Text Interpretation and Mood: Is Happiness an Indicator?

Transcription

1 Text Interpretation and Mood: Is Happiness an Indicator? Laurie J. Patterson Department of Computer Science, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington NC USA Abstract - Text and are widely open to (mis)interpretation by the recipient. It is widely accepted that humor, sarcasm, double entendres do not work well or are interpreted correctly without the smile, tone, or expression given by the sender. This paper looks at the mood or level of happiness of the recipient in the correct interpretation of a text or message. Keywords: Emotion, happiness, interpretation, mood, text e- mail. 1 Introduction The United States Department of Commerce predicted in 2001 that almost half of the U.S. population used to the extent that messages now outnumber the number of letters sent through the U.S. Postal Service [21]. For 2010, Internet World Stats, shows that 77.3% of the U.S. population used the Internet [14]. Gatz and Hirt suggest that is used daily, and in some cases, even hourly [7]. The Radicati Group, in 2010, estimated the total number of s sent per day to be approximately 294 billion [22]. The Pew Internet & American Life Project states that approximately 83% of the U.S. population own cell phones and, of this group, 73% send and receive text messages. That means that daily, at a minimum, almost 240 million s are sent in the US. If only one text message is sent by each cell phone user, approximately 145,351,532 texts are sent daily. Combined, that means that, at a minimum, 385,245,132 electronic messages are sent daily. 1.1 Message Interpretation With that number of messages being sent, there is a chance that messages may be misinterpreted. Because messages arrive without the benefit of seeing or hearing the sender, the recipient may not receive the message in the tone in which it was meant. Nonverbal cues, in a conversation, provide clues to the meaning of the message [10]. Humor, sarcasm, or simple requests for information, when done in person, are frequently presented with a smile, a nudge, or some other form of body language or vocal cue [18]. The sender of a message hears the tone of a message in their head as they type it. The recipient, however, does not hear that tone. Sarcasm, for example, is defined as a sharply ironical taunt or cutting remark [4]. That definition, in itself, strongly suggests verbal cues are associated with sarcasm. Sarcasm, therefore, does not fare well in [2]. Without hearing the tone of the message, recipients may choose to ignore or delete the message [17]. , as a form of writing, is not usually reviewed or edited and particularly not for possible tone interpretation. 1.2 Message Tone has tone, even though the message is not heard by the recipient. All text has tone. The writer of a book/poem/article carefully chooses their words and presents them in a way meant to convey a meaning to the message [14]. Tone is the attitude or feeling the writer wishes to deliver [13] or convey toward the message s topic [17]. The problem for most writers is that they expect the recipient of their message to understand exactly what the writer meant to convey, tone included [10]. Readers, however, take the message literally, with no understanding of what the writer means to say, especially if acronyms are included and the reader does not understand the meaning [17]. In a study conducted using Cornell University students, Kruger et al. found that only half the time was the tone of a message correctly identified by the recipient; however, 80% of the time, the sender believed the recipient would get the tone correct [11]. A Canadian company, The Strategic Counsel, conducted an opinion poll for Microsoft Canada that supports the above study. In their 2007 polling of Canadians, they found: 66% worried about the possibility of their s being misinterpreted or misunderstood; 37% experienced work problems due to misinterpretation; 30% retrieved an because they were afraid it would be misinterpreted [1]. In a study at the University of Vermont Extension, Deziel collected responses from the extension employees on the successful interpretation of messages. A majority of respondents had experienced a misinterpretation of at least one of their messages [3]. His results for the number of e- mails that have been misinterpreted are shown in Figure 1.

