Long-Term Variability in Physiological-Arousal Relationships for Robust Emotion Estimation

TL;DR

This study investigates the long-term stability of physiological signals as indicators of emotional arousal, revealing that these relationships vary over months and emphasizing the need for periodic model updates in emotion estimation systems.

Contribution

It provides a longitudinal dataset and analysis demonstrating temporal variability in physiological-arousal relationships, highlighting the importance of model adaptation over time.

Findings

Physiological-arousal relationships change over months.

Heart rate remains a stable predictor.

EDA shows individual-level fluctuations.

Abstract

Estimating emotional states from physiological signals is a central topic in affective computing and psychophysiology. While many emotion estimation systems implicitly assume a stable relationship between physiological features and subjective affect, this assumption has rarely been tested over long timeframes. This study investigates whether such relationships remain consistent across several months within individuals. We developed a custom measurement system and constructed a longitudinal dataset by collecting physiological signals -- including blood volume pulse, electrodermal activity (EDA), skin temperature, and acceleration--along with self-reported emotional states from 24 participants over two three-month periods. Data were collected in naturalistic working environments, allowing analysis of the relationship between physiological features and subjective arousal in everyday contexts. We examined how physiological-arousal relationships evolve over time by using Explainable Boosting Machines (EBMs) to ensure model interpretability. A model trained on 1st-period data showed a 5\% decrease in accuracy when tested on 2nd-period data, indicating long-term variability in physiological-arousal associations. EBM-based comparisons further revealed that while heart rate remained a relatively stable predictor, minimum EDA exhibited substantial individual-level fluctuations between periods. While the number of participants is limited, these findings highlight the need to account for temporal variability in physiological-arousal relationships and suggest that emotion estimation models should be periodically updated -- e.g., every five months -- based on observed shift trends to maintain robust performance over time.