Linking Categorical and Dimensional Approaches to Assess Food-Related Emotions

Area of Science:

• Sensory Science
• Psychology of Emotion
• Consumer Behavior

Background:

• Emotional responses to food are measured via categorical (lexicon-based) or dimensional (valence-arousal) approaches.
• Directly relating these two measurement approaches for food emotions is challenging.
• A unified understanding of food-related emotions requires linking these distinct measurement paradigms.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish a reliable mapping between a set of 25 emotion terms (EsSense25) and the valence-arousal space.
• To bridge the categorical and dimensional approaches in measuring food-related emotions.
• To indirectly map emotion terms to the valence-arousal space via food image stimuli.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a set of 20 food images and the EmojiGrid graphical response tool.
• Conducted 'matching' tasks where participants linked food images to emotion terms or valence-arousal ratings.
• Performed 'labeling' tasks where participants linked emotion terms to food images or valence-arousal ratings.
• Established an indirect mapping by combining emotion-image and image-valence-arousal mappings.

Main Results:

• Demonstrated reliable mapping between emotion terms and food images.
• Showed that the established linkages between emotions and food stimuli are interpretable.
• Found that indirectly mapped valence and arousal values for emotion terms were less extreme than directly mapped values.

Conclusions:

• The study successfully created an indirect mapping between emotion terms and the valence-arousal space using food images.
• This methodology provides a viable way to connect categorical and dimensional emotion measurement in the context of food.
• The findings offer a more nuanced understanding of how specific emotions relate to sensory experiences of food and beverages.