It’s no secret that the electrical conductivity of the skin depends on the degree of sweating and also reflects the dynamics of the person’s emotional state. Someday gadgets will be able to guess emotions and begin to morally support their owners, but this belongs to the scientific study of the question of how emotions are related to skin conductance. For the first time, Japanese scientists conducted a study on the dynamics of the influence of emotions on the speed and maintenance of skin conductance.

A team from Tokyo Metropolitan University recruited a group of volunteers and showed them scenes from horror movies, scenes of family life, and performances by stand-up comedians. In all cases, accurate measurements of the electrical conductivity of the skin of the hand (palm) and the dynamics of signal manifestation from onset to extinction were carried out. Based on the measurements, graphs were created that gave enough food for thought and the organization of new experiments.

For example, it was noted that signals associated with fear persist the longest, which is probably due to the evolutionary development of a person – the more afraid he is, the more likely he is to escape. The emotions that came with watching the family scenes had the slightest uptick. Scientists explained this by the mixture of emotions that interfere with each other in the process of feeling the moment. It was also determined that the response in skin conductance occurred with a delay of 1 to 3 seconds after the expression of the emotion.

In any case, the data collected shows that emotions can be detected using sensors on human skin. It’s too early to talk about this, but the proposed solution in the future will remove the security camera from the equation of determining human emotions and make this process available to smart watches or fitness bracelets. Correct determination of the current emotional state of a person will help provide him with automatic support, which in some situations can play a decisive role in his fate.