Inside Out or Not: Privacy Implications of Emotional Disclosure

TL;DR

This study explores how emotions influence personal information sharing, revealing that emotional states affect privacy behaviors differently across social ties and locations, with potential detection via physiological signals.

Contribution

It introduces a novel methodology combining context, emotion, and sharing behavior analysis, providing new insights into emotion-driven privacy decisions.

Findings

Self-reported emotions influence sharing with distant social groups.

Neutral emotions lead to less precise sharing with close circles.

Electrodermal activity can potentially detect emotional states related to sharing patterns.

Abstract

Privacy is dynamic, sensitive, and contextual, much like our emotions. Previous studies have explored the interplay between privacy and context, privacy and emotion, and emotion and context. However, there remains a significant gap in understanding the interplay of these aspects simultaneously. In this paper, we present a preliminary study investigating the role of emotions in driving individuals' information sharing behaviour, particularly in relation to urban locations and social ties. We adopt a novel methodology that integrates context (location and time), emotion, and personal information sharing behaviour, providing a comprehensive analysis of how contextual emotions affect privacy. The emotions are assessed with both self-reporting and electrodermal activity (EDA). Our findings reveal that self-reported emotions influence personal information-sharing behaviour with distant social groups, while neutral emotions lead individuals to share less precise information with close social circles, a pattern is potentially detectable with wrist-worn EDA. Our study helps lay the foundation for personalised emotion-aware strategies to mitigate oversharing risks and enhance user privacy in the digital age.