Psychology and Technology

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Psychology and Technology

• Development
• Vs.
• Evaluation

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Web-based InstructionSocial Dynamics of On-line
groups
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Conformity On-line

• Smilowitz, Compton Flint (1988)
• Repeated Aschs line experiments
• 69 vs. Aschs 29 ignored other group members
  and gave a correct answer

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Group Polarization On-line

• Spears, Russell Lee (1990)
• Tendency toward Group polarization
• We are more susceptible to group polarization
  on-line than off-line

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Biased Discussion in Work groups

• Hightower Sayeed (1995)
• Review of candidates resumes
• Synchronous chat and on-line voting
• Much more than F2F, on-line groups did not share
  positive information about the losers, nor
  negative information about the winner

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Minority Opinions in On-line Workgroups

• McLeod, Baron, Marti Yoon (1997)
• Choose company for best investment
• F2F vs. synchronous chat
• Only one member given complete information package

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Minority Opinions in On-line Workgroups

• Minority member did present opinion more strongly
  than F2F minority member but was ignored by group
  members
• Group members perceive anonymity as the reason
  the minority member speaks out

www.ncis.navy.mil/Safekids/ images/chat.jpg
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Gender Effects

• Davis, Zaner, Farnum, Marcjun, McCarthy (2002)
• GDSS
• Discussion to generate names for videogames

Under anonymous condition- Equal contribution of
ideas for females and males

• Under identified condition-
• Females contributed less
• Percentage of their ideas voted for dropped

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Electronic Brainstorming

• Connolly (1997)
• When the group is large , electronic
  brainstorming produces better results than F2F
• On-line workgroups not susceptible to Production
  blocking
• Promotes disinhibition

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Trust in Virtual Teams

• Jarvenpaa, Knoll Leidner (1998)
• swift trust
• Frequent interaction
• Positive tone
• Volunteering
• Extra effort to meet commitments

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Your On-Line PersonaImpression Formation Theory

• Who do you want to be?

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Impression Formation Theory

• Goffman (1959)
• Sign activity of two kinds
• the expression given (verbal)
• the expression given off (non-verbal)

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Nonverbal Signs

• includes facial expression, tone of voice,
  gestures, eye contact, spatial arrangements,
  patterns of touch, expressive movement, cultural
  differences, and other "nonverbal" acts.

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• The continuum of verbal and non-verbal behavior
  (Knapp, 1997)

Intrinsic coding
Iconic Coding
Arbitrary Coding
The proximity of the code to its referent
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Types of non-verbal behaviour

• 1. Proxemics space
• 2. Kinesics movement
• 3. Haptics touch
• 4. Oculesics eye movement
• 5. Vocalics non verbal communicative aspects of
  the voice
• 6. Chronemics time

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Innate?

• Cross-cultural similarities in identifying facial
  expression
• Newborns ability to mimic facial expression
• Facial expression not different in blind children
• Babies spend more time gazing at faces that
  maintain eye contact

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Non-verbal Codes

• Are frequently given more credence and are more
  trusted that verbal codes
• Perhaps because it is our first means of
  communication

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Non-verbal codes

• Are continuous and natural
• Are immediate
• Gestural form often resembles the message content
  whereas words have arbitrary meanings
• (e.g., come here)

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Non-verbal codes

• Appear in clusters
• Several channels operate simultaneously and in
  concert with each other
• Are summative

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The social information processing (SIP) theory of
CMC

• (Walther,1992)
• communicators deploy whatever communication cue
  systems they have at their disposal
• When nonverbal cues are unavailable users adapt
  their language, style, and other cues to such
  purposes.

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On-Line impression formation

• cues that shape impressions are
• participants' screen names and descriptions
• "linguistic style" (language intensity, verbal
  immediacy, and lexical diversity)
• paralinguistic cues include "typographical marks
  and other textual features," including the use of
  capital and lowercase letters, exclamation marks,
  typing errors, and emoticons

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Screen Namesand Social Categorization

• timberwolf is a broad shouldered man who wears
  cotton flannel shirts with the sleeves rolled up
  and likes to spend a lot of time outdoors. He
  wears gold wire-frame glasses and his somewhat
  unruly brown hair is starting to go gray. He's
  from the Pacific Northwest so that explains the
  flannel shirt, pseudo-lumberjack outdoorsman
  part. The graying hair goes with his being a
  professor, as do the glasses, although the fact
  that they are gold wire-rim has more to do with
  his name and the fact that he doesn't capitalize
  it, a sort of understated elegance.

Jacobson, 1999
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Emoticons
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Acronyms
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Opportunities for misinterpretation

• In offline interaction, the meaning of "silence"
  may be interpreted with reference to non-verbal
  cues (e.g., facial expressions, posture,
  gestures, proximity),
• "response latency" (Lea Spears, 1995, p. 218)
  in computer-mediated communication may give rise
  to ambiguity and alarm.
• Silence may be construed as agreement,
  disagreement, or indifference it may also be
  taken as a sign of technical trouble

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Discrepancies between on-line and off-line
impressions

• Buford says, "Cardinal surprised me he is softer
  and gentler than I expected."
• R says, "What had led you to expect otherwise?"
• Buford says, "He is terse online. Since I was
  asking mostly dumb questions about how to do
  things in the virtual community, I felt I
  annoyed him or he made me feel as if I were
  annoying him, when it was just his online
  directness. He always answered, but sometimes
  quite briefly... like 'try help'  

Jacobson, 1999
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More opportunities for misinterpretation

• It takes about 4 to 5 times longer to exchange
  messages in computer-mediated communication than
  in face-to-face communication (Walther, 1996),
• people attempt to sustain the flow of interaction
  by typing briefly and quickly taking turns in
  communicating.
• people are "multitasking" and manage diverse
  demands on their time and attention by responding
  briefly and at irregular intervals.