Full length articleI hear but I don't see you: Interacting over phone reduces the accuracy of perceiving affiliation in the other
Introduction
Social relationships are critical for psychological and physical health (Cacioppo et al., 2002, Cohen, 2004, Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010). Research exploring the influence of the medium of interaction on the quality of social relationships has generally converged in concluding that, relative to technology-mediated interactions (e.g., text messaging, video chat, instant messaging), in-person (i.e., face-to-face) interactions are characterized by enhanced intrapersonal and interpersonal outcomes, such as higher positive affect (Holtzman, DeClerck, Turcotte, Lisi, & Woodworth, 2017), higher satisfaction of belongingness need (Sacco & Ismail, 2014), and greater bonding experience (Sherman, Michikyan, & Greenfield, 2013). Little is known about the mechanisms accounting for these outcomes. Accurately perceiving the other's affiliative behavior may be one such mechanism. Interpersonal Theory defines affiliative behaviors as acts that affirm the person's connection, closeness with, and love for the other (Moskowitz, 1994). Accurately perceiving the other's affiliative behavior may enhance social connection, therefore contributing to higher quality of in-person interactions. We used an event-contingent recording (ECR) methodology to compare romantic partners' in-person interactions with phone-mediated interactions with respect to perceiver's accuracy of perceiving affiliative behavior. Given that the perception of similarity with the other may elicit positive emotions (Montoya, Horton, & Kirchner, 2008), which consequently may enhance social connection, we further explored whether medium of interaction affected the extent to which a perceiver assumed similarity with a romantic partner's affiliative behavior.
The accuracy of interpersonal perception can be defined as the correspondence between perception and interpersonal reality. Perception accuracy has been operationalized in various ways (see Fletcher & Kerr, 2010). Tracking accuracy is measured with the correlation coefficient; the degree of association between a perceiver's perception of a target's characteristic (e.g., affiliative behavior) and a benchmark representing the target's characteristic (e.g., target's self-report of affiliative behavior; Fletcher & Kerr, 2010; Gagne & Lydon, 2004; West & Kenny, 2011). This measure of accuracy quantifies the degree to which the perceiver's perception of affiliative behavior accurately tracks changes in the target's affiliative behavior (West & Kenny, 2011).
Interpersonal perception can be biased. Perceptual biases may involve any valid or invalid information other than the truth that influences perception (West & Kenny, 2011). Bias of assumed similarity emerges from perceivers' reliance on their self-knowledge as a heuristic for making judgments about the target's characteristic. A measure of this type of bias is the strength of the association (i.e., correlation) between perceivers' self-assessment on the characteristic and their perception of the target's level on that characteristic (Kenny & Acitelli, 2001; Schul & Vinokur, 2000).
Several theories provide support for the expectation of enhanced accuracy of perception of affiliative behavior during in-person interactions relative to phone-mediated interactions. Cue-filtered-out theories (Daft and Lengel, 1984, Daft and Lengel, 1986, Culnan and Markus, 1987; Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976) suggest that in-person interactions are characterized by rich and effective communication, supplied by a range of channels through which verbal (e.g., tone, volume) and nonverbal cues (e.g., facial expressions, gestures, posture) are expressed and received. This rich communication enhances social presence and visceral immersion, provides important contextual information, enhances synchronous exchanges, reduces communication ambiguity, and permits nuanced and coordinated interaction (Burgoon, Bonito, Ramirez, Dunbar, Kam, & Fischer, 2002). Media compensation theory (Hantula, Kock, D’Arcy, & DeRosa, 2011) suggests that the human biological communication apparatus has evolved primarily to process social communication between physically present individuals. In-person communication is characterized by a set of distinct features that permit this type of communication to be processed with less effort and more pleasure than technology-mediated communication. These features comprise the ability to see, hear and to synchronize actions quickly with one another; to observe and convey facial expressions, body language, and oral speech; to engage in mutual gaze; and to use and sense subtle olfactory and tactile cues (Hantula et al., 2011). Consistent with these theories, social cues, including affiliative cues, should be more accurately perceived during in-person than phone-mediated interactions because of the presence of nonverbal communication channels and the effortlessness with which the human brain processes these cues.
Similar expectations to cue-filtered-out theories arise from Funder's Realistic Accuracy Model (RAM; 1995). According to RAM, accuracy depends on the target's making available diagnostic cues of the characteristic and on the perceiver correctly detecting and utilizing these cues to make inferences about the target's characteristic. Variables that modulate the extent of cue availability, diagnosticity, detection, and utilization may impact accuracy. In-person interactions relative to phone-mediated interactions involve more non-verbal communication channels to express affiliative cues and may facilitate the processing of these cues, thereby enhancing cue detection and utilization. It follows that the medium of interaction may be a variable impacting accuracy. Specifically, in the context of affiliation, in-person interactions would be characterized by greater accuracy of perceiving affiliation in others.
