The PAD emotional state model is a psychological model developed by

Albert Mehrabian Albert Mehrabian was born in 1939 to an Armenian family living in Iran. He is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles.UCLA CollegeProfessor Emeritus, Department of Psychology, UCLA Although he originally tra ...

and James A. Russell (1974 and after) to describe and measure emotional states. PAD uses three numerical dimensions, Pleasure, Arousal and Dominance to represent all

emotion Emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is currently no scientific consensus on a definition. ...

s. Its initial use was in a theory of

environmental psychology Environmental psychology is a branch of psychology that explores the relationship between humans and the external world. It examines the way in which the natural environment and our built environments shape us as individuals. Environmental Psychol ...

, the core idea being that physical environments influence people through their emotional impact. It was subsequently used by Peter Lang and colleagues to propose a physiological theory of emotion. It was also used by James A. Russell to develop a theory of emotional episodes (relatively brief emotionally charged events). The PA part of PAD was developed into a circumplex model of emotion experience, and those two dimensions were termed "core affect". The D part of PAD was re-conceptualized as part of the appraisal process in an emotional episode (a cold cognitive assessment of the situation eliciting the emotion). A more fully developed version of this approach is termed the psychological construction theory of emotion. The PAD (''Pleasure'', ''Arousal'', ''Dominance'') model has been used to study

nonverbal communication Nonverbal communication (NVC) is the transmission of messages or signals through a nonverbal platform such as eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, posture, and body language. It includes the use of social cues, kinesics, distance ( pr ...

such as

body language Body language is a type of communication in which physical behaviors, as opposed to words, are used to express or convey information. Such behavior includes facial expressions, body posture, gestures, eye movement, touch and the use of space. Th ...

in psychology. It has also been applied to consumer marketing and the construction of

animated character Character animation is a specialized area of the animation process, which involves bringing animated s to life. The role of a character animator is analogous to that of a film or stage actor and character animators are often said to be "actors wit ...

s that express emotions in

virtual world A virtual world (also called a virtual space) is a computer-simulated environment which may be populated by many users who can create a personal avatar, and simultaneously and independently explore the virtual world, participate in its activities ...

The dimensional structure

PAD uses three-dimensional scales which in theory could have any numerical values. The dimensional structure is reminiscent of the 19th century work of

Wilhelm Wundt Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (; ; 16 August 1832 – 31 August 1920) was a German physiologist, philosopher, and professor, known today as one of the fathers of modern psychology. Wundt, who distinguished psychology as a science from philosophy and ...

who also used a three-dimensional system and also the 20th century work of

Charles E. Osgood Charles Egerton Osgood (20 November 1916 – 15 September 1991) was an American psychologist and professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, University of Illinois. He was known for his research on behaviourism versus Cognitiv ...

. The ''Pleasure-Displeasure Scale'' measures how pleasant or unpleasant one feels about something. For instance both anger and fear are unpleasant emotions, and both score on the displeasure side. However joy is a pleasant emotion. The ''Arousal-Nonarousal Scale'' measures how energized or soporific one feels. It is not the intensity of the emotion -- for grief and depression can be low arousal intense feelings. While both anger and rage are unpleasant emotions, rage has a higher intensity or a higher arousal state. However boredom, which is also an unpleasant state, has a low arousal value. The ''Dominance-Submissiveness Scale'' represents the controlling and dominant versus controlled or submissive one feels. For instance while both fear and anger are unpleasant emotions, anger is a dominant emotion, while fear is a submissive emotion. A more abbreviated version of the model uses just 4 values for each dimension, providing only 64 values for possible emotions. For instance, anger is a quite unpleasant, quite aroused, and moderately dominant emotion, while boredom is slightly unpleasant, quite unaroused, and mostly non-dominant.

Applications

Marketing

The abbreviated model has also been used in organizational studies where the emotions towards specific entities or products marketed by them are measured. The PAD model has been used in studying consumer behavior in stores, to determine the effects of pleasure and arousal on issues such as extra time spent in the store and unplanned spending.

Virtual emotional characters

The PAD model, and the corresponding ''PAD Space'' have been used in the construction of animated agents that exhibit emotions. For instance, Becker et al. describe how primary and secondary emotions can be mapped via the PAD space to features in the faces of animated characters to reflect happiness, boredom, frustration or annoyance. Lance et al. discuss how the PAD model can be used to study gaze behavior in animated agents. Zhang et al. describe how the PAD model can be used to assign specific emotions to the faces of

avatars Avatar (, ; ), is a concept within Hinduism that in Sanskrit literally means "descent". It signifies the material appearance or incarnation of a powerful deity, goddess or spirit on Earth. The relative verb to "alight, to make one's appearanc ...

. In this approach the PAD model is used as a high level emotional space, and the lower level space is the MPEG-4 Facial Animation Parameters (FAP). A mid-level Partial Expression Parameters (PEP) space is then used to in a two level structure: the PAD-PEP mapping and the PEP-FAP translation model.

The dimensional structure

Applications

Marketing

Virtual emotional characters

See also

References

Further reading