Emotions in virtual communication

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Emotions in virtual communication are expressed and understood in a variety of different ways from those in face-to-face interactions. Virtual communication continues to evolve as technological advances emerge that give way to new possibilities in computer-mediated communication (CMC). The lack of typical auditory and visual cues associated with human emotion gives rise to alternative forms of emotional expression that are cohesive with many different virtual environments. Some environments provide only space for text based communication, [1] where emotions can only be expressed using words. More newly developed forms of expression provide users the opportunity to portray their emotions using images.

Contents

In contrast to in-person interactions, emotions in virtual communication are restricted to the possibilities provided by the software being used. Likewise, different platforms and software benefit users with individual advantages that are specific to each virtual environment. The emergence of emoticons allows for the employment of nonverbal cues [2] in computer mediated communication. Ongoing research in this area investigates how and when individuals display and interpret various emotions in virtual settings.

Expression

A smiley face might reassure the recipient of a message--or be interpreted as sarcasm. Emoticon.svg
A smiley face might reassure the recipient of a message—or be interpreted as sarcasm.

Text-based emotional expression first appeared through bulletin board systems (BBS), emails, internet-based chatrooms, instant messaging (IM), and social networks. [3] Without physically being able to interpret facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language, early internet users struggled to interpret emotional expressions. Like how Ancient Egyptians used hieroglyphics to record emotions through stories and history early chat room users created emotional language using punctuation marks and rearranging symbolic characters. [4] Adaptations such as emoticons were implemented for the purpose of expressing emotion and tone around 1872. [5] They produced inotations, and gestures that were effective in expressing emotion. Emotional experience has been found to elicit social sharing of emotional climates by processing emotional contagion, and conformity with group and social norms in recent studies. [6] Effectiveness of these text-based communication methods depends on factors such as the attitude and context between senders and receivers. [7]

Emojis

Emoji is a Japanese word meaning "picture letter", which is a pictorial symbol that represents something. Originating from Japanese designer Shigetaka Kurita the pixelated symbol is derived from the English word "emotion". [5] Emojis can express emotion by creating feelings, or concepts in text messages and other electronic communication. Emojis including facial expressions, gestures, common objects, places and types of weather, and animals. [8] In emotional communication, emojis do not perfectly mirror non-verbal signs in face-to-face communication. [8]

AI

AI in virtual communication is referred to as affective computing (emotion AI). Developing around 1995, emotion AI decodes facial expressions, analyzes voice patterns and monitors eye movements and more to interpret and produce human emotional signals in text, audio, video formats. [9] [10] Emotional AI has the goal of creating human-like interactions in digital atmospheres to improve the overall quality of virtual communication. Proven very effective in emotional expression studies from 2020 show that computer technology has advanced enough that a positive congruent response by a virtual agent can overcome the effect of believing that the agent is a computer program. We can thus achieve effective human–virtual agent communication. [11]

Interpretation

One of the reasons that emails that are intended to be positive may come across as more neutral is that the process of email itself tends to be less stimulating than face-to-face communication. [12] Since many people tend to associate emails with work-related matters, they come to expect less positive affect to be displayed in emails. [13] Furthermore, the emotional ambiguity of email messages may actually lead to them to be interpreted as more negatively than they were intended. [14] Byron (2008) notes that emails from senders higher in status will be more likely be perceived as negative than emails received from people who are lower in status. [14]

Sexting

Sexting is defined as the exchange of intimate messages, images, and/or videos digitally. Often linked with negative outcomes, such as an increase in depression, anxiety or cyberbullying, sexting occurs in approximately 11% of the adolescent population. [15] Despite these native associations, sexting has also been shown to have positive effects on sexual relief and body image reinforcement when done with an established partner. [16] Sexting in virtual communication acts as an avenue for sexual pleasure, and has been shown to enhance the sexual aspects of relationships, despite primarily occurring in adolescents. [16]

Controversies

The lack of social cues in CMC has been found to have a depersonalizing effect. [17] Additionally, there can be greater anonymity or perceptions of anonymity in virtual communication. This combination of anonymous and social detached communication has been shown to increase the likelihood of flaming, or angry and hostile language as a result of uninhibited behavior. [18] [19] These hostile attacks [18] are more often seen online than in face-to-face communication and emotional expression.  

Computer mediated communication may also result in increased instances of misinterpreting emotion and intentions. Kruger, Epley, Parker, and Ng (2005) found that individuals overestimate both their ability to clearly relay and interpret emotions via email. [20] They attribute this inability to relay emotions effectively to others over CMC to a combination of egocentrism and a lack of paralinguistic cues including gestures, emphasis, and intonations.

