Measure your emotions

Details of the experiments.

The At-Bristol experiment

Over the course of 2 days, 107 visitors to Explore At-Bristol (65 female, 42 male) aged between 18 and 75 took part in this study.

Each participant was shown the following nine photographs in a random order:

Two girls kissing tenderly, a revealing picture of Denise Van Outen, a hairy spider, a man’s strong muscular back, a surgical operation, a skull and pictures of Maggie Thatcher, Jeremy Paxman and Tony Blair.

Participant’s emotional response to each image was recorded by measuring their galvanic skin response - the tiny changes in sweat produced due to changes in emotional arousal.

Participants wore headphones during the experiment to block out any distracting noises.   After the experiment, they were also asked to rate their feelings towards Maggie Thatcher and Tony Blair to determine how this related to their emotional responses.

The galvanic skin response equipment was created by the UWE scientists and is similar to that used in lie detector tests.

Other researchers have showed that this test can reveal subconscious responses. For example, psychologists showed people a series of words and later asked which ones they recognized. When an 'emotional' word (e.g. a strong swear word) was showed very quickly, although the subjects reports not having seen it - their galvanic skin response revealed a subliminal reaction.

This experiment conducted in Explore aimed to find out more about people’s responses to a set of sexual and political images, and to compare these to the results of an earlier experiment in the House of Commons which measured MP’s responses to the same set of images.

The House of Commons experiment   MPs from all political backgrounds were wired up to an electronic device that measured their emotional reactions to a series of provocative images. The startling result was that for politicians, Margaret Thatcher provoked a stronger response than images of scantily-clad men and women.

The experiment was carried out by scientists from At-Bristol, in the House of Commons in November 2000. Of the 25 MPs who took part, the image of Margaret Thatcher provoked the strongest reaction even in Labour MP’s. However, the strongest response might be due to any emotion, not necessarily admiration!

In contrast, members of the general public seem to react most strongly to the overtly sexual imagery, or to fears such as arachnophobia.

Each MP was showed the following nine photographs in a random order:

Two girls kissing tenderly, a revealing picture of Denise Van Outen, a hairy spider, a man’s strong muscular back, a surgical operation, a skull and pictures of Maggie Thatcher, Jeremy Paxman and Tony Blair.

Using equipment designed by the University of the West of England, we measured the electrical resistance of the MP’s skin as they viewed the pictures.

Out of 25 MP’s tested (from a range of political parties), 20 reacted most strongly to Maggie Thatcher – suggesting admiration, lust, fear or loathing.   Click here to read the BBC report of this experiment.