V.Discussion: Modulating the Aesthetic experience

B.Factors to be accounted for

Unfortunately, the studies reported in the literature (see section II.A) are quite vague about the duration of a posture/movement to have a modulatory effect. In [18], the inducing condition lasted the time necessary to read stories such as “Donald refuses to pay his rent, but only after his landlord failed to make promised repairs”. In [21], Stepper et al. speculate on this length. According to their results, the postural influence appears to be stronger at the onset of the proprioceptive feedback (i.e., as the posture is assumed) rather than after a prolonged maintenance of the position. They suggest that this could be due either to habituation as “effects of neural impingements are typically produced by changes in sensory input and not by its mere state”. This may indicate that, if a certain type of expression is maintained for a longer period, it may have a weaker impact. Hence, it could be expected that the most frequent affective type of expressions during a game point may have an effect on the players’ aesthetic experience. In [8], the use of aggressive expressions, even if not continuously portrayed, did appear to have a significant effect on the emotional state of the player.

To our knowledge, however, in all the studies presented in this literature, the expressions were imposed on, rather than being naturally expressed by, the participants. This may have implications for how the contribution of each body expression (imposed by the game designer or improvised by the player) should be used to measure the quality of an aesthetic experience. In his study, Riskind [72] provides evidence of the effect of posture on affect but it also highlights the fact that this effect is modulated by the congruence between the valence of the posture and the mood of the person (appropriateness hypothesis). It is also important to consider the context in which certain expressions occur. [20] also points out that “the joint occurrence of bodily changes and the activation of the appropriate cognitive contents are likely to provide the optimal conditions for a full-blown emotional experience”. It is possible that body movements may have a stronger effect when game events (but not body movement) are consciously appraised. Rather than a majority vote, therefore, a more complex weighting of these expressions and their alternation may need to be considered in the modelling.

Finally, players’ personalities may have an impact upon how people are affected by proprioceptive feedback. In our study, we labelled the data according to how people read the body expressions of the players. Whilst the emotion classes used in this study are considered universal, studies have shown that differences exist, especially in terms of how people express the intensity of an emotion [48]. It is, therefore, possible that, when building the training set for these systems, we consider personality, culture and gender of the expresser, as they may have an important role in the modulating process. In fact, in [18], the authors show that culturally-learned body movements also have an effect on our cognitive and affective processes.