Investigating the Impact of Emotions on the Quality of Novice Programmers’ Code

This paper examines the impact of emotions on the quality of code for novice programmers while developing in an experimental setting using Python. A relaxation mechanism was additionally-used to explore the possible effect on emotion and programmer performance. Non-invasive EEG was recorded to assess activations in the left and right prefrontal cortex often related to emotions. The quality of code was obtained based on the Code-based Deep Knowledge Tracing method. Contrary to expectations, preliminary results show that positive emotions may contribute to novice programmers generating lower-quality code. Extension of this study may help solidify this relationship while reinforcing the corollary of how negative emotions contribute to code quality and recommendations for how to situate programmers in these varying mental states.