EMOTIONS IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGYBy: Dean Winters

COMPUTER PEOPLE HAVE EMOTIONS TOO

Even though everything that goes on with computers is just 1s and 0s, there are still situations that happen because of people’s emotions.

Here I’ll go through how those emotions can effect the on-goings of IT or at least something along those lines.

SURPRISE! THERE’S AN ARTICLE WITH THIS ONE TOO

Unlike my previous SlideShares, I found a scholarly article instead of just an article from a website.

This one is The Other Side of Acceptance: Studying the Direct and Indirect Effects of Emotion on Information Technology Use by Anne Beaudry.

While this article doesn’t directly apply to Information Technology organizations, it does apply to emotions and information Technology.

THE ARTICLE SUMMED UP

The article uses a study that had 249 bank managers use IT in order to accomplish tasks and the emotions were recorded in 4 categories: excitement, happiness, anger, and anxiety.

Excitement increased while using IT, happiness decreased, anger increased when confronting problems in a social setting, and anxiety decreased. Although the anger gained from social encounters counter-acted the anxiety decrease.

The research is helpful, but much more needs to be done for these results to be more solidified.

THEORIES!

Emotional labor comes in to play a lot here since most of the research from the article shows that when people use IT they get irritated.

Since people generally are more fearless when they are behind a computer screen, workplace bullying can occur and this obviously puts a strain on the victim as well as anyone that has to handle the situation.

Other tensions in relationships both public and private can happen as a result from IT irritation as well.

SPECIFICS!

IT is in almost all organizations in today’s world, so everyone has to do their best not to break down from it if they start to have issues.

Having some sort of way for people to release emotional tensions, whether they’re caused by IT or by any of the other reasons, like exercise equipment or counseling would make the emotional well-being much higher.

Working on emotions in organizations can also lead to beneficial alliances and relationships.

QUESTIONS!

When is more research going to be done on this? Will IT eventually be something that relaxes us more that it

irritates us? Will social media become more and more of a part of our

business lives? All these and more might be answered later!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beaudry, A. (n.d.). Retrieved March 30, 2016, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25750701?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents