Happiness and Fear

Abstract

In February 2016, Facebook launched Reactions, an interactive feature expanding the Like button to include five additional emotional responses: Love, Sadness, Anger, Wow, and Haha. In this article, we examine users’ feedback about this new feature and identify important design implications of this significant modification of Facebook's interface. We did this by applying theories of human emotion and emotion-specific influences on cognitive appraisals to conduct a heuristic evaluation of Facebook Reactions and a thematic content analysis of the 3,000 “top” comments posted by Facebook users on the official pre- and post-launch announcements about Reactions. Prior to launch, many users were concerned that the addition of a Dislike button would lead to abuse; thus, they favored the more nuanced design of Reactions. After launch, users were more positive about the feature as many of their misconceptions were clarified through actual use. Overall, we identified several design constraints of this new feature, including users’ inability to express conflicting emotions. We conclude the article by discussing the implications of our findings and the challenges around research and design for sociotechnical systems that involve complex human emotions.