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TOKYO EYE TRACK FILM

THE DATA VISUALISATION OF DISGUST PSYCHOLOGY

2017 

Keio University, Tokyo

Responsibilities: Disgust Psychology Research, User Research, Experiment Design

Collaborators: Interaction Designer Daisuke Yukita, Developer Roshan Peiris, Professor Kai Kunze

Features: The Alimentarium Musuem, Switzerland, April 2020 - April 2021

Context:

Pupillometry is a cognitive tool for measuring human emotions and reactions, such as anger, fear or arousal. Eye tracking technology use sensors to measure the dilation of our pupils when subjected to visual cues and stimuli. Pupillometry is often used as a marketing tool to understand which images in magazines or adverts are considered most appealing to consumers.

Challenge:

By contrast, understanding how pupillometry can measure what is unappealing to the consumer remains a largely understudied area. For example, there are few studies that test whether pupillometry is an accurate tool for measuring emotions such as disgust and how reactions may differ across people with different cultural backgrounds.

Opportunity:

To use eye tracking technology to test whether pupil size is indicative of disgust level experienced by participants of Japanese, European and American backgrounds. Drawing inspiration from the work of Paul Rozin, one of the pioneers studying the emotion of disgust, I created a short film showing images of Rozin’s proven disgust elicitors (reminders of animality, birth, death, decay, and eating) across three levels of disgust - level one being the least disgusting, level three being the most disgusting. Each participant was equipped with the eye-tracking device and asked to chew mochi, a Japanese gelatinous dessert, as they watched the video.

Insights:

Results indicate that there is a correlation between pupil size and level of disgust experienced - the higher the disgust level the more the pupil size contracted. However, the Japanese participants experienced less of a pupil size reduction during high disgust levels compared to the American and European participants.

The white circles seen in the video show the combined average real-time change in pupil size with the video imagery shown to the participants. The smaller the white circles (pupil size), the more the image was considered disgusting. The purpose of the study was to test whether pupil size was indicative of disgust levels experienced by users across different cultural backgrounds, and to discover whether eating whilst watching a range of disgust imagery would enhance or detract from the level of disgust experienced.

Japanese participant, Sayaka

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