Phasic and tonic electrodermal activity in emotional responses to acoustic environments

The field of physiology of emotion has long attempted to establish the relationship between electrodermal activity (EDA), particularly skin conductance (SC), and subjective emotional experiences. However, there remains a lack of reliable SC parameters that reflect subjective emotions in response to the sensory experiences of real-world physical environments, due to their multiple and continuously changing stimuli. This study aims to fill this gap by investigating the relationship between various SC parameters and subjective emotional responses to acoustic environments encountered in everyday life, and by proposing a novel SC parameter. Through a lab-based listening experiment involving 33 participants exposed to 36 sound stimuli that represent various everyday acoustic environments, this study reveals the distinct roles of phasic and tonic SC in emotional responses to physical environments. Phasic SC parameters are found to be highly associated with subjective emotions during exposure to environmental stimuli, while tonic SC parameters maintain relevance post-exposure. The experimental results further indicate that all SC parameters are primarily associated with the Arousal dimension of emotions and with positive-inactive and negative-active emotions, rather than with the Pleasantness dimension or with negative-inactive and positive-active emotions. Moreover, this study introduces a new phasic SC parameter, which demonstrates the best performance among all SC parameters in measuring the aforementioned highly associated subjective emotions during exposure to physical environments. These findings enhance our theoretical understanding and have potential applications in using SC parameters as practical tools for monitoring and understanding emotional responses to real-world physical environments. •Lab experiment links skin conductance (SC) to emotions from acoustic environments.•Reveals the separated roles of phasic and tonic SC parameters.•Proposes a superior novel phasic SC parameter for acoustic environments.•SC parameters are primarily associated with the Arousal dimension of emotions.•Advances theory and potentially applies SC in real physical environments.