Contribution of Cosmetic Ingredients and Skin Care Textures to Emotions.

OBJECTIVE: Emotions play an important role in consumers' perception of a sensory experience. The objective of this work was to investigate the ability of basic skin care formulas (i.e., without interference of odor, color, packaging) and pillar ingredients (i.e., emollients and rheology modifiers) to elicit emotions. Another objective was to track, as claimed by neurocosmetics, the possible effect of formulas to trigger emotions from their direct biochemical effects on the skin.

METHODS: Standard methodologies were mobilized, combining subjective and behavioral parameters (i.e., verbatim, prosody and gesture). Sense & Story methodology based on a collection of metaphoric verbatim was conducted after an induction phase. In addition, an experimental electrophysiological real-time visualization method was tried as a first experience in cosmetics. Finally, the ability of formulations with emotional benefits to modulate the release of neuropeptides by sensory neurons was evaluated on a 3D human model (epidermis co-cultured with sensory neurons).

RESULTS: Skin care formulas were shown to play a role in emotional potential and the types of emotion generated, while changing one ingredient mostly acted on the intensity of the emotions. Verbatim provided contrasted answers depending on the protocol, highlighting the interest of non-verbal approaches to detect subtle effects. The in vitro model substantiated physiological effects of skin care formulas with emotional potential on human skin sensory neuron activity.

CONCLUSION: Emotions were impacted by the change in ingredients and were better captured through non-verbal methods.