It is no secret that the electrical conductivity of the skin depends on the degree of sweating and also reflects the dynamics of a person’s emotional state. Someday, wearable gadgets will be able to predict emotions and begin to provide moral support to their owners, but this will require a scientific study of how emotions relate to skin conductivity. Japanese scientists were the first to study the dynamics of the influence of emotions on the speed and safety of skin conductivity.
Image source: Tokyo Metropolitan University
The Tokyo Metropolitan University team enlisted a group of volunteers to show them sequences of horror films, family scenes, and stand-up comedians. In each case, precise measurements of the electrical conductivity of the skin of the hands (palms) and the dynamics of signal manifestation from onset to attenuation were carried out. Based on the measurements, graphs were constructed that provided enough food for thought and the organization of new experiments.
For example, it was noted that fear-related signals lasted the longest, which is likely due to human evolutionary development – the more fearful, the more likely to escape. Emotions from observing family scenes had the flattest slope of growth. Scientists explained this as a mixture of emotions that interfere with each other in the process of experiencing the moment. It was also determined that the response in skin conductance occurred with a delay of 1 to 3 seconds after the expression of emotion.
In any case, the collected data suggests that emotions can be detected using sensors on human skin. It’s too early to talk about this, but in the future, the proposed solution will remove security cameras from the equation for determining a person’s emotions, and will make this operation available to smart watches or fitness bracelets. Correctly determining a person’s current emotional state will help provide him with automatic support, which in some cases can play a decisive role in his fate.