Nobember 12, 2016
Popular wisdom has long held that text and email, with their lack of nonverbal features, are less than ideal for expressing emotion. However, Professor Alan R. Dennis, the John T. Chambers Chair of Internet Systems in the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, together with co-author Taylor M. Wells, recently published research that challenges this assumption. The researchers tested the psychophysiological responses of 72 college-age participants as they composed four messages, two via email and two via voicemail. The tasks were either utilitarian (a message coordinating a group project or giving feedback to a friend about a well-crafted resume) or romantic (expressing feelings for an individual he or she was interested in romantically) in nature.
Dennis and Wells found that communicating through email induced different emotional responses from voicemail, as well as more arousing psychophysiological responses, regardless of the task. Moreover, the romantic email used stronger and more thoughtful language than the romantic voicemails, suggesting the participants naturally adapted to the limitations of the email medium and compensated for its lack of cues. Taken together, these results suggest that the medium in which a message is sent influences the sender’s physiology and impacts what he or she chooses to communicate.
“The bottom line is that email is much better when you want to convey some information that you want someone to think about,” explained Dennis to the IUB Newsroom.
Dennis’s work on romantic emails has been featured in over 200 news stories, including the Huffington Post and USA Today.
You can read about Professor Dennis’s research here:
Wells, T. M., & Dennis, A. R. (2016). To email or not to email: The impact of media on psychophysiological responses and emotional content in utilitarian and romantic communication. Computers in Human Behavior, 54, 1-9.