2 Response Percentage 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 2 Mood Yes Figure 1. Percent of survey participants who have had an message misinterpreted [3]. How people evaluate events that occur in their lives depends on two things: cognition and affect (or mood). Mood influences the instant evaluation of an event [6]. For most people, terms such as happy and unhappy are words that are used to describe their mood. 2.1 Measuring Mood Psychologists identify three types of happiness: emotional, moral, and judgmental [9]. Of these three, it is emotional happiness that most people identify; however, emotional happiness is considered subjective [9]. Despite the subjective nature of emotional happiness, there are ways to measure its levels and these methods can be scientific [19]. The most frequently used method of happiness measurement is by asking individuals, through surveys, if they are happy and how happy they feel. Other methods of measurement include physiological indicators, observed behaviors, and nonverbal behaviors. As a subjective concept, each individual tends to be the best judge of their level of happiness [6]. Figure 2 shows objective vs. subjective happiness and how the two are measured. Figure 2. Concepts of happiness and how they are measured [6]. When surveying for happiness, psychologists have identified five main factors that determine an individual s level of happiness: personality, socio-demographic, economic, situational, and institutional [6]. An issue with identifying happiness, however, is that respondents often give No Messages Misinterpreted answers focusing on joy or satisfaction. Joy is a term used to define an emotion. Satisfaction is a term used to define a perception [19]. 2.2 Measuring Happiness One survey, the Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS), was created by Sonja Lyubomirsky and Heidi Lepper [12]. Their survey, through several different studies meant to validate it, was reduced to four simple questions. Answers to the four questions, using a 7-point Likert scale, are averaged. Happiness scores range from 1.0 to 7.0; the higher the score, the higher the level of reported happiness [12]. The questions are: In general, I consider myself ( with 1 corresponding to not a very happy person and 7 corresponding to a very happy person ). Compared to most of my peers, I consider myself (with 1 corresponding to less happy and 7 corresponding to more happy). Some people are generally very happy. They enjoy life regardless of what is going on, getting the most out of everything. To what extent does this characterization describe you? (with 1 corresponding to not at all and 7 corresponding to a great deal ). Some people are generally not very happy. Although they are not depressed, they never seem as happy as they might be. To what extend does this characterization describe you? (with 1 corresponding to not at all and 7 corresponding to a great deal ) [12]. 3 Mood and Message Interpretation There is an abundance of anecdotal evidence regarding the mood of the sender and the tone of the message. Frequently, one will hear that the sender must have been in a bad mood to send that message. Rarely is it heard that the recipient is the one with the bad mood. This, in part, may explain the Facebook page developed (2011) and titled Badmood-DONT-text-Shutup-No-one-was-going-to-text-youanyway. The page is no longer available. To assist with mood and tone, many social network sites provide users with an opportunity to signal their mood with a status. Facebook recently announced that they were going to test a status update composer that would let you use an emoticon and add a mood to accompany your post [15]. E- mails and texts have for many years used emoticons to soften or strengthen the message s interpretation [20]. The problem with emoticons is that the user may not understand its meaning, thus further frustrating the reader [17]. Another issue with the use of emoticons is that it suggests an unprofessional writer. This is especially an issue when the message comes with a business [8].

3 Number of Responses (n=44) This study attempts to connect, not the writer s mood, but the recipient s mood with how an is interpreted. 4 Influence of Mood on Message Interpretation: The Study To determine if there is a connection between the recipients current mood and their interpretation of a text message, a study was conducted using the SHS and several text scenarios. The SHS was selected for use in this study because of its simplicity. 4.1 Research Hypotheses The purpose of this study was to determine whether there was a correlation to the mood (or happiness level) of an reader to the perceived tone of an . To this end, the following null research hypothesis was created: There will be no difference between the happiness levels of an recipient and how they view the tone of the message. 4.2 Scenario Development To reflect messages that individuals might receive, six general topics were selected. Each of the topics was then written with three perspectives in mind: neutral, friendly or warm fuzzy, and unfriendly or cold prickly. The topics were: Cat having kittens Upcoming football game Going out for dinner Upcoming exam for a course Acceptance of a poem for publication Day trip to the beach These topics were developed using a small formative committee of three individuals. The neutral scenario was created first, and then was modified to give more extreme warm positive or cold negative responses. The 18 developed scenarios were then submitted to a group of seven individuals who were asked to evaluate the scenarios on whether they felt warm, cold or neutral towards the message sender. In addition, this group was asked how they would modify each question to get a response closer to neutral. The scenarios were then modified to move the overall feeling of each of them closer to neutral. 4.3 Survey Submission These final scenarios were combined with the SHS questions and submitted to students attending the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Students in these courses were asked to voluntarily participate in the survey. Standard IRB protocols were used with regard to the survey submission. At the writing of this ongoing research, 42 students responded. The survey remains open and additional data continues to be collected. 4.4 Happiness Results Responses to the four SHS questions were based on a seven point Likert scale. Happiness levels are determined by averaging the four scores. Survey results were divided into three groups: happier than average, average, unhappier than average. Lyubomirsky and Lepper s results show the average score for college students to be slightly below 5.0 [5]. Current results from this study of college students show an average of 4.69; the mean, however, is For the respondents, happiness scores ranged from 3.00 to Plotted, the scores have a modified bell curve. Figure 3 shows the modified bell curve Unhappier than average Fig. 1. Levels of respondent happiness. Average SHS Scale with Responses Happier than average The bell curve results were used to determine which respondents would be considered happier than average, average in happiness, and unhappier than average. The columns on the right (slash markings) (n=11) are sorted into happier than average, the middle section (n=22) are those individuals sorted into average happiness, and the columns to the right (checkered) (n=11) are those individuals sorted into unhappier than average General Happiness Demographic Results Of the 35 responses, 25 (59.5%) are female and 17 (40.5%) are male. Males, on average, identified that they were happy individuals. With 7 as the happiest, men averaged a score of 4.88 ( 4 is neutral). Females averaged a score of 4.51.

