Investigating users' affective load in collaborative search

This paper draws on affective load theory to explore the characteristics of users' affective load in collaborative searching. In this experimental study, a total of 32 participants were recruited and divided into 16 pair-groups. Each pair-group collaboratively completed three search tasks in the Coagmento system. Users reported more irritation than anxiety, frustration, and rage. Moreover, the greater a task's perceived difficulty, the higher the irritation, anxiety and frustration felt by users. Users' affective load was higher when they spent more time on a search than they expected to. Conversely, their sense of retrieval success, self-motivation to search contributed to reducing users' perceived affective load, but not as much as satisfaction with collaborative search results, and satisfaction with collaborative task outcomes did.