Other theoretical models assert that given time and familiarity with various technology-mediated kinds of interactions, individuals can adapt to and exploit limitations imposed by these technological mediums to achieve the intrapersonal and interpersonal outcomes afforded by in-person interactions (Carlson and Zmud, 1999, Walther, 1992, p. 2011). For example, Walther's Social Information Processing (SIP) theory postulates that individuals learn over time how to employ the available cues supplied by whatever channel in use to make their technology-mediated communication as effective as in-person communication (Walther, 1992, 2011). From this perspective, in-person interactions relative to phone-mediated interactions would not necessarily be characterized by greater accuracy of perceiving affiliation as long as a perceiver-target dyad has experience interacting over the phone and a phone-mediated interaction lasts long enough for the perceiver to accumulate sufficient information about the target's affiliation.
Nonetheless, empirical findings suggest that the accuracy of perceived affiliation may be inferior during phone-mediated interactions relative to in-person interactions. For example, Sherman et al. (2013) found that the expression of nonverbal affiliative cues such as the Duchenne smile, laughter, head nod, and hand gesture, which indicate love in the context of close relationships (Gonzaga et al., 2001, Gonzaga et al., 2006), decreased as the number of communication channels embedded in the medium of interaction decreased. Relative to in-person interactions, phone-mediated interactions were characterized by a lower number of expressed affiliative cues among pairs of close friends. This finding suggests that even when two individuals display similar levels of affiliation when they interact in-person and over the phone, reduced expression of affiliative cues during phone-mediated interactions may impair accurate inferences about the other's affiliation. Other research suggests that speech perception may be reduced during phone-mediated interactions (Monson, Hunter, Lotto, & Story, 2014). As phones restrict the range of human voice sound frequencies (below 300 Hz and above 3400 Hz) that can be transmitted, speech characteristics such as vocal overtones and noise from consonants that improve the intelligibility of a conversation are omitted from phone-mediated conversations (Monson et al., 2014). It is possible that decreased perception of voice modulation, or tone of voice, that would otherwise convey information about the speaker's message, may contribute to reduced accuracy of perceiving affiliation during phone-mediated interactions.
An ECR methodology was used to examine whether the accuracy of perceived affiliation differed during in-person interactions relative to phone-mediated interactions. Measurements of self-reported affiliative behavior and perception of affiliative behavior were made in naturalistic interactions between romantic partners over 20 days. Based on cue-filtered-out theories (Daft and Lengel, 1984, Daft and Lengel, 1986, Culnan and Markus, 1987; Short et al., 1976) and empirical evidence (Sherman et al., 2013), we expected that the accuracy of perceived affiliation would be higher during in-person interactions (Hypothesis 1). We also explored the effect of medium of interaction on bias of assumed similarity. It was considered plausible that visceral immersion and higher behavioral synchronization afforded by in-person interactions would make it easier for the perceiver to feel more similar to the target with respect to affiliation, which may facilitate the perceiver's greater reliance on his or her own affiliative behavior to make judgments about the target's affiliation and which would result in greater bias of assumed similarity. Therefore, it was hypothesized that, relative to phone-mediated interactions, in-person interactions would be characterized by higher bias of assumed similarity with respect to affiliative behavior (Hypothesis 2).
Section snippets
Participants
Cohabiting heterosexual couples were recruited from the community through advertisements in local newspapers, a wedding planning event organized by vendors, and free online classifieds (e.g., Craigslist.ca). Couples were required to have been cohabiting for at least 6 months, to not have children living in their household, and to hold at least a part-time job. Ninety-two of 131 (70%) eligible couples who agreed to participate in the study completed the ECR procedure and mailed their forms
Analytic strategy
A multilevel actor-partner independence model (APIM; Kenny, Kashy, & Cook, 2006) was employed as an analytic approach. The multilevel APIM is suitable to analyze repeated measures dyadic data, which are characterized by the non-independence of observations due to nesting of (1) ECR measures within a partner and (2) partners within dyads. Non-independence of the observations at the dyad-level was modeled by (1) allowing the residuals of both partners' dependent variables to covary at each level
Discussion
Confirming expectations, we found that tracking accuracy of affiliative behavior was lower when participants interacted over the phone than when they interacted in-person. This effect was not due to participants engaging in less affiliative behavior during phone-mediated interactions relative to in-person interactions. Lower tracking accuracy of affiliative behavior during phone-mediated interactions may stem from reduced availability of relevant or diagnostic cues of affiliation, in particular
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a grant from SSHRC (410-2010-1168) to the second author. The authors would like to thank Kevin Jamey and Sara Del Bello for their assistance with data collection. We express our appreciation to Simon D. Young for his helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.
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