Abstract. Emotions are an important element of human interactions, including those in social media. Despite the prominence of text-based messages in online communication, little is known about how the emotional tone of the messages affects the emotions of the recipients. With three experiments, the current study investigated these effects in the context of online news discussions. Participants first read news discussion threads with a negative, neutral, and positive tone, and then rated their subjective emotional state in terms of valence and arousal. Results showed that negatively toned discussions induced more negative valence and higher arousal ratings than the other conditions. Positive discussions had an opposite effect. Emotionally toned online comments evidently affect the quality and the intensity of the readers’ subjective emotions. We discuss implications for future research and emotion mitigation strategies to improve online discussion quality.

中文翻译：

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情绪化的在线讨论唤起主观体验的情绪反应

摘要。情绪是人类互动的重要元素，包括社交媒体中的互动。尽管基于文本的消息在在线交流中占有重要地位，但人们对消息的情绪基调如何影响接收者的情绪知之甚少。通过三个实验，当前的研究在在线新闻讨论的背景下调查了这些影响。参与者首先以消极、中性和积极的语气阅读新闻讨论线程，然后根据效价和唤醒度对他们的主观情绪状态进行评分。结果表明，与其他条件相比，负面的讨论会引起更多的负面效价和更高的唤醒等级。积极的讨论产生了相反的效果。情绪化的在线评论明显影响读者主观情绪的质量和强度。