Computer-mediated communication of emotions: A lens model approach

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is one of the most widely utilized communication techniques in the business world. Although widely used, little is known about the effectiveness of communicating affective information, emotion in particular, through CMC. Most CMC research has investigated communication of cognitive information, however, only a few studies partially incorporate affects in their analyses. As a result, a primary objective of this dissertation is to investigate the following research questions: (1) Can CMC transfer affective information? (2) To what extent does CIVIC transfer affective information?; Integrating relevant literature from psychology as well as communication research, this dissertation proposed a conceptual model based on a modified version of Brunswik's lens model. The research model and hypotheses were developed to guide the empirical tests of the cue utilization, i.e, detecting a message sender's emotional intentions from email messages.; A total of 225 student subjects participated in a 2 x 3 x 3 (with control groups) laboratory experiment. The results indicated that affective information could be transferred through CMC. In particular, message receivers were able to detect the sender's emotion by (1) associating the message content with positive or negative emotions, (2) using emotion cues such as emotion words, linguistic markers, and paralinguistic cues, and (3) combining these two techniques. The results further indicated that message receivers indicated a higher degree of senders' emotions when the number of emotion cues in the message increased.; The results from this study provide some useful information for practitioners as well as for researchers. For practitioners, this study suggests that communicating emotions through electronic mediums requires careful selections of emotion cues that will be included in the message. For researchers, this study presents a research model that may be used as a foundation for future research in this area. Directions for future research include further examinations of variables that may affects the CMC of emotions. The current study could also be extended to investigate the CMC of emotions across different types of subjects, communication technology, and time frame.