Emotion and Big Data

doi:10.1017/9781108939010.018

13 - Emotion and Big Data

The Elephant in the Room?

from Part III - Algorithmic Behaviour

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 May 2026

Karen Renaud

Edited by

Ganna Pogrebna and

Thomas T. Hills

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Ganna Pogrebna: Affiliation:
The Alan Turing Institute
Thomas T. Hills: Affiliation:
University of Warwick

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Summary

Humans are emotional beings that reason, not reasoning beings that occasionally experience emotions. In fact, emotions are essential to good decision-making. In the world of big data and machine learning, the human potential for emotions can influence the way machine learning systems are developed and deployed and also influence the way they are perceived and used. The two manifestations of emotion that can influence decision-making are bias and noise, both of which have emotional undertones. In this chapter, I consider the impact of emotion, bias and noise and suggest a way to acknowledge and measure their impact in the realm of machine learning and big data.

Keywords

big data machine learning emotion bias noise

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Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Handbook of Behavioural Data Science , pp. 223 - 233
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108939010.018 [Opens in a new window]
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2026

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