SmileWave: sensing and analysis of smile-based emotional contagion over social network: poster abstract

This paper proposes SmileWave, a system for revealing smile-based emotional contagion, propagation effect of the similar emotion through smiley facial expression, on the social network where users interact each other through web-based user interface rather than in-person interaction. SmileWave is a picture-based networking service and detects the change of smile degree when the user looks at posted smile images of others. Our extensive user study with 50 participants for 30 days confirmed the emotional contagion effect on SmileWave. Users' smile degree improved by 27% when the user looked at posted smile images. The result also proved that there is a stronger effect on smile-based emotional contagion when the examinee and the person in the image are in close relationship.