Conversion from Dimensional Emotions to Discrete Emotions

Recognizing user emotions while interacting with computers and consumer products is challenging due to similar physiological or behavioral responses for certain discrete emotions. Because the dimensional emotion model with three emotional indexes measured in a continuum correlated to physiological responses, measuring and differentiating dimensional emotions might be more effective and could provide more knowledge of biological reactions. Could dimensional emotions, however, be transformed into discrete emotions for practical application? Twenty-four adults watched IAPS graphical stimuli as part of this study to get the answer to the question. Subjective feelings were gathered for discrete and dimensional emotions after viewing images. The potential conversion from dimensional emotions to discrete emotions was demonstrated by the discriminant analyses of discrete emotions and the visualization of conversion between two types of emotions. However, positive emotions are confused with positive emotions (e.g., joy and interest), whereas negative emotions are primarily confused with negative emotions (e.g., angry and fear). Although the found discriminability from dimensional emotions to discrete emotions is reasonable, it shows the conversion limitation from dimensional emotions to discrete emotions.