Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Zooming in: Studying Collective Emotions with Interactive Affective Systems

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Cyberemotions

Part of the book series: Understanding Complex Systems ((UCS))

Abstract

Computer-mediated communication between humans is at the center of the formation of collective emotions on the Internet. This chapter presents how interactive affective systems can be applied in order to study the role of emotion in online communication at the micro-scale, i.e. between individual users or between users and artificial communication partners. Specifically, we report on the effect of a simulated conversational partner’s affective profile, the use of fine-grained communication scenarios and social interaction context on changes in emotional states and expressed affect of users as well as their communication patterns. Based on these findings, we propose applications for such systems focused on supporting different e-communities with real-time information and discuss ethical implications of such systems.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 99.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Participants were led to believe that they communicate with a dialog system, while responses are actually provided by a human operator. In the presented experiments, the operator adhered to general guidelines stating the objectives that needed to be achieved during the interactions. These included: providing realistic and coherent responses to the users’ utterances and avoiding utterances that demonstrate an unusual sense of humor or eloquence. Before initiating the experiments, the operator conducted several rounds of pre-test interactions which helped to test and assure a consistency of his communication patterns, in line with the general instructions.

  2. 2.

    In all figures, data are normalized by the number of utterances emitted by a user in a given interaction. Asterisks indicate significant differences at p < 0.05. Error bars indicate ±1 standard error.

  3. 3.

    The analysed data-set included 2.5 million posts acquired from EFNET IRC chats: http://www.efnet.org, covering a range of topics including music, casual chats, business, sports, politics, computers, operating systems and specific computer programs.

  4. 4.

    Analysis conducted on extensive data-sets from Ubuntu IRC channels: http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/.

  5. 5.

    In an absence of other, higher level design principles.

References

  • Altman, I., Taylor, D.: Social Penetration: The Development of Interpersonal Relationships. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York (1973)

    Google Scholar 

  • Bates, J.: The role of emotion is believable agents. Commun. ACM 37 (7), 122–125 (1994). doi:10.1145/176789.176803

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chmiel, A., Sienkiewicz, J., Thelwall, M., Paltoglou, G., Buckley, K., Kappas, A., Hołyst, J.A.: Collective emotions online and their influence on community life. PLoS ONE 6 (7), e22207 (2011a). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0022207

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  • Chmiel, A., Sobkowicz, P., Sienkiewicz, J., Paltoglou, G., Buckley, K., Thelwall, M., Hołyst, J.A.: Negative emotions boost user activity at BBC forum. Physica A 390 (16), 2936–2944 (2011b) doi:10.1016/j.physa.2011.03.040

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  • Ellsworth, P.C., Scherer, K.R.: Appraisal processes in emotion. In: Davidson, R.J., Scherer, K.R., Goldsmith, H.H. (eds.) Handbook Of Affective Sciences, pp. 572–595. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  • Forgas, J.P.: Affective influences on self-disclosure: mood effects on the intimacy and reciprocity of disclosing personal information. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 100 (3), 449–461 (2011) doi:10.1037/a0021129

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Frijda, N.H.: The Laws of Emotion. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, Mahwah (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  • Garas, A., Garcia, D., Skowron, M., Schweitzer, F.: Emotional persistence in online chatting communities. Sci. Rep. 2, 402 (2012). doi:10.1038/srep00402

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  • Garcia, D., Schweitzer, F.: Emotions in product reviews – empirics and models. In: Proceedings of 2011 IEEE International Conference on Privacy, Security, Risk, and Trust, and IEEE International Conference on Social Computing, PASSAT/SocialCom, pp. 483–488 (2011). doi:10.1109/PASSAT/SocialCom.2011.219

    Google Scholar 

  • Gligorijević, V., Skowron, M., Tadić, B.: Evolving topology on the network of online chats. Technical Report TR-2012-14, Österreichisches Forschungsinstitut für Artificial Intelligence, Wien (2012a)

