Mobile agents in crisis situations - adapting information to user’s affective state

Emotion has been found to influence humans’ cognitive information processing and decision-making (Schwarz, 2000). A state of sadness, for example, is accompanied by substantive information processing, with greater attention to detail, whereas people in a happier state tend to process information more heuristically. Mobile applications or services presenting information to users, especially those used primarily in emotionally laden contexts, could adapt information presentation to users’ current emotional state to improve compliance. This paper reports the results of an 2x2 between-subject survey experiment (N=91) with affective state (happy vs. sad) and information presentation style (heuristic vs. substantive) as dimensions. The results confirm that participants in a sad affective state are more likely to comply with mobile agents’ advice when information is tailored to a substantive processing style. They base decisions on substantive information and provide longer descriptions. In contrast, people in a happy affective state prefer heuristic information. These findings reinforce the importance of affect-sensitive adaptation, especially for mobile agents in potentially emotionally laden contexts.