Analysis of Influence of Preference on Emotions in Relation to Physiological Indexes

In recent years, research has been conducted to evaluate human emotions. Emotions have been evaluated using various methods such as subjective evaluation and physiological indexes. However, the relationship between these evaluation methods has not been clarified. Previous research by Ueno et al. analyzed correlation between in-vehicle conditions and subjective evaluation using adjective pairs as well as physiological indexes using electroencephalograph (EEG) and heart rate variability (HRV). However, the relationship between the subjective evaluation and the physiological indexes itself has not been scrutinized yet. In addition, the physiological indexes were reported to have large individual difference. Therefore, this study take into account preferences to clarify the relationship between the subjective evaluation and the physiological indexes, focusing on music genres as emotional stimuli. As a result, preferences were strongly correlated with arousal level measured by EEG, suggesting that human preferences may influence human emotions.