    Google Scholar 

  • Gligorijević, V., Skowron, M., Tadić, B.: Structure and stability of online chat networks built on emotion-carrying links. Physica A 392 (3), 538–543 (2013). doi:10.1016/j.physa.2012.10.003

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  • Gobron, S., Ahn, J., Silvestre, Q., Thalmann, D., Rank, S., Skowron, M., Paltoglou, G., Thelwall, M.: An interdisciplinary VR-architecture for 3D chatting with non-verbal communication. In: Coquillart, S., Steed, A., Welch, G. (eds.) JVRC11: Joint Virtual Reality Conference of EGVE - EuroVR, pp. 87–94. Eurographics Association (2011). doi:10.2312/EGVE/JVRC11/087-094

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamilton, W.: The genetical evolution of social behaviour. J. Theor. Biol. 7 (1), 1–16 (1964). doi:0.1016/0022-5193(64)90038-4

    Google Scholar 

  • Hatfield, M., Cacioppo, J., Rapson, R.: Emotional Contagion. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1994)

    Google Scholar 

  • Hillmann, R., Trier, M.: Sentiment polarization and balance among users in online social networks. In: Joshi, K.D., Yoo, Y. (eds.) Proceedings of the 18th Americas Conference on Information Systems AMCIS 2012, Seattle, WA, p. 10 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  • Holm, S.: A simple sequentially rejective multiple test procedure. Scand. J. Stat. 6 (2), 65–70 (1979)

    MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Hurst, H.: Long-term storage capacity of reservoirs. Trans. Am. Soc. Civ. Eng. 116, 770–799 (1951)

    Google Scholar 

  • Kappas, A., Küster, D., Theunis, M., Tsankova, E.: Cyberemotions: subjective and physiological responses to reading online discussion forums. Poster presented at the 50th Annual Meeting of the Society for Psychophysiological Research, Portland, Oregon, September 2010 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  • Kemper, T.: Predicting emotions from social relations. Soc. Psychol. Q. 54 (4), 330–342 (1991)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kuppens, P., Oravecz, Z., Tuerlinckx, F.: Feelings change: accounting for individual differences in the temporal dynamics of affect. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 99 (6), 1042–1060 (2010). doi:10.1037/a0020962

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Küster, D., Kappas, A.: Measuring emotions in individuals and Internet Communities. In: Benski, T., Fisher, E. (eds.) Internet and Emotions, pp. 48–64. Routledge, New York (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  • Küster, D., Kappas, A., Theunis, M., Tsankova, E.: Cyberemotions: subjective and physiological responses elicited by contributing to online discussion forums. Poster presented at the 51st Annual Meeting of the Society for Psychophysiological Research, Boston, MA, September 2011 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  • Lester, J.C., Converse, S.A., Kahler, S.E., Barlow, S.T., Stone, B.A., Bhogal, R.S.: The persona effect: affective impact of animated pedagogical agents. In: Pemberton, S. (ed.) CHI ’97 Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 359–366. ACM, New York (1997). doi:10.1145/258549.258797

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Levenson, R., Ruef, A.: Empathy: a psychological substrate. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 63 (2), 234–246 (1992) doi:10.1037/0022-3514.63.2.234

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Locke, K., Horowitz, L.: Satisfaction and interpersonal interactions as a function of similarity in level of dysphoria. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 58 (5), 823–831 (1990). doi:10.1037/0022-3514.58.5.823

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marsella, S., Gratch, J., Petta, P.: Computational models of emotion. In: A Blueprint for Affective Computing - A Sourcebook and Manual, pp. 21–46. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  • Mitrović, M., Tadić, B.: Patterns of emotional blogging and emergence of communities: agent-based model on bipartite networks (2011). http://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.5057

    Google Scholar 

  • Mitrović, M., Tadić, B.: Dynamics of bloggers’ communities: bipartite networks from empirical data and agent-based modeling. Physica A 391 (21), 5264–5278 (2012). doi:10.1016/j.physa.2012.06.004

