How to Measure Emotion in Email Communication?

Byron, K. (2008). Carrying too heavy a load? The communication and miscommunication of emotion by email. The Academy of Management Review, 33(2), 309–327. doi:10.5465/AMR.2008.31193163

The author provides a theoretical framework to examine emotion in email communication in order to evaluate the likelihood of miscommunication and improve accuracy in email communication in work contexts. The author draws from literature in communication, emotion, and perception particularly focusing on computer-mediated and nonverbal communication (no primary research was conducted). After defining emotional communication, accuracy, channel, the author discusses two phenomena, the neutrality effect and negativity effect, and their relationship to emotion perception in emails. The author then details how senders and receivers influence emotion perception in emails, arguing such communication can be impacted by gender, relationship length, relative status, age, negative affectivity, and social context. Next, the author looks more specifically at the effects of how senders encode their messages on emotion communication using verbal and nonverbal cues, and then considers the positive and negative consequences of inaccuracy in emails primarily concerning workplace relationships and the transmission of information at work.  

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