Given the permanent and potentially public nature of virtual communication, it is much more likely that unintended parties will view and interpret messages as opposed face-to-face communication, which is fleeting. It has been found that when third parties view virtual communications, these parties may interpret interactions as contentious disputes. [18] This can create conflict in situations where the participating individuals did not intend there to be any.

Increased emotional cues allow for better detection of negative affect, and greater displays of positive affect to counter any negative emotions. Immediacy of feedback relates to how quickly messages are transmitted via a particular communication medium, and the expectation for which they will be responded. [21] For example, instant messaging has a higher degree of immediacy of feedback [22] than email because instant messaging tends to result in much more synchronous communication than email. Immediacy of feedback allows individuals to detect and address frustration and other negative emotions more quickly.  

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emoticon</span> Pictorial representation of a facial expression using punctuation marks, numbers and letters

An emoticon, short for emotion icon, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers and letters—to express a person's feelings, mood or reaction, without needing to describe it in detail.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emotion</span> Conscious subjective experience of humans

Emotions are physical and mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is no scientific consensus on a definition. Emotions are often intertwined with mood, temperament, personality, disposition, or creativity.

Flaming, also known as roasting, is the act of posting insults, often including profanity or other offensive language, on the internet. Flaming is distinct from trolling, which is the act of someone causing discord online or in person. Flaming emerges from the anonymity that Internet forums provide for users which allows them to act more aggressively. Anonymity can lead to disinhibition, which results in the swearing, offensive, and hostile language characteristic of flaming. Lack of social cues, less accountability of face-to-face communications, textual mediation, and deindividualization are also likely factors. Deliberate flaming is carried out by individuals known as flamers, which are specifically motivated to incite flaming. These users specialize in flaming and target specific aspects of a controversial conversation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Affective computing</span> Area of research in computer science aiming to understand the emotional state of users

Affective computing is the study and development of systems and devices that can recognize, interpret, process, and simulate human affects. It is an interdisciplinary field spanning computer science, psychology, and cognitive science. While some core ideas in the field may be traced as far back as to early philosophical inquiries into emotion, the more modern branch of computer science originated with Rosalind Picard's 1995 paper on affective computing and her book Affective Computing published by MIT Press. One of the motivations for the research is the ability to give machines emotional intelligence, including to simulate empathy. The machine should interpret the emotional state of humans and adapt its behavior to them, giving an appropriate response to those emotions.

Facial expression is the motion and positioning of the muscles beneath the skin of the face. These movements convey the emotional state of an individual to observers and are a form of nonverbal communication. They are a primary means of conveying social information between humans, but they also occur in most other mammals and some other animal species.

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is defined as any human communication that occurs through the use of two or more electronic devices. While the term has traditionally referred to those communications that occur via computer-mediated formats, it has also been applied to other forms of text-based interaction such as text messaging. Research on CMC focuses largely on the social effects of different computer-supported communication technologies. Many recent studies involve Internet-based social networking supported by social software.

Virtual sex is sexual activity where two or more people gather together via some form of communications equipment to arouse each other, often by the means of transmitting sexually explicit messages. Virtual sex describes the phenomenon, no matter the communications equipment used.

Unconsciouscommunication is the subtle, unintentional, unconscious cues that provide information to another individual. It can be verbal or it can be non-verbal. Some psychologists instead use the term honest signals because such cues are involuntary behaviors that often convey emotion whereas body language can be controlled. Many decisions are based on unconscious communication, which is interpreted and created in the right hemisphere of the brain. The right hemisphere is dominant in perceiving and expressing body language, facial expressions, verbal cues, and other indications that have to do with emotion but it does not exclusively deal with the unconscious.

Media richness theory (MRT), sometimes referred to as information richness theory, is a framework used to describe a communication medium's ability to reproduce the information sent over it. It was introduced by Richard L. Daft and Robert H. Lengel in 1986 as an extension of information processing theory. MRT is used to rank and evaluate the richness of certain communication media, such as phone calls, video conferencing, and email. For example, a phone call cannot reproduce visual social cues such as gestures which makes it a less rich communication media than video conferencing, which affords the transmission of gestures and body language. Based on contingency theory and information processing theory, MRT theorizes that richer, personal communication media are generally more effective for communicating equivocal issues in contrast with leaner, less rich media.

Expectancy violations theory (EVT) is a theory of communication that analyzes how individuals respond to unanticipated violations of social norms and expectations. The theory was proposed by Judee K. Burgoon in the late 1970s and continued through the 1980s and 1990s as "nonverbal expectancy violations theory", based on Burgoon's research studying proxemics. Burgoon's work initially analyzed individuals' allowances and expectations of personal distance and how responses to personal distance violations were influenced by the level of liking and relationship to the violators. The theory was later changed to its current name when other researchers began to focus on violations of social behavior expectations beyond nonverbal communication.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social information processing (theory)</span> Theory of human interactions

Social information processing theory, also known as SIP, is a psychological and sociological theory originally developed by Salancik and Pfeffer in 1978. This theory explores how individuals make decisions and form attitudes in a social context, often focusing on the workplace. It suggests that people rely heavily on the social information available to them in their environments, including input from colleagues and peers, to shape their attitudes, behaviors, and perceptions.