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  • Novotny, H., Scott, P., Gibbons, M.: Mode 2’ revisited: the new production of knowledge - introduction. Minerva 41 (3), 179–194 (2003) doi:10.1023/A:1025505528250

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Paltoglou, G., Gobron, S., Skowron, M., Thelwall, M., Thalmann, D.: Sentiment analysis of informal textual communication in cyberspace. In: Proceedings of ENGAGE 2010. LNCS State-of-the-Art Survey, pp. 13–25. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  • Peng, C.K., Buldyrev, S.V., Havlin, S., Simons, M., Stanley, H.E., Goldberger, A.L.: Mosaic organization of DNA nucleotides. Phys. Rev. E 49 (2), 1685–1689 (1994). doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.49.1685

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  • Petta, P.: The role of emotions in a tractable architecture for situated cognisers. In: Trappl, R., Petta, P., Payr, S. (eds.) Emotions In Humans And Artifacts. pp. 251–288. MIT Press, Cambridge (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  • Prescott, T.: Sunny uplands or slippery slopes? the risks and benefits of using robots in care. In: Proceedings of UKRE Workshop on Robot Ethics (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  • Preston, S., Waal, F.: Empathy: its ultimate and proximal bases. Behav. Brain Sci. 25 (1), 1–20 (2002). doi:10.1017/S0140525X02000018

    Google Scholar 

  • Rank, S.: Docking agent-based simulation of collective emotion to equation-based models and interactive agents. In: McGraw, R., Imsand, E., Chinni, M.J. (eds.) Proceedings of the 2010 Spring Simulation Multiconference on - SpringSim’10, p. 6. Society for Computer Simulation International, San Diego (2010). doi:10.1145/1878537.1878544

    Google Scholar 

  • Rank, S., Skowron, M., Garcia, D.: Dyads to groups: modeling interactions with affective dialog systems. Int. J. Comput. Linguistics Res. 4 (1), 22–37 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  • Reeves, B., Nass, C.: The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media like Real People and Places. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  • Rimé, B.: Emotion elicits the social sharing of emotion: theory and empirical review. Emot. Rev. 1 (1), 60–85 (2009). doi:10.1177/1754073908097189

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Rosenblatt, A., Greenberg, J.: Examining the world of the depressed: do depressed people prefer others who are depressed. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 60 (4), 620–629 (1991). doi:10.1037/0022-3514.60.4.620

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rybski, D., Buldyrev, S.V., Havlin, S., Liljeros, F., Makse, H.A.: Scaling laws of human interaction activity. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 106 (31), 12640–12645 (2009). doi:10.1073/pnas.0902667106

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  • Schweitzer, F.: Brownian agents and active particles. Collective Dynamics in the Natural and Social Sciences. Springer Series in Synergetics, 1st edn. Springer, Berlin (2003). doi:10.1007/978-3-540-73845-9

    Google Scholar 

  • Schweitzer, F., Garcia, D.: An agent-based model of collective emotions in online communities. Eur. Phys. J. B 77 (4), 533–545 (2010). doi:10.1140/epjb/e2010-00292-1

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  • Skowron, M.: Affect listeners: Acquisition of affective states by means of conversational systems. In: Esposito, A., Cambell, N., Vogel, C., Hussain, A., Nijholt, A. (eds.) Development of Multimodal Interfaces—Active Listening and Synchrony: Development of Multimodal Interfaces: Active Listening and Synchrony. Lecture notes in computer science, vol. 5967, pp. 169–181. Springer, Berlin (2010). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-12397-9_14

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Skowron, M., Rank, S.: Affect listeners - from dyads to group interactions with affective dialog systems. In: Proceedings of AISB/IACAP World Congress 2012, LaCATODA 2012, pp. 55–60 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  • Skowron, M., Rank, S.: Interacting with collective emotions in e-communities. In: Scheve, C.V., Salmela, M. (eds.) Collective Emotions. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2014). doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199659180.003.0027

