Emotalizer: Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow Divorce

“The Emotalizer asks respondents to rate news stories on both pleasure and activation.”

The Emotalizer asks respondents to rate news stories on both pleasure and activation. By doing this we can plot them amongst the known emotions on the affective circumplex, a general framework that can be used to characterise any core emotion on these two aspects: activation (how strong it is) and pleasure (how positive it is). The end of Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow’s ten year marriage sits in the slightly negative and slightly deactivated space on the circumplex. This shows that, though people are somewhat saddened by the news they are generally disengaged with the topic. When asked the main emotions that they were feeling, the most common responses were indifference, boredom and sadness. We can continue to add further news events onto the circumplex and see how they relate.