to both an historic and newly made heritage. Key to this exploration were the energies, realities and responses of actual bodies as they moved around and interpreted the various ways in which Sovereign Hill presents the past to its visiting audiences. Methodologically, the paper draws from a series of qualitative visitor interviews gathered in 2014.

Emotional affordances for human–robot interaction

This paper provides a new concept for the improvement of human–robot interaction (HRI) models: ‘emotional affordances’. Emotional affordances are all the mechanisms that have emotional content as a way to transmit and/or collect emotional meaning about any context; it can include bodily expressions, social norms, values-laden objects or extended space, among others. With this rich concept, we open the way to new ways to understand the multimodal and complex nature of emotional mechanisms. Based on the grounded emotional mechanisms of human cognition and behaviour (that is, based and result of the bodily structure and its coupled relationship with the natural and/or social environment), the purpose of this paper is focused on the definition of a framework for the design of a taxonomy of emotional affordances, useful for a modal and improved understanding of the domains of emotional interactions that can emerge between humans and robots. This process will make possible in next research steps to define processing modules as well as to elicit visual display outputs (expressing emotions). Consequently, with this project we provide robotic experts with a unified taxonomy of human emotional affordances, useful for the improvement of HRI projects.