Happy software developers solve problems better: psychological measurements in empirical software engineering

For more than thirty years, it has been claimed that a way to improve software developers’ productivity and software quality is to focus on people and to provide incentives to make developers satisfied and happy. This claim has rarely been verified in software engineering research, which faces an additional challenge in comparison to more traditional engineering fields: software development is an intellectual activity and is dominated by often-neglected human factors (called human aspects in software engineering research). Among the many skills required for software development, developers must possess high analytical problem-solving skills and creativity for the software construction process. According to psychology research, affective states—emotions and moods—deeply influence the cognitive processing abilities and performance of workers, including creativity and analytical problem solving. Nonetheless, little research has investigated the correlation between the affective states, creativity, and analytical problem-solving performance of programmers. This article echoes the call to employ psychological measurements in software engineering research. We report a study with 42 participants to investigate the relationship between the affective states, creativity, and analytical problem-solving skills of software developers. The results offer support for the claim that happy developers are indeed better problem solvers in terms of their analytical abilities. The following contributions are made by this study: (1) providing a better understanding of the impact of affective states on the creativity and analytical problem-solving capacities of developers, (2) introducing and validating psychological measurements, theories, and concepts of affective states, creativity, and analytical-problem-solving skills in empirical software engineering, and (3) raising the need for studying the human factors of software engineering by employing a multidisciplinary viewpoint.

[1]  Pekka Abrahamsson,et al.  Are Happy Developers more Productive? The Correlation of Affective States of Software Developers and their self-assessed Productivity , 2013, PROFES.

[2]  J. M. Cortina,et al.  What Is Coefficient Alpha? An Examination of Theory and Applications , 1993 .

[3]  António Caetano,et al.  Validation of the Flourishing Scale and Scale of Positive and Negative Experience in Portugal , 2011, Social Indicators Research.

[4]  C. D. De Dreu,et al.  A meta-analysis of 25 years of mood-creativity research: hedonic tone, activation, or regulatory focus? , 2008, Psychological bulletin.

[5]  Claudio Ciborra,et al.  Improvisation and Information Technology in Organizations , 1996, ICIS.

[6]  S. Brand,et al.  How do we learn in a negative mood? Effects of a negative mood on transfer and learning , 2007 .

[7]  Jan Zabojnik,et al.  Work-related perks, agency problems, and optimal incentive contracts , 2008 .

[8]  R Gary,et al.  APA Dictionary of Clinical Psychology , 2012 .

[9]  M. Forgeard.  Happy people thrive on adversity: Pre-existing mood moderates the effect of emotion inductions on creative thinking , 2011 .

[10]  A. Cropley.  In Praise of Convergent Thinking , 2006 .

[11]  Teresa M. Amabile,et al.  Affect and Creativity at Work , 2005 .

[12]  Ian Sommerville,et al.  Human, Social and Organisational Influences on the Software Process , 2007 .

[13]  David P. Darcy,et al.  Exploring Individual Characteristics and Programming Performance: Implications for Programmer Selection , 2005, Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[14]  N. Schwarz.  Feelings as information: Informational and motivational functions of affective states. , 1990 .

[15]  T. Shallice.  Specific impairments of planning. , 1982, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences.

[16]  Robert M. Hierons,et al.  Do moods affect programmers’ debug performance? , 2011, Cognition, Technology & Work.

[17]  Fatma Sapmaz,et al.  THE ROLE OF SELF-ESTEEM, PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL - BEING, EMOTIONAL SELF - EFFICACY, AND AFFECT BALANCE ON HAPPINESS: A PATH MODEL , 2013 .

[18]  Tore Dybå.  Improvisation in Small Software Organizations , 2000, IEEE Software.

[19]  HighWire Press.  Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London , 1781, The London Medical Journal.

[20]  E. Thompson.  Development and Validation of an Internationally Reliable Short-Form of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) , 2007 .

[21]  Sigal G. Barsade,et al.  Why Does Affect Matter in Organizations , 2007 .

[22]  G. Kaufmann,et al.  'Paradoxical' Mood Effects on Creative Problem-solving , 1997 .

[23]  Andrew G. Miner,et al.  State mood, task performance, and behavior at work: A within-persons approach , 2010 .

[24]  J. George,et al.  Understanding when bad moods foster creativity and good ones don't: the role of context and clarity of feelings. , 2002, The Journal of applied psychology.

[25]  S. Lyubomirsky,et al.  The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success? , 2005, Psychological bulletin.

[26]  F. Hesse,et al.  Relative effectiveness and validity of mood induction procedures : a meta-analysis , 1996 .

[27]  L. Cronbach.  Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests , 1951 .

[28]  Kristen M. Shockley,et al.  A Meta-Analytic Investigation of the Relationship Between State Affect, Discrete Emotions, and Job Performance , 2012 .

[29]  T. M. Amabile.  Social psychology of creativity: A consensual assessment technique. , 1982 .

[30]  Shari Lawrence Pfleeger,et al.  Preliminary Guidelines for Empirical Research in Software Engineering , 2002, IEEE Trans. Software Eng..

[31]  D. Sgroi,et al.  Happiness and Productivity , 2015, Journal of Labor Economics.

[32]  G. Clore,et al.  Mood, misattribution, and judgments of well-being: Informative and directive functions of affective states. , 1983 .

[33]  Cynthia D. Fisher,et al.  Mood and emotions while working: missing pieces of job satisfaction? , 2000 .