The hyperpersonal model is a model of interpersonal communication that suggests computer-mediated communication (CMC) can become hyperpersonal because it "exceeds [face-to-face] interaction", thus affording message senders a host of communicative advantages over traditional face-to-face (FtF) interaction. The hyperpersonal model demonstrates how individuals communicate uniquely, while representing themselves to others, how others interpret them, and how the interactions create a reciprocal spiral of FtF communication. Compared to ordinary FtF situations, a hyperpersonal message sender has a greater ability to strategically develop and edit self-presentation, enabling a selective and optimized presentation of one's self to others.

Media naturalness theory is also known as the psychobiological model. The theory was developed by Ned Kock and attempts to apply Darwinian evolutionary principles to suggest which types of computer-mediated communication will best fit innate human communication capabilities. Media naturalness theory argues that natural selection has resulted in face-to-face communication becoming the most effective way for two people to exchange information.

Social presence theory explores how the "sense of being with another" is influenced by digital interfaces in human-computer interactions. Developed from the foundations of interpersonal communication and symbolic interactionism, social presence theory was first formally introduced by John Short, Ederyn Williams, and Bruce Christie in The Social Psychology of Telecommunications. Research on social presence theory has recently developed to examine the efficacy of telecommunications media, including SNS communications. The theory notes that computer-based communication is lower in social presence than face-to-face communication, but different computer-based communications can affect the levels of social presence between communicators and receivers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Facial electromyography</span> Electromyography technique that measures muscle activity of the face

Facial electromyography (fEMG) refers to an electromyography (EMG) technique that measures muscle activity by detecting and amplifying the tiny electrical impulses that are generated by muscle fibers when they contract.

Affective haptics is an area of research which focuses on the study and design of devices and systems that can elicit, enhance, or influence the emotional state of a human by means of sense of touch. The research field is originated with the Dzmitry Tsetserukou and Alena Neviarouskaya papers on affective haptics and real-time communication system with rich emotional and haptic channels. Driven by the motivation to enhance social interactivity and emotionally immersive experience of users of real-time messaging, virtual, augmented realities, the idea of reinforcing (intensifying) own feelings and reproducing (simulating) the emotions felt by the partner was proposed. Four basic haptic (tactile) channels governing our emotions can be distinguished:

  1. physiological changes
  2. physical stimulation
  3. social touch
  4. emotional haptic design.

Social cues are verbal or non-verbal signals expressed through the face, body, voice, motion and guide conversations as well as other social interactions by influencing our impressions of and responses to others. These percepts are important communicative tools as they convey important social and contextual information and therefore facilitate social understanding.

Joseph B. Walther is the Mark and Susan Bertelsen Presidential Chair in Technology and Society and the Director of the Center for Information Technology & Society at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research focuses on social and interpersonal dynamics of computer-mediated communication, in groups, personal relationships, organizational and educational settings. He is noted for creating social information processing theory in 1992 and the hyperpersonal model in 1996.

Emotion perception refers to the capacities and abilities of recognizing and identifying emotions in others, in addition to biological and physiological processes involved. Emotions are typically viewed as having three components: subjective experience, physical changes, and cognitive appraisal; emotion perception is the ability to make accurate decisions about another's subjective experience by interpreting their physical changes through sensory systems responsible for converting these observed changes into mental representations. The ability to perceive emotion is believed to be both innate and subject to environmental influence and is also a critical component in social interactions. How emotion is experienced and interpreted depends on how it is perceived. Likewise, how emotion is perceived is dependent on past experiences and interpretations. Emotion can be accurately perceived in humans. Emotions can be perceived visually, audibly, through smell and also through bodily sensations and this process is believed to be different from the perception of non-emotional material.

The study of the relationship between gender and emotional expression is the study of the differences between men and women in behavior that expresses emotions. These differences in emotional expression may be primarily due to cultural expectations of femininity and masculinity.

