The release of Apple’s iOS 17 is anticipated to occur soon. A tool for recording everyday mood and emotion is one of the new features included in the software upgrade. Emotion researchers refer to this method as “experience sampling.”
Despite these limitations, several research on the benefits of recording one’s sentiments on a regular basis in mental health. Apple already collects a ton of customer health information, so why would it also want to capture their subjective emotions? How beneficial might this be for users as well?
How it works
With the most recent software update, Apple’s Health app will enable users of iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch to report their feelings on a scale ranging from “very unpleasant” to “very pleasant.”
Then, users will pick from a list of adjectives to describe their feelings and identify which elements—such as their physical and mental health, their relationships, their jobs, their finances, and current events—have had the biggest impact on those feelings.
Users will receive daily and weekly summaries of their emotions as well as information on potential influencing variables. Users will be able to “build emotional awareness and resilience,” according to Apple.
Why does Apple give a damn about how we feel?
Before this upgrade, Apple has already gathered a vast amount of health information. While the Apple Watch can also monitor skin temperature and heart rate, the iPhone has an accelerometer, gyroscope, light meter, microphone, camera, and GPS. Why does Apple now demand that consumers track their emotions as well?
The emotion detection and recognition market is anticipated to reach US$56 billion (A$86.9 billion) by 2024, driven by a variety of possible applications, including fraud detection, improved customer experience, and targeted marketing. Apple is one of many tech firms that have made investments in the effort to identify people’s emotions via sensor records.
Scientists disagree, nevertheless, as to whether such physical cues may be used to deduce emotions. According to evaluations of the literature, it is not possible to accurately deduce someone’s emotions from their facial expressions or physiological reactions.
Apple may be acknowledging that subjective experience is crucial to comprehending human emotion and, it seems, relinquishing the goal of inferring emotions entirely from “objective” data by include self-report in its scientific toolkit.
The methodology of experience sampling.
Users can now record their emotions “right now” (using labeled emotions) or “overall today” (using defined moods) using Apple’s new functionality. Is this distinction accurate?
Emotions are often defined as being about something, even though scientific agreement is elusive: I am upset at my supervisor because she turned down my idea. On the other hand, moods are not consciously connected to particular occasions: I don’t know why I’m feeling grumpy.
Although Apple’s two reporting techniques rely on various cognitive processes that may result in inconsistent estimates of people’s sentiments, they do not clearly discriminate between emotions and moods.
Users may become more conscious of biases in their memory of feelings if the new feature allows them to independently choose the time period (momentary or daily) and kind of feeling (directed emotion or diffuse mood). It might even assist individuals in determining the mood’s frequently elusive root causes.
People can rate their feelings as pleasant or bad using Apple’s feeling slider. This captures the main, or valence, aspect of feeling but leaves out other crucial aspects.
The assumption made by the feature is that pleasantness and unpleasantness are on different ends of a continuum, although scientists disagree and believe that the two emotions can co-exist as mixed emotions. Users might report mixed emotions, which are typical in daily life, if happy and bad feelings were measured independently.
According to some study, determining someone’s degree of arousal—such as how “tense” or “calm” they are—can be used to infer the second fundamental component of their feelings, namely how pleasant and awful they are feeling.
The Apple function then asks users to categorize their feelings using a selection of adjectives like “grateful,” “worried,” “happy,” or “discouraged” after they have rated the valence of the feelings.
Do these choices adequately represent the range of human emotions? Current scientific discussion centers on the number of distinct emotion types—or even whether such categories even exist. Nevertheless, Apple’s initial list of sensation categories offers a respectable amount of coverage in this area.
What advantages are there?
Apple’s assertion that tracking mood and emotions may enhance consumers’ wellbeing is not without merit. According to research, tracking and categorizing emotions improves people’s capacity to distinguish between them and aids in distress management. These two are essential components of psychological well-being.
In addition, new study points to the possibility that patterns of moment-to-moment variations in people’s regular sensations can help identify those who are more likely to experience depression or other mental diseases.
There is hope that recording people’s emotions on a large scale could result in scientific advancements in our comprehension, treatment, and prevention of prevalent mental health diseases given Apple’s history of research partnership.
What are the risks?
We can’t ignore the possible drawbacks of the new function because Apple is also asking consumers to provide yet more of their personal data.
The Health app, according to Apple, is “designed for privacy and security” and comes with a number of security features, such as data encryption and user control over data sharing. Specifically, it states that health information “may not be used for advertising, marketing, or sold to data brokers.”
Although it might sound reassuring, Apple’s track record on data privacy is far from ideal. French authorities recently penalized the business for utilizing client information for targeted advertising without permission.
Potential uses for detailed information on user-reported moods and emotions include product and service advertising. Sensitive mental health data may be used inappropriately or turned into a commodity, which raises the possibility that there is a need for tighter controls on how businesses gather, retain, and use consumer data.
We strongly advise you to examine the hazards vs the potential rewards for you before utilizing Apple’s new mood and emotion tracking tool.
Software
