Evaluating the Outcome of Collaborative VR Mind Mapping Sessions with Sentiment Analysis and Emotional Intelligence.

Collaborative brainstorming harbours various positive effects: Enhancement of creativity and social skills, broader discussions and contributions, and instant feedback [ 28 , 46 ], while the technique of mind mapping simultaneously visualises the results of this process. Using a Virtual Reality (VR) application, a technology increasingly adopted for ideation [ 23 , 44 ], this study creates a setting that allows collaborators to produce meaningful results in an immersive digital environment. By nature, group settings remain complex and dynamic, with emotions playing a significant role in the outcome [ 2 ]. So far, emotional responses have mainly been researched through biophysical responses on a single-user basis [ 13 ]. To assess the complex relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and the language-based results of collaborations, a mind-mapping task was analysed through performance and sentiment analysis, a natural language processing (NLP) technique that identifies the polarity of a given text. We examine the outcome of 13 sessions (N=39) in VR by distinguishing the results into problem-orientation and solution-orientation before applying a fine-tuned language model to get detailed information on the emotional polarity of the results. This mixed-level data analysis shall bridge the gap between self-assessment questionnaires and support the automated group work evaluation by analysing results on an objective scale. Although enhanced problem orientation could not be connected to specific emotions in the sentiment analysis, our results have shown significant relationships between the number of solutions created and the emotions of joy and surprise and a significant negative relationship with the emotion of sadness.