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The physiological correlates of emotional cues in technology mediated communication
Dissertation   Open access

The physiological correlates of emotional cues in technology mediated communication

Kelly Bumgarner
Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.), Drexel University
Jun 2024
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/00010557
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Abstract

Interpersonal communication--Study and teaching Affect (Psychology) Telematics Emotions Physiology
Remote work and virtual environments require leaders to communicate and lead employees they do not physically see. This poses a need to better understand how to communicate effectively through technology mediated means. Traditional communication environments rely on affect to influence others. This study seeks to address the gap in research to understand how technology mediated communication impacts the use of affect to influence others. Specifically, the goal is to understand the impact of using emotion cues in technology mediated communication on the affective state of the receiver, the receiver's perception of the sender's affective state, and how it impacts the receiver's task response. To address these questions, a 2x2x2 lab study was conducted to measure the response towards stimuli written as a chat message. The independent variables studied were affect (happy/sad), emotion cue frequency (high/low), and formality (formal/informal). The dependent variables included time to read and respond to the stimuli, self-rated affect, perceived sender affect, delta heart rate, and the behavior of emotion cues used in written responses. While additional physiological correlates were gathered, only delta heart rate was used to examine the support for the predictions from the research model. After reading negative messages, the participants took longer to respond as compared to positive messages. The findings support that using a low number of emotion cues with an informal tone or a high number of emotion cues with a formal tone is likely to cause emotion mirroring. Looking specifically at written behavior, the study found that using emotional cues in writing did cause the receivers of the communication to respond using emotional cues in their writing. Overall, this study found support for using emotional cues in technology mediated communication that will influence the receiver's behavior. Further studies can address the limitations of this lab study and look at additional technology mediated communication modes.

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