Toward a model of emotions and mood in the online information search process

This article reports the results of a study that examined relationships between primary emotions, secondary emotions, and mood in the online information search context. During the experiment, participants were asked to search Google to obtain information on the two given search tasks. Participants’ primary emotions were inferred from analysis of their facial expressions, data on secondary emotions were obtained through participant interviews, and mood was measured using the Positive Affect Negative Affect Scale (PANAS; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) prior, during, and after the search. The search process was represented by the collection of search actions, search performance, and search outcome quality variables. The findings suggest existence of direct relationships between primary emotions and search actions, which in turn imply the possibility of inferring emotions from search actions and vice versa. The link between secondary emotions and searchers’ evaluative judgments, and lack of evidence of any relationships between secondary emotions and other search process variables, point to the strengths and weaknesses of self-reported emotion measures in understanding searchers’ affective experiences. Our study did not find strong relationships between mood and search process and outcomes, indicating that while mood can have a limited effect on search activities, it is a relatively stable and long-lasting state that cannot be easily altered by the search experience and, in turn, cannot significantly affect the search. The article proposes a model of relationships between emotions, mood, and several facets of the search process. Directions for future work are also discussed.