Apple is on everyone’s lips. Following the presentation of their new iPhone 15 and Watch Series 9, Tim Cook’s company has many novelties in store for us that will arrive throughout the end of the year. And the most striking developments come with iOS 17.
It is expected that Apple’s iOS 17 operating system will be released today. The software update comes with several new features, including a tool for daily mood and emotion tracking.
This is a technique known to emotion researchers as “experience sampling.” It’s not new, as we’ve already seen it with Fitbit watches.
How does emotion tracking work?
With the latest software update, Apple’s Health app will allow iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch users to record how they feel on a scale ranging from “very unpleasant” to “very pleasant.”
Afterwards, users will be able to choose from a list of adjectives to label their feelings and indicate which factors (such as health, fitness, relationships, work, money, and current events) have had the most influence on how they feel.
The goal is to provide users with daily and weekly summaries of their feelings, along with data on the factors that may have influenced them. Apple claims that this will help users “build emotional awareness and resilience.”
Why does Apple care about our feelings?
Before this update, Apple’s devices already collected large amounts of health-related data. The iPhone is equipped with an accelerometer, gyroscope, light sensor, microphone, camera, and GPS, while the Apple Watch can also record skin temperature and heart rate.
Why does Apple now want users to also record how they feel? For money, as the emotion detection and recognition sector is projected to reach a value of $56 billion by 2024.
And Apple is one of the numerous tech companies that have invested in trying to detect people’s emotions from sensor recordings.
However, scientists are not clear whether emotions can be inferred from these bodily signals. Reviews of research suggest that neither facial expressions nor physiological responses can reliably be used to deduce what emotions someone is experiencing.
By adding self-reporting to their methodological tools, Apple may be acknowledging that subjective experience is essential for understanding human emotions and, seemingly, abandoning the goal of deducing emotions solely from “objective” data.
Of course, the ultimate goal is to improve their health sector to make a better business in the future. There’s no doubt about that.
