LAUSR

& THIS ARTICLE ANALYZES the interplay between gender and keystroke dynamics, i.e., the way people type as opposed to what they type. In particular, the experiments show that people of different gender tend to type differently when they interact through live-chat interfaces like those available in popular products such as Whatsapp or Skype. The analysis of the results shows that the differences concern mostly the expression of affective states, the way of conveying social presence, and the frequency of planning problems (the difficulties in deciding what to type next). In addition, the experiments show that the differences are sufficiently consistent to allow automatic gender recognition with accuracy higher than 95%. In other words, typing behavior appears to be a reliable gender marker, at least in the case of the interaction through text-based live-chats. One of the main features of social interaction is the pervasive use of nonverbal behavioral cues (facial expressions, gestures, vocalizations, etc.) conveying socially and psychologically relevant information such as attitudes, emotions, personality, gender, etc. Social psychology has extensively investigated the phenomenon in the case of face-to-face interactions in which people have at disposition their natural means of expression (face, body, voice, etc.). However, it is still relatively unclear what happens when communication takes place through technologies (e.g., live-chats and messaging systems) that do not allow the use of nonverbal cues. In other words, it is still relatively unclear whether communication mediated by such technologies involves a nonverbal component and, if yes, whether there are nonverbal cues that convey Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MIS.2019.2948514