Exploring the Validity of Methods to Track Emotions Behind the Wheel.

Emotions accompany us anytime, even while driving. Thereby especially negative emotional experiences influence our driving behavior and the safety on our roads. A psychological intervention to regulate feelings is to track them, e.g. by labeling them along categories. Thus, the aim of this work is to establish an empirical base to guide the development of a system that encourages the driver to label his or her emotions. This involves asking what the relevant emotions are and how they can be validly labeled in the driving context. For this purpose, a driving study was conducted to collect data on emotional experiences in-situ. For the labeling task, three methodological approaches were used: free responses, dimensional emotion rating (DER), and categorical emotion rating (CER). As a result, while DER and CER lack validity due to ambiguity or priming effects, respectively, the free response method has practical limitations. Following, it is recommended to develop an in-car emotion tracker based on CER and use the free response data to determine the appropriate number and naming of categories that cover a significant range of emotions. An initial analysis of the free responses revealed 40 distinct categories of emotional experiences.