Abstract
This study examines emotion regulation strategies in written digital discussions revolving around controversial issues. Twenty-five undergraduate students, placed in five study groups, took part in written digital discussions. Two groups were chosen to participate in the study. Participants were interviewed and were asked to read the transcript of the digital conversation they took part in, while referring to all conversation turns. They were asked to explain their own, as well as others’ reasoning regarding emotion expression and emotion intensity levels. Ninety-three interpretations of participants’ turns were made during the interviews. We compared the ways composers labeled their own emotions and intensity levels, with the ways in which other participants’ recognize these emotions, in order to assess the correlations between them. We report on several emotion recognition strategies that were found and point to the idiosyncratically rich but lacking in common ground nature of emotional social language. We highlight the gaps between composers' emotion labeling and others’ emotion recognition. The study offers new insight regarding emotional communication in CSCL settings, claiming that despite poor correlation rates and lack of shared emotional language, participants were indeed able to communicate emotionally. In CSCL settings, emotions function as a dialogic instrument enabling people to relate to each other by fostering closeness and establishing relations.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adorno, T. W. (2017). Education for maturity and responsibility: Conversation with Hellmut Becker 1959-1969 (A. Angermann, Trans.). Kibutz Meuchad & Mofet. (Original work published 1970).
Aldemir, T., Borge, M., & Soto, J. (2022). Shared meaning-making in online intergroup discussions around sensitive topics. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 17, 361–396.
Amorim, M., Anikin, A., Mendes, A. J., Lima, C. F., Kotz, S. A., & Pinheiro, A. P. (2021). Changes in vocal emotion recognition across the life span. Emotion, 21(2), 315. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000692
Austin, J. L. (1975). How to do things with words. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198245537.001.0001
Bailey Bisson, J. (2019). It’s written all over their faces: Preschoolers’ emotion understanding. Social Development, 28(1), 74–89. https://doi.org/10.1111/sode.12322
Baker, M. J., Andriessen, J., & Schwarz, B. B. (2019). Collaborative argumentation-based learning. In R. Wegerif, N. Mercer, & L. Major (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of research on dialogic education (pp. 76–88). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429441677
Bareither, C., & Bareither, C. (2019). Doing emotion through digital media: An ethnographic perspective on media practices and emotional affordances. Ethnologia Europaea, 49(1). https://doi.org/10.16995/ee.822
Barrett, L. F. (1997). The relationships among momentary emotion experiences, personality descriptions, and retrospective ratings of emotion. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(10), 1100–1110. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672972310010
Benita, M., Levkovitz, T., & Roth, G. (2017). Integrative emotion regulation predicts adolescents’ prosocial behavior through the mediation of empathy. Learning and Instruction, 50, 14–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2016.11.004
Boekaerts, M., & Pekrun, R. (2015). Emotions and emotion regulation in academic settings. In L. Corno & E. M. Anderman (Eds.), Handbook of educational psychology (pp. 90–104). Routledge.
Bohn- Gettler, C., & Rapp, D. N. (2014). Emotion during reading and writing. In R. Pekrun & L. Linnenbrink-Garcia (Eds.), International handbook of emotion in education (pp. 437–457). Routledge.
Castells, M. (2016). Networks of outrage and hope: Social movements in the Internet age. In Democracy (pp. 433-435). Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/blau17412-091
Chi, M. T., & Wylie, R. (2014). The ICAP framework: Linking cognitive engagement to active learning outcomes. Educational Psychologist, 49(4), 219–243. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2014.965823
Curato, N. (2019). Democracy in a time of misery: From spectacular tragedies to deliberative action. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198842484.001.0001
Duranti, A. (2012). Linguistic anthropology. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511810190
Eisenberg, N., Sadovsky, A., & Spinrad, T. L. (2005). Associations of emotion-related regulation with language skills, emotion knowledge, and academic outcomes. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 2005(109), 109–118. https://doi.org/10.1002/cd.143
Ekman, P., & Oster, H. (1979). Facial expressions of emotion. Annual Review of Psychology, 30(1), 527–554. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ps.30.020179.002523
Firer, E., Slakmon, B., Dishon, G., & Schwarz, B. B. (2021). Quality of dialogue and emotion regulation in contentious discussions in higher education. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 30, 100535. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2021.100535
Gastil, J. (2008). Political communication and deliberation. Sage Publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781483329208
Gee, J. P. (2015). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses (fifth). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203944806
Hadwin, A., Järvelä, S., & Miller, M. (2018). Self-regulation, co-regulation, and shared regulation in collaborative learning environments. In D. H. Schunk & J. A. Greene (Eds.), Educational psychology handbook series: Handbook of self-regulation of learning and performance (pp. 83–106). Routledge.
