Emotions are an intricate part of all human interactions, whether it is in the workplace, at home, at a sporting event, when shopping, when exposed to marketing efforts, or in many other situations. Every human response is a combination of rational and emotional processing. Tapping into and understanding emotions allow researchers to better understand why people believe and act in certain ways by modeling the emotions that are driving these behaviors. For example, in marketing, emotional response data can be linked to behavioral, demographic, lifestyle and product usage data to develop strategies and more comprehensive target market profiles. More importantly, emotional response data can provide valuable insight into consumer behaviors, such as purchase intentions.

Many traditional methodologies focus more heavily on measuring the rational component of the response. Tapping into human emotional responses provides valuable insight that is not readily attained through common research methods. Accurately assessing a fleeting emotional response is not easy or practical. Methods such as EKG may be reliable but not feasible in many settings, for example with children or in large studies with many respondents and multiple stimuli.

There are different methods for assessing emotional reactions. The most common approach utilizes semantic differential scales that consist of pairs of pre-calibrated emotion denoting adjectives. Researchers have discovered many inherent problems with the verbal based semantic differential. Besides being cumbersome, these types of measurements create verbal biases that distort immediate reactions. Researchers have adopted non-verbal pictorial methods, such as the measure ADSAM® utilizes, that reliably assess human emotions and are not only easy to administer but also very accurate.