4 When reviewing question one, identifying the level of happiness felt at the given moment, males are slightly more happy (5.588) than females (5.52). The overall average to this question, across genders, was When compared to their peers (question two), however, females identified themselves as slightly more happy (5.08) than males did (4.94). The overall average to this question, across genders, was The third question, whether the respondents enjoyed life regardless of what is going on, females were slightly lower than males with a score of compared to the male average score of The overall average to this question, across genders, was With the fourth question, referencing that some people just are not happy people, females had a stronger negative response to this characterization of them with an average score of ( 1 corresponds to not at all ) than males did. Males rated themselves, on average, with a score of The overall average to this question, across genders, was Specific Results The levels of happiness (warm, neutral, cold) and the respondents ratings for each scenario were done using correlation. Pearson s product moment correlation coefficient was done to see if there was a linear association between the respondent s level of happiness and how each scenario was ranked. Participants were presented with the 18 written scenarios. Each of the six basic formats included a warm fuzzy scenario, a neutral scenario and a cold prickly scenario. Participants ranked these interactions on a 5 point scale ranging from 1 "cold" to 5 "warm". Scores from all 18 scenarios were averaged to give a final score. These general rankings will be termed civility scores. Happiness scores ranged from to with a mean of and standard deviation of.662. Civility scores averaged from a range of to with a mean of and a standard deviation of.239. A Pearson's correlation coefficient was calculated for happiness by civility, resulting in a significant positive correlation of.476 (p <. 001). These results suggest that happier respondents are more likely to perceive responses as civil, than are less happy respondents. r2 suggests that 23% of the variation in civility judgment is due to the level of happiness felt by the recipient. In reviewing the data, there is some evidence to suggest that this effect is consistent across the cold prickly, neutral and warm fuzzy response scenarios. Similar bivariate correlations appear when comparing each of the three separate scenario groups with the level of happiness. The results, from cold prickly to neutral to warm fuzzy are r =.347, r =.364, and r =.350 respectively. There was not difference, however, between how males and females responded to the scenarios. Their overall results mirrored the results of that of the combined genders. 5 Conclusion and Future Work It appears that it is the mood, or level of happiness, of the recipient appears to significantly determine how an electronic message is interpreted. There is a connection between the recipients current mood and their interpretation of a text message. The survey and subsequent evaluation continues to attract more participants. With this initial result, other variables or influences could also be evaluated, such as other ages (non-college students) or settings (businesses, 6 References [1] Bell Media. (October 17, 2007). rife with regret, misinterpretation: study. [Online]. Available: sues_ / [2] Business Etiquette. (May 8, 2008). Emoticons in Business . [Online]. Available: [3] G. Deziel, Use and Communication Perceptions of University of Vermont Extension Employees, Journal of Extension, Volume 42, Number 3, June, [4] Dictionary.com. (2012). Sarcasm. [Online]. Available: [5] The Dr. Oz Show. (04/02/2010). Subjective Happiness Scale. [Online]. Available: 04/02/2010 z.com/dr-oz-total-body-reboot-contest [6] B. S. Frey, and A. Stutzer, Happiness and Economics: How the Economy and Institutions affect Well-Being. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, [7] L. G. Gatz, and J. B. Hirt, Academic and social integration in cyberspace: Students and , Review of Higher Education, 23, , [8] P. Gil. (January, 2013). Emoticons and Smileys 101 An Introduction to 21st Century Hieroglyphs. [Online]. Available: /a/bl_emoticons101.htm [9] D. Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness, Vintage books, New York, NY, 2007.

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