Natural
Kinds or Conceptual Constructions: Determining Emotion Measurement
Th. March 8 11:15 AM 'The Glass House'
« review the Neuromarketing World Forum 2018 agenda
Two emotion theories
– Natural Kinds and Conceptual Constructions – have
been batted around in the behavioral sciences. In the past, these emotion theories
were hardly even considered when it came to consumer research. It wasn’t until
the early 90s that whispers started about the usefulness of consumer research,
followed by a more recent full-scale focus by neuromarketing experts on consumer
emotions studies. Since then psychologists and neuroscientists have shown that
emotion is a critical, if not a primary, driver of human (consumer) behavior.
This new focus on
emotion differentiation calls for an effective way to measure it. You can pick
from an entire array of measurement approaches: self-report surveys; brain
scanning, biometrics and facial coding; metaphor analysis; natural language
processing (NLP); and implicit affective priming. But before determining how to
measure emotion, it’s important to take a minute and reflect on what emotions
really are.
During this session,
Paul Conner will lead a
discussion about the difference between Natural
Kinds, where emotions are seen as naturally pre-existing neurophysiological
and/or behavioral reactions to stimuli, and Conceptual Constructions,
seen as cognitively constructed in the context of every situation. Are the
emotions of a specific consumer group led by an innate, reliable brain and body
“fingerprint” (i.e. Natural Kinds)? Or is that group basing their actions on
what they similarly learn, as opposed to the brain and body fingerprints they’re
born with?
Audience takeaways:
- Gain knowledge about
the existing differences in emotion theory
- Attain clarity about
the different theories
- Learn how to measure
emotion and choose an approach that applies to the theory