Proposal of an Estimation Method of Emotional Centroid Based on the Russell’s Circumplex Model for Quantitative Evaluation of Affect

Abstract

In human face-to-face communication, not only verbal messages but also non-verbal behaviors such as facial expressions, body movements, and gazes are conveyed; these non-verbal behaviors can express human affect. In addition, it leads to sharing of empathy unconsciously in human interaction and enhancing intimacy between humans. In particular, cognitive empathy as well as emotional empathy play an important role in sharing of empathy. Therefore, it is expected to evaluate emotional empathy based on the features of affect for enhancing intimacy. In this study, for the basic research of evaluating emotional empathy, a method that estimates the emotional centroid based on the coordinate system in the Russell’s circumplex model was proposed. In addition, the experiment was conducted to evaluate the proposed method. The results demonstrated that the method has a possibility to estimate the features of affect.