Emotion Expression under Stress in Instant Messaging

Abstract

In spite of rapid growth of text-based instant messaging (IM) in very diverse settings, emotion expression in IM has received limited empirical scrutiny, especially outside of casual settings. The main focus of this study is how stress and personality traits affect verbal and nonverbal cues used in IM to express emotions during a simulated team decision-making task. This exploratory study analyzed a preexisting set of 168 chat logs from an experiment on team decision making under stress. Results of the analysis revealed significant differences in the frequency of several verbal and nonverbal cues as a result of manipulations of mood (happy and sad) and stress (time pressure). In addition, several correlations were found between cue types and three personality traits: extraversion, openness to experience, and locus of control. Understanding how users express emotions in IM helps researchers and designers to support the user’s emotional needs, resulting in the improvement of emotional communication strategies in IM.