Assessing Emotional Affordance of the Brand Image and Foreign Image Based on the Emotiv Epoc+ Using Case Studies from Dubai

This paper is concerned with investigating the effect of contemporary architectural styles on the unconscious human emotion. In particular, it looks at the traditional visual context versus the international visual context within the built environment. United Arab Emirates (UAE) is one of the countries that has applied little restrictions on the adoption of the architectural styles, the case that makes it an appropriate place to conduct this kind of studies. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the emotional affordance of a number of participants when they observe a visual context of a 'Brand Image' and compare it with another visual context of 'Foreign Image', both were selected from the city of Dubai. A physiological method used to examine the emotional quality of the studied visual contexts, it depends on EMOTIV algorithm which translates the electrical waves extracted from the brain cortex into six brain performance metrics. These metrics include: Stress; Engagement; Interest; Focus; Excitement; Relaxation. A sample of 29 subjects of laypeople participated in this study, including locals and nonlocals (aged 19-45) the participants were divided into three groups; Al Ain locals, northern emirates locals, and nonlocals. The results showed that the brand image provides the observers with better emotional quality than the foreign image for local participants from Al Ain and nonlocal participants, while the foreign image provided no statistical significance for the three groups. The findings of this study contribute to the emotional studies in the field of meaning in architecture. It also validates the effectiveness of the physiological method to investigate the emotional responses to architectural styles. The outcomes of this study supported that designing new buildings based on local traditional architecture is meaningful and contributes to the wellbeing of the local society.