Counteract or Assist?: Influence of Dynamic Force-feedback on Emotions

Although interfaces can adapt to users' behavior only little empirical evidence has been reported about their capability to influence people's emotions. The goal of this study is to explore the influence of haptic force feedback on the emotional experience in a linear sliding movement. We varied force feedback behaviors designed for a motorized slider in a controlled experiment. The slider presented three behaviors, named as counteractive, assistive, and no behavior while participants were exposed to affective imagery varying in valence. The results showed that under different emotions (positive, negative, neutral), people experience small differences in dominance and valence between the force feedback behaviors. A counteractive force feedback seems to increase the feeling of control regarding unpleasant stimuli, while providing an assistive force feedback reduced the level of dominance in case of pleasant stimuli. Our study contributes new understanding of how adaptive feedback influence user's emotions to support design in this field.