Valence and intensity
Intensity and tone are two separate dimensions. Emotional Engagement measures how strong the reaction is, whatever its tone. Valence measures whether the tone is positive or negative. Neither is an input to the other.
What it is
Every emotional reaction has two separate qualities:
- Intensity: how strongly people react. Foresight reports it as Emotional Engagement.
- Tone: whether the reaction feels pleasant or unpleasant. Foresight reports it as Valence.
Think of a horror trailer and a comedy sketch. Both can provoke a strong reaction (high intensity), but one is unpleasant and the other pleasant (opposite tone). A calm, cosy coffee ad can be pleasant but quiet (positive tone, low intensity).
What feeds it
Both scores come from the same eight predicted emotions in the Emotional Profile. They read those emotions in two different ways.
How it's built
Each of the eight emotions has a fixed position on two axes: how pleasant it is and how activating it is. Foresight's team set these positions based on Russell's circumplex model of affect, a standard map of emotions in psychology. They are the same for every creative.
Emotional Engagement (intensity). Each emotion counts according to how activating it is. Higher-energy emotions such as fear and excitement count more than calmer ones such as contentment and sadness. Their weighted strengths are combined into one intensity value, which is then positioned against Foresight's reference creatives. Whether an emotion is positive or negative plays no role.
Valence (tone). Each emotion pushes the tone up or down: amusement, awe, contentment and excitement push it up; anger, disgust, fear and sadness push it down. Stronger emotions move it further. Valence describes your creative's own tone; it is not a ranking against other creatives.
Valence is not an input to Emotional Engagement, and Engagement is not an input to Valence; they read the same eight emotions in two different ways. A different emotion profile can therefore change both.
Scale and direction
How strong the predicted emotional reaction is, whatever its tone, relative to Foresight's reference creatives.
Valence runs from −100 (clearly negative) through 0 (neutral or balanced) to +100 (clearly positive). Higher means a more positive tone; that is "better" only if a positive tone is your goal. The marker on the Valence bar shows the average of your selected comparison group; that average is often not 0, so a valence just above 0 can still sit below that marker. If no comparison group is selected, or for videos and platform-framed images, the score is still computed but no comparison value is shown.
Only Emotional Engagement feeds the E-Score. The E-Score combines Emotional Engagement and Attention, so a high E-Score needs strength on both. Valence and the individual emotions are not inputs, so a negative tone never lowers the E-Score.
Image vs video
Both scores use the same method for images and videos. For a video, the overall values describe the average reaction across all frames. The Scenes view shows Emotional Engagement and Valence per scene, and the emotion timeline shows how the emotions behind them move over time.