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CYBEREMOTIONS in the laboratory

Dennis Küster Arvid Kappas 1

1. Jacobs University Bremen, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Campus Ring 1, Bremen 28759, Germany

Abstract

Building models of how emotions spread over the Internet requires certain assumptions what actually happens within the nodes that compose a network: Individuals. Does reading an emotional post of another person who is not known to the reader create emotions? Are the emotions experienced by sender vs. receiver the same, or can they be complementary? One of the assumptions of appraisal theory is that the elicitation of emotions is dependent on personal relevance – does that mean that propagation of emotions online requires shared personal relevance?

In our laboratory we have created several experimental situations that provide a microscopic view on some of the affective processes that are associated with reading and writing contents on the Internet either in asynchronous contexts, such as forums, or synchronous contexts, such as chats. We have assessed subjective experience, facial responses, and physiological activation associated with the autonomic nervous system. Our findings support the notion that emotions can travel from person to person and seem to be moderated by psychological constructs, such as relevance or social relationships, but they do not depend on them.

 

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Related papers

Presentation: Poster at CyberEmotions conference, by Arvid Kappas
See On-line Journal of CyberEmotions conference

Submitted: 2012-12-23 12:23
Revised:   2012-12-23 12:23