Email Makes You Sweat: Examining Email Interruptions and Stress Using Thermal Imaging
Abstract
Workplace environments are characterized by frequent interruptions that can lead to stress. However, measures of stress due to interruptions are typically obtained through self-reports, which can be affected by memory and emotional biases. In this paper, we use a thermal imaging system to obtain objective measures of stress and investigate personality differences in contexts of high and low interruptions. Since a major source of workplace interruptions is email, we studied 63 participants while multitasking in a controlled office environment with two different email contexts: managing email in batch mode or with frequent interruptions. We discovered that people who score high in Neuroticism are significantly more stressed in batching environments than those low in Neuroticism. People who are more stressed finish emails faster. Last, using Linguistic Inquiry Word Count on the email text, we find that higher stressed people in multitasking environments use more anger in their emails. These findings help to disambiguate prior conflicting results on email batching and stress.
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For neurotic individuals, batched email is more stressful than continually incoming email.
“Analyzing a subset of the data presented in this paper, we reported in CHI’1913 that for neurotic individuals batched email is more stressful than continually incoming email.”
From Stress and productivity patterns of interrupted, synergistic, and antagonistic office activities (2019) · cites this paper as [13]
Cites
A diary study of task switching and interruptions
Czerwinski, M., Horvitz, E., & Wilhite, S. (2004) · Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/985692.985715 · Cited by 830 · see citing works
The cost of interrupted work: more speed and stress
Mark, G., Gudith, D., & Klocke, U. (2008) · Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/1357054.1357072 · Cited by 728 · cited 2× · see citing works
“This result is consistent with a study showing that when participants worked in an environment with interruptions from phone and instant messaging, their stress increased (measured by self-report), and they inished emails quicker [32].”
BackgroundResultSelf-citationGillespie, N. A., Walsh, M., Winefield, A. H., Dua, J., & Stough, C. (2001) · Work & Stress · doi:10.1080/02678370117944 · Cited by 695 · see citing works
E-mail as a source and symbol of stress
Barley, S. R., Meyerson, D. E., & Grodal, S. (2011) · Organization Science · doi:10.1287/orsc.1100.0573 · Cited by 637 · see citing works
Activity-Aware Mental Stress Detection Using Physiological Sensors
Sun, F.-T., Kuo, C., Cheng, H.-T., Buthpitiya, S., Collins, P., & Griss, M. (2012) · Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering · doi:10.1007/978-3-642-29336-8_12 · Cited by 292 · see citing works
Checking email less frequently reduces stress
Kushlev, K., & Dunn, E. W. (2015) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2014.11.005 · Cited by 238 · see citing works
Email overload at work: an analysis of factors associated with email strain
Dabbish, L. A., & Kraut, R. E. (2006) · Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work · doi:10.1145/1180875.1180941 · Cited by 238 · see citing works
"A pace not dictated by electrons"
Mark, G., Voida, S., & Cardello, A. (2012) · Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/2207676.2207754 · Cited by 221 · cited 1× · see citing works
“Email can disrupt focus: cutting of email for ive days caused information workers to increase their task focus and lower their stress [34].”
BackgroundSelf-citationEmail Duration, Batching and Self-interruption: Patterns of Email Use on Productivity and Stress
Mark, G., Iqbal, S. T., Czerwinski, M., Johns, P., Sano, A., & Lutchyn, Y. (2016) · Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/2858036.2858262 · Cited by 160 · cited 7× · see citing works
“[9, 33, 40, 57, 61, 66], is that it enables us to precisely synchronize the stress measure with time and/or tasks.”
BackgroundResultInfluentialSelf-citationUsing mental load for managing interruptions in physiologically attentive user interfaces
Chen, D., & Vertegaal, R. (2004) · CHI '04 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/985921.986103 · Cited by 120 · see citing works
Züger, M., Müller, S. C., Meyer, A. N., & Fritz, T. (2018) · Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3173574.3174165 · Cited by 66 · cited 1× · see citing works
“[9, 33, 40, 57, 61, 66], is that it enables us to precisely synchronize the stress measure with time and/or tasks.”
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Stress and productivity patterns of interrupted, synergistic, and antagonistic office activities
Zaman, S., Wesley, A., Silva, D. R. D. C., Buddharaju, P., Akbar, F., Gao, G., Mark, G., Gutierrez-Osuna, R., & Pavlidis, I. (2019) · Scientific Data · doi:10.1038/s41597-019-0249-5 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
Self-citationFor whom and under what circumstances does email message batching work?
Wijngaards, I., Pronk, F. R., & Burger, M. J. (2022) · Internet Interventions · doi:10.1016/j.invent.2022.100494 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
- Authors
- Akbar, F., Bayraktaroglu, A. E., Buddharaju, P., Da Cunha Silva, D. R., Gao, G., Grover, T., Gutierrez-Osuna, R., Jones, N. C., Mark, G., Pavlidis, I., Storer, K., Wang, Z., Wesley, A., & Zaman, S.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA
- University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA
- Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA
- Venue
- Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2019-05-02
- Pages
- 1-14
- Cited by
- 26
- References
- 11
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (1704889)
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