Sentics: The Scientific study of Emotions

Dr. Manfred Clynes invented a device, a finger pressure sensor called the sentograph. When he started studies with the device, he obtained some very enlightening results.

Dr. Clynes discovered that when people have emotional experience, their nervous system always responds in a characteristic way which is measurable. This means that everyone has a common frame reference, or common experience given the same stimuli.

Dr. Clynes measured the physiological brainwave responses to word cues for specific emotions. Dr. Clynes confirmed that we all experience basic emotions internally in the same way regardless of nationality, creed, religion, etc. When studying the Essentic Forms in other languages, the keywords had to be translated very carefully to find and use words that carried equal emotional weight. When the right words were determined, the Essentic Form Patterns were consistently reproduced.

The measured neurological emotional responses were essentially equal in all humans tested.

The Essentic Forms Patterns

During the studies, Dr. Clynes was able to resolve at least 20 different emotional states, or Essentic Forms Patterns including: anger, hate, grief, love, sex, joy, reverence, and no-emotion. Others essentic forms studied included hope, courage, guilt, and shame. There are probably a lot more, but sometimes they are combinations of emotions, like envy.

This allowed Dr. Clynes to precisely map different physiological and behavior patterns based on the particular evoked emotion.

Another surprising result of the study is that there really wasn't a significant measurable difference between men and women, as both sexes were able to experience all emotional Essentic Forms. It was possible to measure the ease of expression of various Essentic Forms which lead the discovery that people have on average more difficulty with Joy than Love than Hate. Anger and Grief were the least difficult Essentic Forms to reproduce.