References

  1. ↑ Hancock, Jeffrey T.; Landrigan, Christopher; Silver, Courtney (2007-04-29). "Expressing emotion in text-based communication". Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. CHI '07. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 929–932. doi:10.1145/1240624.1240764. ISBN   978-1-59593-593-9.
  2. ↑ Krohn, Franklin B. (October 2004). "A Generational Approach to Using Emoticons as Nonverbal Communication". Journal of Technical Writing and Communication. 34 (4): 321–328. doi:10.2190/9EQH-DE81-CWG1-QLL9. ISSN   0047-2816.
  3. ↑ Lake, Matt (2009-07-15). "Timeline: The evolution of online communities". Computerworld. Retrieved 2023-11-20.
  4. ↑ Wilson, Emily (2022-09-30). "The invention of emojis: A brief history". Galvanize. Retrieved 2023-11-20.
  5. 1 2 Bai, Qiyu; Dan, Qi; Mu, Zhe; Yang, Maokun (2019-10-15). "A Systematic Review of Emoji: Current Research and Future Perspectives". Frontiers in Psychology. 10: 2221. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02221 . ISSN   1664-1078. PMC   6803511 . PMID   31681068.
  6. ↑ Garcia, David; Kappas, Arvid; Küster, Dennis; Schweitzer, Frank (2016-08-10). "The dynamics of emotions in online interaction". Royal Society Open Science. 3 (8): 160059. doi:10.1098/rsos.160059. ISSN   2054-5703. PMC   5108936 . PMID   27853586.
  7. ↑ Bai, Qiyu; Dan, Qi; Mu, Zhe; Yang, Maokun (2019). "A Systematic Review of Emoji: Current Research and Future Perspectives". Frontiers in Psychology. 10. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02221 . ISSN   1664-1078. PMC   6803511 .
  8. 1 2 Li, Li; Yang, Yue (2018-09-15). "Pragmatic functions of emoji in internet-based communication---a corpus-based study". Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education. 3 (1): 16. doi: 10.1186/s40862-018-0057-z . ISSN   2363-5169.
  9. ↑ Purdy, Mark; Zealley, John; Maseli, Omaro (2019-11-18). "The Risks of Using AI to Interpret Human Emotions". Harvard Business Review. ISSN   0017-8012 . Retrieved 2023-11-20.
  10. ↑ "Emotion AI, explained | MIT Sloan". mitsloan.mit.edu. 2023-11-16. Retrieved 2023-11-20.
  11. ↑ Numata, Takashi; Sato, Hiroki; Asa, Yasuhiro; Koike, Takahiko; Miyata, Kohei; Nakagawa, Eri; Sumiya, Motofumi; Sadato, Norihiro (2020-04-06). "Achieving affective human–virtual agent communication by enabling virtual agents to imitate positive expressions". Scientific Reports. 10 (1): 5977. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-62870-7 . ISSN   2045-2322. PMC   7136238 .
  12. ↑ Kock, N. (2005). "Media richness or media naturalness? The evolution of our biological communication apparatus and its influence on our behavior toward e-communication tools". Professional Communication, IEEE Transactions on 48(2): 117-130.
  13. ↑ Lea, M. and Spears, R. (1991). "Computer-mediated communication, de-individuation and group decision-making." International Journal of Man-Machine Studies 34(2): 283-301.
  14. 1 2 Byron, K. (2008). "Carrying too heavy a load? The communication and miscommunication of emotion by email" [ permanent dead link ]. Academy of Management Review 33(2): 309.
  15. ↑ Hu, Y., Clancy, E. M., & Klettke, B. (2023). Longitudinal Sexting Research: A Systematic Review. Psych, 5(2), 526. https://doi.org/10.3390/psych5020035
  16. 1 2 Currin, J. M. (2022). Linking Sexting Expectancies with Motivations to Sext. European Journal of Investigation in Health, Psychology and Education, 12(2), 209. https://doi.org/10.3390/ejihpe12020016
  17. ↑ Siegel, J., Dubrovsky, V., Kiesler, S., and McGuire, T. (1986). "Group processes in computer-mediated communication." Organizational behavior and human decision processes 37(2): 157-187.
  18. 1 2 3 Alonzo, Mei; Aiken, Milam (2004-01-01). "Flaming in electronic communication". Decision Support Systems. 36 (3): 205–213. doi:10.1016/S0167-9236(02)00190-2. ISSN   0167-9236.
  19. ↑ Moor, P. J., Heuvelman A., and Verleur, R. (2010). "Flaming on youtube". Computers in Human Behavior 26(6): 1536-1546.
  20. ↑ Kruger, J., Epley, N., Parker, J. and Ng, Z. W. (2005). "Egocentrism over e-mail: can we communicate as well as we think?"1 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 89(6): 925
  21. ↑ Dennis, A. R. and Valacich, J. S. (1999). Rethinking media richness: Towards a theory of media synchronicity. System Sciences, 1999. HICSS-32. Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Hawaii International Conference on, IEEE.
  22. ↑ "Chinedu Eugenia Anumudu et al., "A Review on the Efficacy of Immediacy Factors towards Achieving Communication Satisfaction via Email among Academic Staff," Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, May 2018" (PDF).
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