Understanding the Affect of Developers: Theoretical Background and Guidelines for Psychoempirical Software Engineering

TL;DR

This paper emphasizes the importance of understanding developers' emotions and moods in software engineering, reviews affect theory, and offers guidelines for integrating psychological measurements into research.

Contribution

It highlights challenges, reviews affect theory comprehensively, and proposes guidelines for psychoempirical software engineering research.

Findings

Identifies misconceptions in affect-related SE research

Provides a comprehensive review of affect theory

Proposes guidelines for psychoempirical studies

Abstract

Affects---emotions and moods---have an impact on cognitive processing activities and the working performance of individuals. It has been established that software development tasks are undertaken through cognitive processing activities. Therefore, we have proposed to employ psychology theory and measurements in software engineering (SE) research. We have called it "psychoempirical software engineering". However, we found out that existing SE research has often fallen into misconceptions about the affect of developers, lacking in background theory and how to successfully employ psychological measurements in studies. The contribution of this paper is threefold. (1) It highlights the challenges to conduct proper affect-related studies with psychology; (2) it provides a comprehensive literature review in affect theory; and (3) it proposes guidelines for conducting psychoempirical software engineering.