This software reads your emotions via typing style

Can our typing style reveal our emotions? If we believe researchers here, a new computer programme can recognise people's emotions based on how they type.

Can our typing style reveal our emotions? If we believe researchers here, a new computer programme can recognise people's emotions based on how they type.

An emotionally intelligent online system can change teaching style or the contents of its lectures to better adapt to a particular student's emotional state, a team of researchers noted.

'A computer interface that is intelligent enough to interact with humans can detect user emotions and change its behaviour accordingly,' wrote researchers from the Islamic University of Technology in Bangladesh in the study.

During the study, researchers asked people to type a block of sample text.

They then analysed the keystrokes and characteristics to see if they could identify any of seven different emotional states - joy, fear, anger, sadness, disgust, shame and guilt.

The emotions that the programme recognised with the greatest degree of accuracy were joy (87%) and anger (81%).

The emotion-detecting system could be used in applications like online teaching.

The paper appeared in the journal Behavior & Information Technology.