The role of gender differences in response to emotional music: a comprehensive analysis of autonomic signal characteristics

Individual differences, especially gender, have an important role on individuals responds to the emotions. In cognitive science investigations, the analysis of biological signals has been introduced as a confident way to evaluate such responses. In this paper, by adopting a comprehensive approach on biomedical signal processing techniques, a precise examination on women and men differences in affective responses has been provided into different emotional stimuli, including fear, sadness, happiness, and peacefulness.
Accordingly, signal processing methods were divided into three general categories, linear, wavelet, and non-linear based techniques. In the proposed method, different features from each of three categories and from three autonomic signals, including electrocardiogram (ECG), finger pulse, and galvanic skin response (GSR), were extracted. To induce emotions in participants, validated emotional pieces of music were broadcast in four affective classes.
The results indicate the different patterns of responses into affective incentives in women and men. The differences were more noticeable in the features of pulse signal than those of the other signals. Among emotional classes, fear resulted in the highest rate of distinction between men and women emotional responses.
By the comprehensive evaluation of autonomic signals and different signal processing techniques, this study has tried to offer a new insight for better understanding of gender differences in emotional responses. In addition, it will help the researchers to adopt appropriate decisions in identifying efficient processing approach to deal with large amount of information achieved from signal analysis.