How Differing Audiences Were Associated with User Emotional Expression on a Well-Being App

In the last five years, there has been an explosion of mobile apps that aim to impact emotional well-being, yet limited research examined ways users interact, and specifically write develop a therapeutic alliance within these apps. Writing is developmental practice in which narrator transforms amorphous thoughts emotions into expressions, according narrative theory, linguistic characteristics writing can be understood as physical manifestation narrator’s affect. Informed by literacy theorists who have argued convincingly narrators address different audiences ways, we used IBM Watson’s Natural Language Processing software (IBM Watson NLP) examine how expression emotion on well-being app differed depending audience. Our findings demonstrate audience was strongly associated with way expressed writing. When explicit wrote longer narratives, less sadness, anger, disgust, fear, more joy, direct relevance for researchers design.