E-mail Communication Versus Face-to-Face Communication:
Perception of Other’s Personality and Emotional State


Yuuki KATO* and Kanji AKAHORI**
Graduate School of Decision Science and Technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology,
2-12-1, O-okayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, 152-8552 Japan
<*yuuki, **akahori>@ak.cradle.titech.ac.jp


Abstract: Increasingly, computer-mediated communication (CMC) is used in distance education
settings. This paper focuses on electronic mail, which is the most common communication tool used
in CMC. An experiment was conducted comparing the arising of emotions in e-mail communication
versus F2FC, including examining the effect of combining e-mail and F2FC for each communication.
In addition, this paper paid attention to the perception of each partner’s personality and emotional
states in each communication. The findings of this experiment suggested that when compared with e-
mail communication, F2FC may contain more positive emotional communication. Furthermore, e-
mail communication following F2FC may result in a more positive emotional interaction than when
only e-mail communication is used. The findings also suggested that the perception of the partner in
e-mail communication lacks accuracy, however using F2FC before or after e-mail communication
may lead to more accurate perception of the other.


1. INTRODUCTION

Increasingly, computer-mediated communication, commonly referred to as CMC (Kiesler, Siegel, &
McGuire, 1984), is used in distance education settings (e.g., Flottemesch, 2000). As a result, there are many studies
on CMC which give suggestions for educational use. Most of the studies have focused on the technical or cognitive
aspects of CMC, which are important for learning. However, it is also important to focus on the emotional aspect,
since CMC is a medium in which emotional troubles or outbursts occur frequently (Siegel, Dubrovsky, Kiesler, &
McGuire, 1986). Furthermore, some studies in the field of the cognitive psychology suggest that emotion affects
memory, thinking, and learning (e.g., Bower, 1981; Forgas, 1991). Additionally, the importance of the social
presence (Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976) has been emphasized by recent research on distance education (e.g.,
Gunawardena, 1995). Given prior research suggested that emotional dimension of communications contributes to
the degree of the social presence.
Emotional communication in CMC (Nojima & Gill, 1997) primarily involves negative or hostile emotions.
For instance some CMC researchers pointed out that aspersions are cast in CMC. However, previous studies have
shown benefits in using CMC. For example, Uhler & Clark (2001) suggested that CMC often allows people to feel
more comfortable, because of visual or facial anonymity (Harashima, 2001). It is important that teachers promote
students’ positive emotions and inhibit negative or hostile emotions in learning scenes. For suggestion to the
teachers who use CMC in their classes, the present study pays attention to both the positive and negative or hostile
emotions arising in CMC.
Most of the previous studies on CMC have compared CMC with face-to-face communication, which is
commonly referred to as F2FC (e.g., Jonassen & Kwon, 2001; Sannomiya & Kawaguchi, 1999). Additionally, some
studies examine the effects of combining CMC and F2FC (e.g., Kato, Furuya, & Akahori, 2001). In real
communication, it is most natural to combine the use of CMC and F2FC. Moreover, studies on e-learning point out
that this combination, known as a “blend”, is an important issue. Therefore, the present study not only compares the
arising of emotions in CMC versus F2FC, but also examines the effect of the combination on the arising of emotions
in each communication.

1.1 Features of CMC
The primary advantage of CMC is the lack of a temporal or spatial constraint (Kiesler, Siegel, & McGuire,
1984; Kiesler & Sproull, 1992; Kiesler, 1997). CMC contains two features -visual anonymity and limited channel
(i.e., text only) communication- that have been implicated in a variety of interpersonal behaviors. The limited
channel communication and visual anonymity experienced by CMC users has numerous consequences for their
behavior. Both visual anonymity and text-only communication have been used to predict that CMC will lack the

