The sentics research published in Dr. Clynes' book Sentics [Clynes, 1986] has revealed, among other things, a correlation between emotional valence and the dynamic finger pressure of a subject pushing a button. His research has focused on identifying emotions based on the characteristic signal pattern of finger pressure. To this end, Dr. Clynes has traveled the globe testing subjects on his sentograph and found that there are distinct patterns that arise for similar emotions across all subjects. The specific emotions Dr. Clynes had his subjects elicit and their characteristic signals correlated strongly, see figure 2-4.
His experiments had right-handed subjects sit in a prescribed manner
(to eliminate non-essential movement) with their finger on the
sentograph. At the tone the subject, imagining, fantasizing, or
remembering themselves in a pre-specified state, tried to express the
emotion by pushing on the sentograph button. The specific emotions
Dr. Clynes studied included - Anger, Hate, Grief, Love, Sex, Joy, and
Reverence.
Although he
found that many cultures did not have the words for all these
emotions, the specific emotions he wanted to elicit were very familiar
to the subjects.
[Figure 2-4: The top line reflects vertical pressure and the bottom trace is horizontal deflection.]
Dr. Clynes' experiments support the hypothesis that it is an innate unconscious human tendency to pull positive stimuli towards the self, and to push negative stimuli away. He found that emotions like love and joy were accompanied by less dramatic horizontal deflection than anger and hate. By measuring the pressure of the finger in the horizontal plane, towards verses away from the subject, valence information can be extracted.