Exploring Indicators of Developers' Sentiment Perceptions in Student Software Projects

TL;DR

This study investigates how individual traits, circumstances, and group dynamics influence developers' perception of sentiment in text messages within student software projects, revealing variability and ambiguity in sentiment interpretation.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence on the factors affecting sentiment perception in software development, highlighting the variability and context-dependence of sentiment labels.

Findings

Sentiment perception is moderately stable within individuals.

Label changes are concentrated on ambiguous statements.

Higher mood traits correlate with more positive sentiment labeling.

Abstract

Communication is a crucial social factor in the success of software projects, as positively or negatively perceived statements can influence how recipients feel and affect team collaboration through emotional contagion. Whether a developer perceives a written message as positive, negative, or neutral is likely shaped by multiple factors. In this paper, we investigate how mood traits and states, life circumstances, project phases, and group dynamics relate to the perception of text-based messages in software development. We conducted a four-round survey study with 81 students in team-based software projects. Across rounds, participants reported these factors and labeled 30 decontextualized statements for sentiment, including meta-data on labeling rationale and uncertainty. Our results show: (1) Sentiment perception is only moderately stable within individuals, and label changes concentrate on ambiguity-prone statements; (2) Correlation-level signals are small and do not survive global multiple-testing correction; (3) In statement-level repeated-measures models (GEE), higher mood trait and reactivity are associated with more positive (and less neutral) labeling, while predictors of negative labeling are weaker and at most trend-level (e.g., task conflict); (4) We find no clear evidence of systematic project-phase effects. Overall, sentiment perception varies within persons and is strongly statement-dependent. Although our study was conducted in an academic setting, the observed variability and ambiguity effects suggest caution when interpreting sentiment analysis outputs and motivate future work with contextualized, in-project communication.