    Google Scholar 

  • Skowron, M., Theunis, M., Rank, S., Borowiec, A.: Effect of affective profile on communication patterns and affective expressions in interactions with a dialog system. In: D’Mello, S., Graesser, A., Schuller, B., Martin, J.-C. (eds.) Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction: 4th International Conference, ACII 2011, Memphis, TN, USA, October 9–12, 2011, Proceedings, Part I. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 6974, pp. 347–356. Springer, Berlin (2011a). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-24600-5_38

    Google Scholar 

  • Skowron, M., Pirker, H., Rank, S., Paltoglou, G., Ahn, J., Gobron, S.: No peanuts! affective cues for the virtual bartender. In: Murray, R.C., McCarthy, P.M. (eds.) Proceedings of the 24th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference, pp. 117–122. AAAI Press, Menlo Park (2011b)

    Google Scholar 

  • Skowron, M., Rank, S., Theunis, M., Sienkiewicz, J.: The good, the bad and the neutral: affective profile in dialog system-user communication. In: D’Mello, S., Graesser, A., Schuller, B., Martin, J.-C. (eds.) Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction: 4th International Conference, ACII 2011, Memphis, TN, USA, October 9–12, 2011, Proceedings, Part I. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 6974, pp. 337–346. Springer, Berlin (2011c). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-24600-5_37

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Skowron, M., Theunis, M., Rank, S., Kappas, A.: Affect and social processes in online communication - experiments with affective dialog system. IEEE Trans. Affect. Comput. 4 (3), 267–279 (2013). doi:10.1109/T-AFFC.2013.16

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Skowron, M., Rank, S., Świderska, A., Küster, D., Kappas, A.: Applying a text-based affective dialogue system in psychological research: case studies on the effects of system behaviour, interaction context and social exclusion. Cogn. Comput. (2014). doi:10.1007/s12559-014-9271-2

    Google Scholar 

  • Thelwall, M., Buckley, K., Paltoglou, G.: Sentiment in twitter events. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 62 (2), 406–418 (2011). doi:10.1002/asi.21462

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thelwall, M., Buckley, K., Paltoglou, G., Skowron, M., Garcia, D., Gobron, S., Ahn, J., Kappas, A., Küster, D., Hołyst, J.A.: Damping sentiment analysis in online communication: discussions, monologs and dialogs. In: Gelbukh, A. (ed.) Computational Linguistics and Intelligent Text Processing, 14th International Conference, CICLing 2013, Samos, Greece, March 24–30, 2013, Proceedings, Part II. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 7817, pp. 1–12. Springer, Berlin (2013). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-37256-8_1

    Google Scholar 

  • Šuvakov, M., Garcia, D., Schweitzer, F., Tadić, B.: Agent-based simulations of emotion spreading in online social networks (2012). http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.6278

    Google Scholar 

  • Watson, D., Tellegen, A.: Toward a consensual structure of mood. Psychol. Bull. 98 (2), 219–235 (1985) doi:10.1037/0033-2909.98.2.219

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wu, Y., Zhou, C., Xiao, J., Kurths, J., Schellnhuber, H.J.: Evidence for a bimodal distribution in human communication. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 107 (44), 18803–18808 (2010). doi:10.1073/pnas.1013140107

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Vienna, Austria

    Marcin Skowron

  2. Department of Digital Media, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Stefan Rank

  3. ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    David Garcia

  4. Faculty of Physics, Warsaw University of Technology, Koszykowa 75, 00-662, Warsaw, Poland

    Janusz A. Hołyst

Authors
  1. Marcin Skowron
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Stefan Rank
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. David Garcia
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Janusz A. Hołyst
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marcin Skowron .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Physics, Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland

    Janusz A. Holyst

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Skowron, M., Rank, S., Garcia, D., Hołyst, J.A. (2017). Zooming in: Studying Collective Emotions with Interactive Affective Systems. In: Holyst, J. (eds) Cyberemotions. Understanding Complex Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43639-5_14

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation