Emotional

Overview

Emotional engagement deals with the “nature and intensity of the affect exhibited by visitors during the engagement and immediately after” (Tisdal 2004). The nature of the emotional engagement may be positive, negative, or neutral.

Codes

POSITIVE AFFECT

General: Positive emotional engagement is defined as a positive expression towards the experience. This includes positive reactions to the experience (e.g. “That’s cool”; “Wow!”; “I like that”), positive reactions to others, within the context of experience (e.g. “Great idea!”; “You’re so smart!”), positive body language/noises (e.g. dancing, clapping, high fives), and positive laughing (e.g. amused laughter or laughter indicating enjoyment/joy).

Keywords: happy, joyful, supportive, positive

Specifics [fill in for your exhibit]:

  • Positive reactions to the experience:
  • Positive reactions to others within context of experience:
  • Positive body language/noises:

 

NEGATIVE AFFECT

General: Negative emotional engagement is defined as negative expression towards the experience. This includes negative reactions to the experience (e.g. Wow that’s lame.”; “That sounds bad”), negative reactions to others, within the context of the experience (e.g. yelling something; “Yours is weird”; “She broke it!”), and negative body language/noises (e.g. stomping; hand swatting; crying; wailing). This does not include conducting action (i.e. telling others what to do—e.g. “Stop that”), as conducting is more directional than emotional.

Keywords: negative, unhappy, sad, angry, disappointed, disgruntled, mean

Specifics [fill in for your exhibit]: 

  • Negative reactions to the experience: 
  • Negative reactions to others within context of experience:
  • Negative body language/noises:

 

NEUTRAL AFFECT

General: Neutral emotional engagement is the nondominant code and is defined as the absence of a positive/negative emotional response. In practice, we found that the neutrality of certain vocalizations was a bit ambiguous, so we provide some clarifying points below.

There may be energy in a neutral statement even if there is not emotion (e.g. “Look at that!” said with energy is not necessarily positive or negative). We also classify the following expressions as neutral: emotional responses that do not relate to the exhibit, interjectional “ums” and “ahs,” conducting or telling others what to do, expressing curiosity, making observations, apologizing, and laughter that is not clearly expressing a positive emotion.

Keywords: neutral, not positive or negative

Specifics [fill in for your exhibit]:

  • Interjectional comments (regardless of tone):
  • Conducting:
  • Curiosity: 
  • Observation:
  • Apologizing: