The Impact of Thermal Cues on Affective Responses to Emotionally Resonant Vibrations

This paper investigates how presenting emotionally resonant vibrotactile stimuli at cool, neutral and warm temperature levels impacts mean ratings for emotional resonance and affective response. Affective vibrotactile stimuli can elicit pleasant or calming responses, making them applicable for emotion regulation. Evoking real-world sensations via emotional resonance can widen their affective range and improve their effectiveness, and allow them to enhance immersive multimodal experiences. Thermotactile cues have been shown to affect emotional responses, but have not been combined with emotionally resonant vibrations to see how they change responses to such cues. This study (n=20) assessed the impact of 3 temperature levels (24℃, 30℃, and 34℃) on 15 emotionally resonant vibrotactile cues and observed if emotionally resonant stimuli exceeded the affective range non-resonant vibrotactile stimuli. The findings suggest that presenting specific resonant vibrations at temperatures that are appropriate for the sensation they evoke can improve emotional resonance and vice versa. In addition, temperature had a positive effect on affective response and emotionally resonant vibrations were found to have a wider affective range than traditional vibrotactile cues. These findings support using emotionally resonant vibrations and thermal cues to elicit desirable emotional responses in emotion regulation and immersive media applications.