Psychology & Technology

Exercise 2: Biological Psychology

This is a group exercise. This means you will work together, and each group will hand in a single assignment. Note that for this assignment, you will not receive an individual grade, but each group will receive a pass/fail grade. 1: Create groups. Group size can be flexible, depending on the number of people that own an iPhone 4, or a Phone with Android 2.1 or higher, with a minimum of 3 people in each group. People with a smartphone should download the Instant Heart Rate app by Azumio for Android or for iPhone. People without smart phones should work together with a fellow student that has a smart phone. Answer the following questions (each question should be answered in at least four and no more than ten sentences).

4: You will perform your own experiment, where you will try to partially replicate the experiment by Ekman, Levenson, and Friesen (1983). Before we start, it is important to note that the smartphone app that measures heart rate is not as reliable as the equipment used in the original experiment. As previous week with the Simon effect, we are trying to replicate an experiment in a different way, so it might not work.

3: Investigate how the smartphone app is able to measure heart rate, and with the group, explain this in at least four and no more than ten sentences.

2: Together, read the article "Autonomous Nervous System Activity Distinguishes Among Emotions" by Ekman, Levenson, and Friesen (1983), which you can download here. Summarize with the group, with respect to the effects of emotions on heart rates, what the authors have found.

In the current replication attempt, we will focus on two emotions: Anger and Happiness. In addition, we will only use the relived emotion task. In each group, every student will once be the experimenter, once be the participant, and will once take care of the data entry. Follow the Experimental Procedure on the next page, and enter the data online here. First read through the procedure before running the first participant.

Experimental Procedure:

4: The subject should rate the intensity of any felt emotion on a scale from 0 (absolutely not intense) to 8 (extremely intense). Enter this data in the corresponding text field (self-reported anger or self-reported happiness).

3: The experimenter asks the participant to relive the first emotion, and to relive this emotion until the experimenter tells the participant to stop After 10 seconds, start to measure the heart rate with the smartphone app. When the measurement is successful, tell the participant to stop. Enter the heart rate in the correct entry field (Anger heart rate or Happiness heart rate). If the heart rate measurement is not successful after 60 seconds, tell the participant to stop. Enter 999 in the heart rate field to indicate the measurement failed.

2: The participant should be seated, with one hand extended and resting palm-up on a table. The experimenter softly presses the smartphone camera against the tip of a finger, and measures the Baseline heart rate. Enter the baseline heart rate in the correct field (Baseline heart rate Anger or Baseline heart rate Happiness).

1: Flip a coin. If the coin is heads, the participant should first relive the Anger emotion, followed by the Happiness emotion. Enter a 1 in the condition field of the data form. If the coin is tails; the order is reversed. Enter a 2 in the condition field of the data form.

6: Each group should come up with three examples how this new technology can be used in real life. Think one crowd-management situation in which you would want to recognize people with the emotions Anger, Fear, or Sadness. Consider how, using sensitive infrared camera's to distinguish temperature, more precise information can be retrieved. Think about possible applications in a home setting, and how a technological device could use this information to perform in a different manner. Think about one way in which YouTube videos can be analyzed, and how people or companies might use this data. Three individuals in each group should make a single slide for each of the three ideas a group comes up with, and three people from each group will present the ideas during the next meeting. Upload your single slide to the Google docs presentation here. Include on your single slide the names group members. You need to hand in the assignment before the normal deadline, but you can make changes to the presentation until right before the meeting. Note that there is a track changes function active in the document, and it stores all the changes everyone makes to each slide.

5: Although it is already very impressive that it is possible to measure heart rate through a smart phone, more recent technological advances show an even more impressive way in which heart rate can be measured with a camera. Watch this video online, especially the part about color magnification, and how it can be used to measure heartbeat. Also, check out this iPhone app that can do the same thing (but costs $4.99) http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cardiio-touchless-camerapulse/id542891434?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

5: Wait at least one minute before repeated steps 2 to 4 for the second emotion. Fill in the results in the remaining three fields. Be sure to click on the SUBMIT button (INSTUREN) when done.

Send a word document (not protected, no pdf files, etc) with the answers to questions 2 and 3. Name the file NAME1-STUDENTNUMBER1- NAMEi-STUDENTNUMBER1-EXERCISENUMBER (e.g., Lakens58282942-Midden - 2144232-2.docx) and send it to D.Lakens@tue.nl before Thursday 12:00 pm. Please complete the assignments with people from your group only. Do not share your answers with fellow students from other groups. All exercises are automatically checked for plagiarism, and observed plagiarism will be reported. Contact me if you have any questions.