Evaluation of Emotional Changes Caused by Wearing Gothic Lolita Using Physiological Sensors

Goth is a music-based subculture that has a dark worldview and has influenced fashion, fiction, and art. In Japan, the Goth subculture was merged with Lolita clothing to create Gothic Lolita, which has been popular for over 20 years. Although previous research has shown that wearing Gothic Lolita can have positive emotional effects on the wearers. However, these studies mainly rely on questionnaires and interviews, which can be influenced by various factors such as the possibility of mixing the intentions of participants into the results. To address this issue, we applied a method that applied EEG signals and HRV indexes to evaluate the emotions of the participants. Since the Gothic Lolita is the darkest style within Lolita clothing, in this study, we did a preliminary experiment to collect physiological information while wearing Lolita clothing. We applied time-series analysis to collected data. As the result, the collected EEG signals and HRV indexes were more positive when wearing Lolita clothing than when wearing ordinary clothing. Both questionnaires and physiological information evaluations showed that wearing Lolita clothing increased the participants’ arousal, valence, and dominance.