Hennessy, S., Rojas-Drummond, S., Higham, R., Torreblanca, O., Barrera, M. J., Marquez, A. M., García Carrión, R., Maine, F., & Ríos, R. M. (2016). Develo** an analytic coding scheme for classroom dialogue across educational contexts. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 9, 16–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2015.12.001
Hillis, K., Paasonen, S., & Petit, M. (Eds.). (2015). Networked affect. MIT Press.
Hofmann, R. (2019). Dialogue, teachers and professional development. In N. Mercer, R. Wegerif, & L. Major (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of research on dialogic education (pp. 213–216). Routledge.
Järvelä, S., Kirschner, P. A., Hadwin, A., Järvenoja, H., Malmberg, J., Miller, M., & Laru, J. (2016). Socially shared regulation of learning in CSCL: Understanding and prompting individual-and group-level shared regulatory activities. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 11(3), 263–280. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-016-9238-2
Järvenoja, H., & Järvelä, S. (2009). Emotion control in collaborative learning situations: Do students regulate emotions evoked by social challenges. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 79(3), 463–481. https://doi.org/10.1348/000709909X402811
Järvenoja, H., Näykki, P., & Törmänen, T. (2019). Emotional regulation in collaborative learning: When do higher education students activate group level regulation in the face of challenges? Studies in Higher Education (Dorchester-on-Thames), 44(10), 1747–1757. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2019.1665318
Jasper, J. M. (1998). The emotions of protest: Affective and reactive emotions in and around social movements. Sociological Forum, 13(3), 397–424. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022175308081
Jenkins, H. (2008). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York University Press. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439307306088
Keltner, D., Sauter, D., Tracy, J., & Cowen, A. (2019). Emotional expression: Advances in basic emotion theory. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 43(2), 133–160. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-019-00293-3
Keynan, O., Brandel, N., & Slakmon, B. (2022). Students’ knowledge on emotion expression and recognition in computer-mediated communication: A comparative case study. Computers & Education, 189, 104597. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2022.104597
Lajoie, S. P., Pekrun, R., Azevedo, R., & Leighton, J. P. (2020). Understanding and measuring emotions in technology-rich learning environments. Learning and Instruction, 70, 101272. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2019.101272
Lindquist, K. A. (2013). Emotions emerge from more basic psychological ingredients: A modern psychological constructionist model. Emotion Review, 5(4), 356–368. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073913489750
Lindquist, K. A. (2017). The role of language in emotion: Existing evidence and future directions. Current Opinion in Psychology, 17, 135–139. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.07.006
Lindquist, K. A., & Gendron, M. (2013). What’s in a word? Language constructs emotion perception. Emotion Review, 5(1), 66–71. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073912451351
Martins, M., Pinheiro, A. P., & Lima, C. F. (2021). Does music training improve emotion recognition abilities? A critical review. Emotion Review, 13(3), 199–210. https://doi.org/10.1177/17540739211022035
Massironi, M. (2002). The psychology of graphic images : Seeing, drawing, communicating. Psychology Press. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410601896
McRae, K., & Gross, J. J. (2020). Emotion regulation. Emotion, 20(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000703
Mueller, R. A. (2019). Episodic narrative interview: Capturing stories of experience with a methods fusion. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 18, 1609406919866044. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406919866044
Näykki, P., Isohätälä, J., & Järvelä, S. (2021). “You really brought all your feelings out” – Scaffolding students to identify the socio-emotional and socio-cognitive challenges in collaborative learning. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 30, 100536. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2021.100536
Niven, K., Totterdell, P., & Holman, D. (2009). A classification of controlled interpersonal affect regulation strategies. Emotion, 9(4), 498. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015962
Papacharissi, Z. (2010). A private sphere: Democracy in a digital age. Polity Press. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443711431200a
Papacharissi, Z. (2015). Affective publics: Sentiment, technology, and politics. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199999736.001.0001
Pell, M. D., & Kotz, S. A. (2021). Comment: The next frontier: Prosody research gets interpersonal. Emotion Review, 13(1), 51–56. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073920954288
Polo, C., Lund, K., Plantin, C., & Niccolai, G. P. (2016). Group emotions: The social and cognitive functions of emotions in argumentation. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 11(2), 123–156.
