Emotions Group - Methods

Participants

We plan to recruit a total of 60 students from the Communications courses that offer class credit for participation in experiments. All the participants will be between the ages of 18 and 25. 30 people will be randomly assigned to the control group, and 30 people will be randomly assigned to the experimental group. In this way, both the control and experimental group will consist of 15 dyads. Each dyad will be of the same sex: males will be paired together and females will be paired together.

Our study was conducted on the second floor of Kennedy Hall in Professor Hancock’s laboratory. The two members of a dyad were asked to arrive in Kennedy Hall at separate locations so that they cannot communicate prior to the experiment. Additionally, they were shown to different rooms in the laboratory so that they could not see their partner during the study.

Procedure

The subjects were first told that they were involved in a study that will test their ability to analyze movies. In the control group, both people were shown a neutral clip from the documentary Mammoths of the Ice Age. In the experimental group, one person was shown the same neutral clip from Mammoths of the Ice Age, while the other person was shown a sad clip from the movie Sophie’s Choice. Afterwards, they were asked to fill out a brief questionnaire about the movie and a PANAS emotion scale. We then deceived the subjects by asking them to participate in a second study that will analyze how people interact when they meet someone new online. They were given the task of getting to know their partner for twenty minutes through the medium of instant messaging. In addition, we requested that they not mention the previous study to their partner, as conversation about the movie could affect the mood of both subjects. Following this, both members of the dyad were given a questionnaire that included questions asking them to rate their own mood as well as that of their partner. The subjects also filled out another PANAS emotion scale. After the experiment, we debriefed the subjects on the true purposes of our study.

Materials

As our objective was to use films to induce certain emotions, we chose two different films for the study. The film intended to induce sadness was entitled Sophie’s Choice; the neutral film was a documentary entitled Mammoths of the Ice Age. Our group also used instruction sheets, which we did not show the participants. In addition, we used two computer terminals, one for each participant. We used the basic psychological scale, PANAS, twice in the experiment in order to assess the mood of each participant after the movie and after the conversation. Accompanying each part of our experiment (the film and the online chat) was a questionnaire. One questionnaire asked about the effects of movies on viewers; the second questionnaire asked about the feelings of each participant and his partner after conversing through instant messaging. We expect that both the scales and questionnaires will be crucial to gauge the emotions of our participants.

Since our experiment was divided into two sections, we used two consent forms to aid in deceiving the participants. As a distraction for the single experiment we were running, the participants were told that one form was for Professor Shapiro and the other was for Professor Hancock. Lastly, we had debriefing forms that the participants received after completing the experiment.

Coding

Following the experiment, we will use the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program to analyze the emotion expressed through instant messaging. This program will help us determine the 1) emoticons and other CMC conventions, 2) length of responses, 3) use of affect language (divided into subcategories of positive and negative), 4) pronoun use, and 5) the number of negations and assents in the conversations. By hand, we can determine the 1) use of punctuation and 2) content of the conversations. In addition to the transcripts, we will use the questionnaires from our experiment to determine the mood of the neutral participant and to determine whether he could perceive the emotions of his partner.