Emotional web-based design: the concepts of emotional experience and emotional expression

Abstract

For many years people have been trying to measure differences between individuals. Over the course of time, a combination of developments in statistical know-how and the evolution of thought within psychology enabled the refinement of measures, and subsequently the assessment of more specific factors in the field of individual differences like different kinds of ability, affect and emotion. This knowledge has been used in many areas within psychology and at the same time the advancement of technology has enabled the development of web-based systems that measure specific factors relevant to specific situations. Our research focuses on the emotional mechanisms that drive human behaviour in general and how we can implement a set of rules to web design so that we can promote system adaptability on the very important field of human emotions which is at the same time extremely difficult to describe and define. In this paper we introduce our model of emotion regulation and we present our first experimental results that concern the concepts of emotional experience and emotional expression and their effect on decision making and problem solving styles. Furthermore, we present the implications that these theoretical and empirical representations can have in web applications and design. © 2011 IADIS.