Porat, D. A. (2004). From the scandal to the Holocaust in Israeli education. Journal of Contemporary History, 39(4), 619–636. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022009404046757
Porat, R., Erel, L., Pnueli, V., & Halperin, E. (2020). Develo** ReApp: An emotion regulation mobile intervention for intergroup conflict. Cognition and Emotion, 34(7), 1326–1342. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2020.1747400
Resnick, L. B., Asterhan, C. S., Clarke, S. N., & Schantz, F. (2018). Next generation research in dialogic learning. The Wiley Handbook of Teaching and Learning, 323-338. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118955901.ch13
Rojas, M., Nussbaum, M., Guerrero, O., Chiuminatto, P., Greiff, S., Del Rio, R., & Alvares, D. (2022). Integrating a collaboration script and group awareness to support group regulation and emotions towards collaborative problem solving. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 1-34. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-022-09362-0
Rommetveit, R. (1992). Outlines of a dialogically based social-cognitive approach to human cognition and communication. In A. H. Wold (Ed.), The dialogical alternative: Towards a theory of language and mind (pp. 19–44). Oxford University Press.
Schwarz, B. B. (2018). Computer-supported argumentation and learning. In F. Fischer, C. E. Hmelo-Silver, S. R. Goldman, & P. Reimann (Eds.), International handbook of the learning sciences (pp. 318–329). Routledge.
Slakmon, B., & Schwarz, B. B. (2019b). Democratization and education: Conditions and technology for dialogic transformative political education. In N. Mercer, R. Wegerif, & L. Major (Eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Research on Dialogic Education (pp. 485–496). Routledge.
Slakmon, B., & Schwarz, B. B. (2019a). Deliberative emotional talk. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 14(2), 185–217.
Sowden, S., Schuster, B. A., Keating, C. T., Fraser, D. S., & Cook, J. L. (2021). The role of movement kinematics in facial emotion expression production and recognition. Emotion, 21(5), 1041–1061. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000835
Torre, J. B., & Lieberman, M. D. (2018). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling as implicit emotion regulation. Emotion Review, 10(2), 116–124. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073917742706
Tsovaltzi, D., Greenhow, C., & Asterhan, C. (2015). When friends argue: Learning from and through social network site discussions. Computers in Human Behavior, 53, 567–569. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.08.021
Tull, M. T., & Aldao, A. (2015). Editorial overview: New directions in the science of emotion regulation. Current Opinion in Psychology, 3, iv–x.
Van Dijck, J. (2013). The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.08.021
Van Emeren, F. H., Grootendorst, R., & Kruiger, T. (2019). Handbook of argumentation theory. De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110846096
Walton, D. (2008). Informal logic: A pragmatic approach. Cambridge University Press.
Walton, D. (2010). The place of emotion in argument. Penn State Press.
Wegerif, R. (2007). Dialogic education and technology: Expanding the space of learning (Vol. 7). Springer Science & Business Media.
Williams, W. C., Morelli, S. A., Ong, D. C., & Zaki, J. (2018). Interpersonal emotion regulation: Implications for affiliation, perceived support, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 115(2), 224. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000132
Zaki, J. (2020). Integrating empathy and interpersonal emotion regulation. Annual Review of Psychology, 71, 517–540.
Ziv, Y., Golden, D., & Goldberg, T. (2015). Teaching traumatic history to young children: The case of Holocaust studies in Israeli kindergartens. Early Education and Development, 26(4), 520–533. https://doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2015.1000719
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Maya Resnick, Sharon Hirsch, Baruch B. Schwarz, and Carolyn P. Rosé for their invaluable support at different stages of the project, as well as the anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Deceleration of interest statement
The authors certify that they have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest (such as honoraria; educational grants; participation in speakers’ bureaus; membership, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, or other equity interest; and expert testimony or patent-licensing arrangements), or non-financial interest (such as personal or professional relationships, affiliations, knowledge or beliefs) in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.
Additional information
Publisher's note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Slakmon, B., Keynan, O. & Shapira, O. Emotion expression and recognition in written digital discussions on Civic Issues. Intern. J. Comput.-Support. Collab. Learn 17, 519–537 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-022-09379-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-022-09379-5