Emotional Projective Mapping (EmoMap): A Pilot Study Examining a Tool for Collecting Emotional Responses to Food

Abstract

Emotions can provide meaningful information for understanding food choices. Most methods for collecting emotions in sensory evaluation are list-based questionnaires. Lists, however, might reduce data accuracy and lead to lost information. Therefore, an adaptation of projective mapping for collecting emotional responses, called Emotional Projective Mapping (EmoMap) is being piloted. To validate the EmoMap, online, it was compared to two lexicon techniques (EsSense25/emotion circumplex). Pictures of eight foods were presented to 63 participants who answered how they expected to feel if they could eat the food. EmoMap was effective in discriminating and describing foods based on the emotional profile. Twenty-seven emotion categories were created providing broad descriptive data for a holistic understanding of participants' perceptions. EmoMap can effectively be used to collect product-specific emotional data in a single session. Data collected were used in an integrative analysis to show an overall relation between emotions, attributes, and liking.