How Does a Caller’s Anger, Fear and Sadness Affect Operators’ Decisions in Emergency Calls?

Abstract

Emergency operators must make controlled and rapid decisions about the help to which callers are entitled. These decisions are based on verbal reports, provided over the phone, with the assistance of pre-scripted protocols. The accuracy and speed of the operators' assessments, discriminating severe cases from less severe cases, saves lives as well as provides for equal care of callers. Research on the role played by the caller's emotional expressions in these decisions is inconclusive. Rather than examining the situation itself and the words used to communicate it, this study considers the emotional content of calls to operators as expressed through non-verbal means.Previous studies claim operators are exposed to caller's vivid emotions (Whalen & Zimmerman, 1998) and that the caller's emotional stance, which may range from keeping calm to losing control, is crucial for operators' understanding and assessment of emergency calls (Alfsen, Møller, Egerod & Lippert, 2015). Other studies claim that the emotional content of emergency calls is less dramatic than the public considers them to be. The latter assume that emotional expressions do not influence operators' protocol-based decision making. For instance, Eisenberg et al. (1986) showed the mean emotional content of calls about cardiac arrest to be only slightly elevated in comparison to non-arrest calls. Using the same scale, Clawson and Sinclair (2001) and Ma et al. (2007) later confirmed these findings and, further, noted a general lack of negative emotional expressions (i.e., hysterical callers) in emergency cardiac arrest calls.Thus, examining the role of vocally expressed emotions in fast, accurate and formalized decision-making of operators is a divisive pursuit and questions remain unanswered. Nonetheless, a growing body of research addresses how discrete emotional expressions are vital for decision making in other organizational settings (Van Kleef, DeDreu & Manstead, 2010;Van Kleef, Homan & Cheshin, 2012). In that research, emotional expressions are social signals that inform perceivers about both the characteristics of the expresser and particularities of the setting (Hareli & Hess, 2010).Using a narrow scope of emotions, such as the level of "hysteria", and a joint measure for emotions and decision making, as was done in previous emergency operator studies, the work of Eisenberg et al. (1986), Clawson and Sinclair (2001) and Ma et al. (2007), 1 stands in contrast to the more recent studies by Van Kleef, DeDreu and Manstead (2010) and Hareli and Hess (2010) on the role of discrete emotions. Making aggregated assessments of emotional expression in calls about a certain decision category (cardiac arrest), rather than focusing on different types of emotions in relation to a range of emergency decisions, raises the risk of not capturing the true influence of emotional expressions on emergency assessment. For instance, making aggregated ratings of emotional expressions fails to recognize the nuanced information that discrete emotions (such as anger, fear a...

Emotions in telephone calls to emergency medical services involving out-of-hospital cardiac arrest: A scoping review

“…, 20. , 21. were identified via manual/ post-hoc search, and also included for full text review ( Fig.…”

“…All studies involved review of audio recordings of the emergency calls to EMS regarding OHCAs. Most of the included studies (except Chin et al 14 and Svensson and Pesämaa 21 ) employed an opportunistic and consecutive sampling approach, within a certain time period chosen by the authors. On the other hand, Svensson and Pesämaa 21 prospectively sampled and rated the first EMS call in every 30-minute block.…”

“…Most of the included studies (except Chin et al 14 and Svensson and Pesämaa 21 ) employed an opportunistic and consecutive sampling approach, within a certain time period chosen by the authors. On the other hand, Svensson and Pesämaa 21 prospectively sampled and rated the first EMS call in every 30-minute block. Chin et al 14 reviewed the calls’ recordings primarily for the purpose of calibration/validation of their new artificial intelligence (AI) models.…”

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“…Therefore, the information gleaned from customers’ emotional displays conveying suffering or need can potentially be adaptive for employees to be more effective at enacting their role. Supporting this logic, researchers have found that distressed emotional expressions can prompt others’ helpfulness both in general (Eisenberg et al., ) as well as in employee service interactions (Svensson & Pesämaa, ).…”

Mediating Role of Stress at Work in the Relationship of Alexithymia and PTSD among Emergency Call Operators

“…Public-Safety Answering Point operators are often confronted with demanding situations where the decision to provide help must be made within seconds. The caller must be supported and understood [ 2 , 3 ], and the emergency operators are required to actively translate callers’ excited, often frantic expressions of need into pragmatic, real-time decisions [ 4 ]. Operators are also exposed to lively, intense, and infectious caller emotions [ 5 ].…”