To email or not to email
Abstract
Lean asynchronous computer mediated communication is often considered poor for communicating emotion, yet individuals continue to use it for business, personal, and even romantic communication. We used a lab experiment to investigate the influence of media (email and voicemail) and task type (romantic and utilitarian) on both the psychophysiological responses of senders and the content of the resulting messages. Message senders had more arousing physiological responses when sending emails than when leaving voicemails. An interaction exists between media and task such that the content of romantic email messages was more positive than romantic voicemails; while the opposite was true for utilitarian tasks. Thus the choice of media triggers different emotional responses in the sender and leads to different message content. We examined media use for utilitarian and romantic tasks using psychophysiology.Media and task change sender's emotions and the emotional content of messages.Romantic emails were the most positive and romantic voicemails the least positive.Composing email causes greater physiological arousal.Senders compensate for the limitations of email when sending romantic messages.
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- To email or not to email
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Published: 01 January 2016
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