A Song Can Do That: An Emotion Induction Study for the Development of Intelligent Emotion-Aware Systems

Emotion induction is a crucial activity when designing experimental studies focused on collecting training data about human behaviour in the interaction with technology under different emotional conditions. In this paper, we assess the emotion induction power of four playlists, conceived to induce euphoria, anxiety, sadness and anger, respectively, by means of a study involving 44 participants. Perceived emotions have been self-judged by participants on a per-song basis by leveraging questionnaires built upon both continuous and discrete emotion models to improve data reliability. Results show that two out of four playlists (euphoria and anxiety) have been effective in inducing the emotion they were conceived for, while the other ones need further attention to be considered as reliable materials for emotion induction purposes.