Using Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) to Measure Trust and Cognitive Load in the Text-Chat Environment.

Exchanging text messages via software on smart phones and computers has recently become one of the most popular ways for people to communicate and accomplish their tasks. However, there are negative aspects to using this kind of software, for example, it has been found that people communicating in the text-chat environment may experience a lack of trust and may face different levels of cognitive load [1, 11]. This study examines a novel way to measure interpersonal trust and cognitive load when they overlap with each other in the text-chat environment. We used Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), a physiological measurement, to collect data from twenty-eight subjects at four gradients and overlapping conditions between trust and cognitive load. The findings show that the GSR signals were significantly affected by both trust and cognitive load and provide promising evidence that GSR can be used as a tool for measuring interpersonal trust when cognitive load is low and also for measuring cognitive load when trust is high.