[34]  Gerhard Fischer,et al.  Cognitive View of Reuse and Redesign , 1987, IEEE Software.

[35]  Shane T. Mueller,et al.  Executive function on the Psychology Experiment Building Language tests , 2011, Behavior Research Methods.

[36]  Ralf Romeike,et al.  Creativity as a pathway to computer science , 2008, ITiCSE.

[37]  Chu Kim-prieto,et al.  New Well-being Measures: Short Scales to Assess Flourishing and Positive and Negative Feelings , 2010 .

[38]  Neal M. Ashkanasy,et al.  The emerging role of emotions in work life: An introduction. , 2000 .

[39]  Paul T. Sowden,et al.  Creative feelings: the effect of mood on creative ideation and evaluation , 2011, C&C '11.

[40]  Remus Ilies,et al.  Understanding the dynamic relationships among personality, mood, and job satisfaction: A field experience sampling study , 2002 .

[41]  Walter F. Tichy,et al.  Hints for Reviewing Empirical Work in Software Engineering , 2000, Empirical Software Engineering.

[42]  M. Csíkszentmihályi.  Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life , 1997 .

[43]  Lefteris Angelis,et al.  Links between the personalities, views and attitudes of software engineers , 2010, Inf. Softw. Technol..

[44]  Mark A. Davis.  Understanding the relationship between mood and creativity: A meta-analysis , 2009 .

[45]  E. Holmes,et al.  Induction of Depressed Mood Disrupts Emotion Regulation Neurocircuitry and Enhances Pain Unpleasantness , 2010, Biological Psychiatry.

[46]  J. Funke,et al.  The role of emotions in complex problem solving , 2005 .

[47]  J. Henry,et al.  The positive and negative affect schedule (PANAS): construct validity, measurement properties and normative data in a large non-clinical sample. , 2004, The British journal of clinical psychology.

[48]  Agile Manifesto,et al.  Manifesto for Agile Software Development , 2001 .

[49]  Georgios Kouroupetroglou,et al.  Towards modeling of Readers’ Emotional State response for the automated annotation of documents , 2008, 2008 IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence).

[50]  A. Cockburn,et al.  Agile Software Development: The People Factor , 2001, Computer.

[51]  Teresa M. Amabile,et al.  Creativity and Innovation in Organizations , 1996 .

[52]  Catherine M. Stoney,et al.  Depressed Mood Is Related to High-Frequency Heart Rate Variability During Stressors , 2000, Psychosomatic medicine.

[53]  Michael A. West,et al.  A test of basic assumptions of Affective Events Theory (AET) in call centre work , 2006 .

[54]  Richard E. Lucas,et al.  Subjective Weil-Being: Three Decades of Progress , 2004 .

[55]  Claes Wohlin,et al.  Using Students as Subjects—A Comparative Study of Students and Professionals in Lead-Time Impact Assessment , 2000, Empirical Software Engineering.

[56]  Ray J. Paul,et al.  The Labyrinths of Information: Challenging the Wisdom of Systems , 2005, Eur. J. Inf. Syst..

[57]  R. Paul.  Review of "The labyrinths of information: Challenging the wisdoms of systems" by Claudio Ciborra, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 2002 , 2005 .

[58]  Laurie A. Williams,et al.  Agile software development: it's about feedback and change , 2003, Computer.

[59]  Barry W. Boehm,et al.  Understanding and Controlling Software Costs , 1988, IEEE Trans. Software Eng..

[60]  R Core Team,et al.  R: A language and environment for statistical computing. , 2014 .

[61]  G. Clore,et al.  Mood as Information: 20 Years Later , 2003 .

[62]  R. J. Melton,et al.  The Role of Positive Affect in Syllogism Performance , 1995 .

[63]  Martin Guha,et al.  APA Dictionary of Clinical Psychology , 2013 .

[64]  Christina T. Fong,et al.  The effects of emotional ambivalence on creativity , 2003 .

[65]  Ricardo Colomo Palacios,et al.  A Study of Emotions in Requirements Engineering , 2010, WSKS.

[66]  Paul M. Muchinsky,et al.  Emotions in the workplace: the neglect of organizational behavior , 2000 .

[67]  Brian Knutson,et al.  Cultural variation in affect valuation. , 2006, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[68]  D. Watson,et al.  Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: the PANAS scales. , 1988, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[69]  Robert L. Glass,et al.  Software tasks: Intellectual or clerical? , 1992, Inf. Manag..

[70]  H. Weiss,et al.  Affective Events Theory: A theoretical discussion of the structure, causes and consequences of affective experiences at work. , 1996 .

[71]  Yong Wang,et al.  The Scale of Positive and Negative Experience (SPANE): Psychometric Properties and Normative Data in a Large Chinese Sample , 2013, PloS one.

[72]  Shane T. Mueller,et al.  The Psychology Experiment Building Language (PEBL) and PEBL Test Battery , 2014, Journal of Neuroscience Methods.

[73]  Patrik Berander,et al.  Using students as subjects in requirements prioritization , 2004, Proceedings. 2004 International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering, 2004. ISESE '04..

[74]  James C. Kaufman,et al.  Captions, consistency, creativity, and the consensual assessment technique: New evidence of reliability , 2007 .

[75]  George V. Neville-Neil.  Kode Vicious Wanton Acts of Debuggery , 2012 .

[76]  Elizabeth Gerber,et al.  Affective computational priming and creativity , 2011, CHI.

[77]  E. Higgins,et al.  Handbook of motivation and cognition : foundations of social behavior , 1991 .