Context Matters: The Effect of Textual Tone on the Evaluation of Mediated Social Touch

Abstract

Mediated Social Touch (MST) promises interpersonal touch over a distance through haptic or tactile displays. Tests of the efficacy of MST often involve attempts to demonstrate that effects of social touch (e.g., on affective responses or helping behavior) can be replicated with MST. Results, however, have been mixed. One possible explanation is that contextual factors have not sufficiently been taken into account in these experiments. A touch act is accompanied by other verbal and non-verbal expressions, and whom we touch, when, and in what manner is regulated through social and personal norms. Previous research demonstrated, amongst others, effects of gender and the facial expression of the toucher on the recipients' touch experience. People can use expressions of the toucher's emotions as a cue to anticipate the meaning of the ensuing social touch. This current study examines whether emotions expressed in text (i.e., textual tone) affects the meaning and experience of MST. As expected we found textual tone to affect both the comfortableness of the touch as well as its perceived meaning. Limitations and implications are discussed. Keywords: Mediated social touch Á Textual tone Á Affective haptic devices Á Computer mediated communication Á Haptic feedback

The Effect of Co-Verbal Remote Touch on Electrodermal Activity and Emotional Response in Dyadic Discourse

“…This finding was consistent in Eid’s paper on affective haptics—a term the author used to describe the field which “integrates ideas from affective computing, haptic technology, and user experience” [ 41 ]. Also consistent with Huisman’s findings, Askari found that, much like social touch, mediated touch is highly contextualized [ 42 ].…”

“…As suggested by previous literature, context shapes how mediated touch is experienced ( [15][16][17][40][41][42]). We conducted a two-way ANOVA test to investigate the interaction effects between different types of factors (i.e., context) such as sex of the partners, sentiment of the utterances, and type of remote touch (affective, non-affective, or other) on the change in EDA measurements in each utterance.…”

User-defined gestures for mediated social touch on touchscreens

“…It highly depends on context. Some verbal and non-verbal expressions accompany a touching act, and whom we touch, when, and in what manner are regulated through social and personal norms [33]. It is important to take contextual factors into account [33].…”

Manifesto for Digital Social Touch in Crisis

“…Although the authors found an initial effect of digital social touch on helping behavior similar to that of the unmediated Midas touch effect, later research indicated that this might reflect a potential confederate bias, where the effect only occurred when the confederate was aware of the experimental condition (Haans and Ijsselsteijn, 2014). Other studies have looked into how mediated social touch affects interpersonal trust (Erk et al, 2015), can be used to communicate emotions (Huisman and Darriba Frederiks, 2013;Rantala et al, 2013), and examined how textual tone affects the evaluation of mediated social touch (Ipakchian Askari et al, 2020). Embedding digital touch into social sensory contexts of established social touch communication remains complex and raises key design issues for effective mediated social touch.…”

“…We are at a point where despite the success of haptics as a field, and its potentials for social touch. Questions about the successful replication of social touch in mediated environments remain (Haans et al, 2014;Willemse et al, 2017;Askari et al, 2020;Ipakchian Askari et al, 2020) including how technology should be deployed and used for social touch. The manifesto thus speaks back to the technological landscape and asks, is digitally mediated social touch itself in a moment of crisis?…”