richness of normal F2F interaction (Rice & Love, 1987). Based on the above features of CMC, previous studies have
pointed out the positives and negatives of CMC. Positively, when compared with F2FC CMC is often more
impersonal and free (Kiesler, Siegel, & McGuire, 1984, p.1126), more uninhibited (Siegel, Dubrovsky, Kiesler, &
McGuire, 1986; Sproull & Kiesler, 1986, 1991), contains more disclosures of personal information (Joinson, 1998,
2001; Kiesler & Sproull, 1992), contains more equal-member participation (Sproull & Kiesler, 1993), and contains
more task-oriented interactions (Connolly, Jessup, & Valacich, 1990). As a result, CMC often allows people to feel
more comfortable and confident in their discussions. Negatively, CMC can contain more “flaming” (e.g., hostile
comments, insults) (Dyer, Green, Pitts, & Millward, 1995; McGuire, Kiesler, & Siegel, 1987), be uninhibited and
depersonalized (Garton & Wellman, 1995; Walther, Anderson, & Park, 1994), and be more likely to show decision
shift (Siegel, Dubrovsky, Kiesler, & McGuire, 1986).
Despite initial beliefs that CMC would encourage reasonable communication, it was found that CMC
encouraged emotional communication instead (Nojima & Gill, 1997). Due to this, Researchers in CMC have
become very interested in the phenomenon of “flaming”. Some models explaining the mechanism of the flaming
were proposed (e.g., Reduce Social Cues Model (Sproull & Kiesler, 1991), Social Identity and DE-individuation
Model (Lea, 1992)). Most, such as above-mentioned models, have focused on the sender of the slanderous message.
However, there is little research on the receiver’s emotional state when he/she receives a message in CMC. In fact,
there is not much research on emotions in CMC.

1.2 Perception of other’s personality characteristics
Until relatively recently, interaction has been conducted entirely F2F, or at the least synchronously. It is
therefore unsurprising that in such contexts, we are highly effective at judging people’s characteristics, such as
familiarity, gender, emotion or temperament (e.g., Cheng, O’Toole, & Abdi, 2001). Perception of other’s personality
characteristics is a significant aspect of human interpersonal communication. It refers to the interpersonal process by
which people employ all available information and make general judgments of other’s personality characteristics.
Recent F2FC research (Krauss & Fussell, 1996; Kraut, 1978) has consistently indicated that both nonverbal and
verbal cues jointly affect the process of the perception. According to Patterson (1994), nonverbal cues can be
managed for particular interpersonal goals, such as engaging with other people. The nonverbal cues primarily
explored in the previous literature focused mainly on three types of cues: visible (e.g., facial expressions, eye contact,
touch, etc.), paralinguistic (e.g., frequency, speech duration, vocal intensity, pause, response latency, etc.), and
psychological (e.g., attention, attribution, primacy effect, and recency effect) (Liu, Ginther, & Zelhart, 2001).
Technology now mediates much communication. Phone, e-mail or video-conference: in each case, people
must make do with impoverished cues to help them estimate other people’s emotional states, dispositions and
personalities. This is especially so when CMC users cannot see each other and the CMC environment is restricted in
terms of nonverbal cues. As a result, some studies have focused on perception in CMC contexts (e.g., Gill &
Oberlander, 2003; Markey & Wells, 2002; Nass, Moon, Fogg, & Reeves, 1995). In particular, Kato, Sugimura, &
Akahori (2001) have focused on perception of other’s emotional states in e-mail communications, and found gaps
between sender’s self report of emotional states and receiver’s perception of sender’s emotional sates. In CMC, it is
often mentioned that a partner cannot be perceived correctly. The difficulty of perceiving the partner in
communication is considered to affect a CMC participant’s emotional aspects. However, there is no experimental
research which compares perceptions of other’s personality characteristics and emotional states in CMC versus
F2FC.

2. OBJECTIVES

This paper focuses on e-mail, which is the most common communication tool used in CMC. The aim of
this study is to compare the arising of emotions in e-mail communication with those of F2FC, and examine the
effect of the combination of e-mail communication and F2FC on the arising of emotions in each communication.
Specifically, the following three points were analyzed from the experimental results:
(a) The emotions produced in F2FC and in e-mail communication are compared.
(b) The emotions produced in F2FC following e-mail communication are analyzed.
(c) The emotions produced in e-mail communication following F2FC are analyzed.
In addition, this paper pays attention to the perception of each partner’s personality characteristics in each
communication. The accuracy of judgements of each partner’s personality and emotions is examined. Specifically,
the following three points are analyzed:
(d) The accuracy of judgements of partner’s personality in F2FC and e-mail communication is compared.
(e) The accuracy of judgements of partner’s emotions in F2FC and e-mail communication is compared.