EmoSnaps: a mobile application for emotion recall from facial expressions

Abstract. We introduce EmoSnaps, a mobile application that captures unobtrusively pictures of one’s facial expressions throughout the day and uses them for later recall of her momentary emotions. We describe two follow-up field studies that employ EmoSnaps in an attempt to investigate if and how individuals and their relevant others infer emotions from self-face and familiar face pictures, respectively. Recalled emotions through EmoSnaps are being compared to ground truth data as derived from Experience Sampling. Contrary to our expectations, it was shown that by increasing the temporal distance of recall to an experience and by reducing temporal context, we increase users ’ ability to infer their emotions from a self-face picture. Happiness, as derived from self-face pictures, displayed plausible effects related to mobile usage, such as fluctuation across time and different interactions, while a checking habit formation was detected. Experience Sampling Method (ESM), Emotion Evaluation, Day Reconstruction Method (DRM)