Interest is a feeling or
emotion
Emotions are physical and mental states brought on by neurophysiology, neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavior, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or suffering, displeasure. There is ...
that causes
attention
Attention or focus, is the concentration of awareness on some phenomenon to the exclusion of other stimuli. It is the selective concentration on discrete information, either subjectively or objectively. William James (1890) wrote that "Atte ...
to focus on an object, event, or
process
A process is a series or set of activities that interact to produce a result; it may occur once-only or be recurrent or periodic.
Things called a process include:
Business and management
* Business process, activities that produce a specific s ...
. In contemporary psychology of interest, the term is used as a general concept that may encompass other more specific psychological terms, such as
curiosity and to a much lesser degree
surprise.
The emotion of interest does have its own
facial expression
Facial expression is the motion and positioning of the muscles beneath the skin of the face. These movements convey the emotional state of an individual to observers and are a form of nonverbal communication. They are a primary means of conveying ...
, of which the most prominent component is having
dilated pupils.
Applications in computer assisted communication and B-C interface
In 2016, an entirely new communication device and
brain-computer interface was revealed, which required no
visual fixation or eye movement at all, as with previous such devices. Instead, the device assesses more covert interest, that is by assessing other indicators than eye fixation, on a chosen letter on a virtual keyboard. Each letter has its own (background) circle that is micro-oscillating in brightness in different time transitions, where the determination of letter selection is based on the best fit between first, unintentional pupil-size oscillation pattern and second, the circle-in-background's brightness oscillation pattern. Accuracy is additionally improved by the user's mental rehearsing of the words 'bright' and 'dark' in synchrony with the brightness transitions of the circle/letter.
Measurement of sexual interest
In social science measurement methodology, when the intensity of (sexual) interest needs to be measured, the changes in pupil size – despite its weaker, but still consistent, correlations with other measures such as self-reported measures of
sexual interest's orientation – have been proposed as its appropriate measure.
[Rieger, Gerulf; Savin-Williams RC (2012]
''The Eyes Have It: Sex and Sexual Orientation Differences in Pupil Dilation Patterns''
Public Library of Science ONE 7(8): e40256. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0040256 San Francisco
See also
*
Curiosity
*
Ecstasy (emotion)
*
Carroll Izard
*
Surprise
*
Attraction (emotion)
References
External links
A theory of different stages of interest (from
noticing something, wondering about it, being
curious, to being fascinated,
astonished, and, in
ecstasy)
{{Authority control
Emotions