Abstract
This study focused on the influence of contents of e-mail messages on the occurrences of emotions in communications by e-mail. This paper consists of "Study 1" and "Study 2". In Study 1, 62 university students were randomly paired and asked to participate in an e-mail communication. Using the data obtained from the communication, multiple regression analyses were conducted to investigate the influence of the received e-mail contents and receivers' emotional aspects. The influence of these factors -"emoticons", "answer of gender", "question", "emphasis sign", and "number of characters" - was shown in the results. Subsequently, in Study 2, e-mail messages which were manipulated with the above factors were presented to 23 subjects and their emotions when reading the e-mails were measured. The results obtained generally supported the influence of these factors on the occurrences of emotions in communications by e-mail. The results suggested that e-mail communication becomes positive when self-assertion is not strengthened, but when on the contrary, a relation with a partner is valued, and emoticons are utilized.
