The relationship between emotions and HRV under the stimulation of bra images

Abstract

It is a stressful ordeal in general to buy bras online aimlessly. The wise approach for eCommerce platform is to use emotion recognition to effectively assess consumers’ needs through the bra images, which can quickly close their preferences and accurately recommend them suitable bras. However, the significant physiological features that can be used for emotion recognition in fashion are still in the exploratory stage. This study focuses on the relationship between cardiac activity and emotional responses (the different levels of Satisfaction (S) and Attractiveness (A) under the stimulation of bra images. Firstly, we labelled 96 bra images in the dimensions and selected 45 bra images to make three groups of emotional stimuli using k-means clustering analysis. Then, we collected Photoplethysmogram (PPG) signals from 46 subjects consisting of 11 males and 35 females simulated by three groups of the stimuli, extracted 10 metrics of heart rate variability (HRV), and then analyzed the relationships between HRV and emotions based on their subjective evaluation. The males and females have different cardiac activity patterns under the same emotion, that the parasympathetic of males are more active than females. In a non-neutral emotion, the parasympathetic nervous system would keep an activated state. However, it is dominated by the parasympathetic nervous system whether in high or low satisfaction. While high and low attractiveness are respectively dominated by the sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves. The results of this study have certain significance for understanding the physiological phenomenon of emotions and further help to explore emotion recognition technology which can be used in product development to enhance the competitiveness of enterprises.