Psychophysiological assessment of emotions

The scientific dispute concerning the identification of different psychophysiological patterns associated with specific emotions is still far to be settled. In this preliminary work we present new empirical data to foster the understanding of this topic. We report results related to cardio-respiratory indexes during the experience of autobiografical recall of emotions, namely: fear, anger, happiness and sadness, and show how it is possible to distinguish in a significant way between the different emotions and baseline conditions in 27 students. Of note, some indexes were even able to detect a significant difference between all four emotions. Although these preliminary findings refer to a partial sample of the ongoing research project, aimed at recording data from up to 60 subjects, the data support the possibility to detect specific psychophysiological patterns associated to the target emotions. A confirmation of these findings would foster the development of new tools for automatic recognition of affective states by means of cardio-respiratory signals.