Efficiency of Computer Vision in Modulating Happiness: An Interventional Study

According to the Facial Feedback Hypothesis, a forceful smile will generate the feeling of happiness in a subject. This could have resulted in a practical self-care activity. However, there is a conspicuous absence of standardized procedures for the forceful smile, and this study was conducted to prove that the precise scoring system from Computer Vision (CV) can induce high levels of happiness.

Participants were alternately assigned to the CV-assisted or non-CV-assisted (traditional) group. Both groups had to recognise emotions displayed on a computer screen as quickly as possible, in two phases: a control phase and an intervention phase. During the intervention phase, the CV-assisted group had to smile constantly during the task, whereas the traditional group had to bite on a pen sideways. According to the congruency effect, a person experiencing a particular emotion will be more efficient at recognising faces which display the same emotion. Performance was assessed in terms of change in participants’ correct responses while identifying happiness and reaction time for the same, compared to the baseline obtained from the control phase.

The traditional group showed greater improvement in correct responses when identifying happiness. Even when the proportion of correct responses was directly compared between the CV-assisted and traditional groups, the latter had a significantly higher score (p = 0.014).

The simpler traditional method seems to have generated higher levels of happiness in this study. Repeated prompts to smile, given to participants in the CV-assisted group, might have hampered their performance; thus, future studies can try to circumvent this.

If precise guidelines are established for the execution of the traditional method, its advantages in generating happiness could be reaped uniformly by all.