On “Emotion in Human-Computer Interaction” and Developing Compassion

People are inherently emotional. Emotions, sentiments, and moods effect each aspect of response and interaction in our lives. Indeed, if any interface ignores this, it “risks being perceived as cold, socially inept, untrustworthy, and incompetent.” Part of the truth of this lies in the personification of the computer or software by the user. However, we also have the choice to change our emotions, sentiments, and moods in order to modify our behavior. The key lies in consistent intention and progression.

Brave and Nass reveal the underlying mechanisms of emotion with a figure that demonstrates the connections between the thalamus, the cortex, and the limbic system. The thalamic-limbic pathway is responsible for the primary emotions, while secondary emotions “result from activation of the limbic system by processing in the cortex.” They then go on to cover the debate over whether or not emotion is innate or learned. Regarding this debate, Brave and Nass describe the middle of the two extremes where “the limbic system is prewired to recognize the basic categories of emotion, but social learning and higher cortical processes still play a significant role in differentiation.”

One recent article that came to my attention involves the ability to learn compassion using meditative states. The experiment in the article entitled Regulation of the Neural Circuitry of Emotion by Compassion Meditation: Effects of Meditative Expertise used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure differences in brain activity between novice and experienced meditators, those having 10,000 plus hours of Buddhist compassion mediation practice. They were asked two alternate between actively generating a condition of compassion mediation and refraining from the practice.

In this case:

The meditative practice studied here involves the generation of a state in which an “unconditional feeling of loving-kindness and compassion pervades the whole mind as a way of being, with no other consideration, or discursive thoughts” ... According to the tradition, as a result of this practice, feelings and actions for the benefit of others arise more readily when relevant situations arise. Our main hypothesis was thus that the concern for others cultivated during this meditation would enhance the affective responses to emotional human vocalizations, in particular to negative ones, and that this affective response would be modulated by the degree of meditation training.

They analyzed the areas of the brain associated with empathy including the insula cortex and the somatosensory cortex. The data support their main hypothesis, namely that “the brain regions underlying emotions and feelings are modulated in response to emotional sounds as a function of the state of compassion, the valence of the emotional sounds and the degree of expertise.”

One interesting way to see these results is to acknowledge that the meditation itself, over time, changes the neurology of the practitioner in such a way that the empathy and compassion become more automatic and spontaneous. In the section on Effects of Affect: Attention, Brave and Nass state, “people also often consciously regulate mood, selecting and attending to stimuli that sustain desired moods or, alternatively, counteract undesired moods.” Compassion meditation would then put people in a more sustained compassionate mood. I say mood because it seems to fit the definition better than emotion. “Moods...are nonintentional; they are not directed at any object in particular and are thus experienced as more diffuse, global, and general.” This would seem to be the case with long-term practitioners of compassion mediation. It becomes a “way of being.”

Brave and Nass support this by saying, “Intense or repetitive emotional experiences tend to prolong themselves into moods.” The Lutz, Johnstone and Davidson study used fMRI results to measure affect, but Brave and Nass also suggest other methods for doing so, including electroencephalogram (EEG) to test neurological responses, autonomic activity, facial expression, voice, self-report measures, and affect recognition by users.

Depending on the conditions of the study, these methods for testing affect differ in efficacy. The Compassion Mediation study did not use behavioral analysis during the testing because the meditators informed them that this would interfere with the meditation process itself. So they has to rely on the fMRI measurements and a certain amount of self-reporting. Self-report measures, in particular, suffer from a problem with temporal relevance. Brave and Nass point out that “questionnaires are capable of measuring only the conscious experience of emotion and mood. Much of affective processing, however, resides in the limbic system and in nonconscious processes.”

The dimensional theories using arousal and valence were also used during the Compassion Mediation study and with correlational results. This would support that for further research, where any self-reporting is necessary, compassion should be tested as a mood emergent from a two-dimensional space of “conscious emotional experience.”

By Christine Rosakranse
Professor Nathan Freier
Theory and Research on Tech Comm and HCI
September 29, 2009

References:
Brave, S., & Nass, C. (2007). Emotion in human-computer interaction. In Sears, A. & Jacko, J. (Eds.). The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications, 2nd Edition. (pp. 77-92). Lawrence Erlbaum.
Fledman Barrett, L. & Russell. (1999). The structure of current affect: Controversies and emerging consensus. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 8(1), 10-14.
Lutz A, Brefczynski-Lewis J, Johnstone T, Davidson RJ (2008) Regulation of the Neural Circuitry of Emotion by Compassion Meditation: Effects of Meditative Expertise. PLoS ONE 3(3): e1897. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001897



1 Brave, S., & Nass, C. (2007). Emotion in human-computer interaction. In Sears, A. & Jacko, J. (Eds.). The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications, 2nd Edition. (pp. 77-92). Lawrence Erlbaum.
2 Brave, S., & Nass, C. (2007). Emotion in human-computer interaction. In Sears, A. & Jacko, J. (Eds.). The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications, 2nd Edition. (pp. 77-92). Lawrence Erlbaum.
3 Lutz A, Brefczynski-Lewis J, Johnstone T, Davidson RJ (2008) Regulation of the Neural Circuitry of Emotion by Compassion Meditation: Effects of Meditative Expertise. PLoS ONE 3(3): e1897. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001897
4 Brave, S., & Nass, C. (2007). Emotion in human-computer interaction. In Sears, A. & Jacko, J. (Eds.). The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications, 2nd Edition. (pp. 77-92). Lawrence Erlbaum.
5 Brave and Nass, pg. 87.
6 As described by Fledman Barrett, L. Russell, 1999. The structure of current affect: Controversies and emerging consensus. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 8(1), 10-14.