Objective measurement of positive emotions in students as part of safety assessment of educational environment

Abstract

We propose a new procedure for objective measurement of positive emotion in students in various situations of educational environment. We introduce the concept of “true emotions” – those causing changes in body functional state and affecting its smell. We argue that emotionally safe learning environment should provide a genuine emergence of positive emotions and reduce the likelihood of genuine negative emotions. We provide data of experimental research of genuine positive emotions in three main situations of student life: training classes (lecture), imaginary situations of joy (trainings, student life activities), real-life situations outside the school. It is shown that in the 0.4–0.5% of imaginary situations and real-life situations, students’ functional state changes, thus giving rise to alcohol-like substances exhaling. We describe these situations (food enjoying, meeting with someone you love, pain control, art perception, etc.). We point out that in the control series of measurements, when the students were in a neutral functional state (on a lecture), no alcohol-like substance in the breath were observed.

Keywords

• educational environment
• safety
• positive emotions
• joy
• pleasure
• smell
• functional state
• alcohol in breath