Implicit communication of emotions via written text messages

Abstract

In this research I explored the communication of emotions in digital contexts. Specifically, how well are people able to implicitly communicate discrete emotional states with words alone, and what are some of the correlates of this ability? In two experiments, senders created text messages designed to communicate 22 specific emotions (e.g., disgust), without naming the emotion, and receivers were asked to identify the emotion being conveyed. Senders and receivers indicated their degree of confidence that they successfully conveyed/recognized each emotion, and all participants completed measures of empathy and perspective taking. Emotion recognition (50%) far exceeded chance (5%) when a multiple-choice procedure was used (Experiment 2) and was substantial (20%) when participants were required to generate their own emotion labels (Experiment 1). When receivers failed to recognize the specific emotion, their errors were almost always of the same valence as the conveyed emotion (85% in Experiment 1 and 91% in Experiment 2), a rate that far exceeded chance (50%). Even though implicit emotional communication was relatively successful, the confidence rating of senders (but not receivers) was unrelated to communicative success. Emotion communication was more successful when the receiver was female and higher in empathy and perspective taking. In contrast, the gender and empathy level of senders was unrelated to communicative success. Overall, these results demonstrate that people can, to varying degrees, communicate emotions in digital contexts with words only.