Emotional display behavior in different forms of Computer Mediated Communication

• This study examines emotional display behavior in different chat conditions.
• Monitorability and visibility do not influence the degree of social presence.
• Visibility influences the use rate of textual paralinguistic cues.
• Emotional valence influences the use of emotion management techniques.
• Monitorability partially influences emotional display behavior.

The primary purpose of the current study is to explore whether emotional-display behavior varies on different forms of CMC in a context of one-to-one online chat. Eighty college students (40 males and 40 females) participated in this experiment, and participants were randomly and equally assigned to one of the four different chat conditions (i.e., joint-view, no-view, view-in, and view-out), manipulating visibility (whether or not participants could see their chat partner) and monitorability (whether or not participants could be monitored by their chat partner). In an assigned chat condition, participants were asked to read, consecutively, two different emotional (happy and disgusting) stories typed by their chat partner. The emotional behavior participants displayed while reading the emotional stories was measured by self-reports and a facial-action coding system. Results reveal (1) no main effects for visibility and monitorability on the degree of social presence; (2) significant differences in the use of emotion-management techniques in response to happy and disgust emotions, respectively; and (3) less likelihood of a facial expression of disgust in the monitored conditions than in the unmonitored conditions. The results indicate that there are some differences between text-based chat and video-based chat in terms of emotional-display behavior. These findings make meaningful contributions to the ongoing debate regarding communication behavior in CMC.