Lea, M & Spears, R. (1992)
Paralanguage and Social Perception in Computer-Mediated Communication
Journal of Organizational Computing, 2(3&4), 321-341
Repeat reading required!
Reviews cues filtered out view
P322/323
‘Information about the communicators themselves – their status, authority, personality, mood, motivations and intentions – are also thought to be largely absent in CMC ( Kiesler, 1986). ‘
Offers an alternative view
Argues that
Paralanguage
P322 ‘paralanguage is one source of information contained in CMC that people use to form impressions of each other when communicating. Furthermore, the interpretation of paralinguistic cues, ….. is influenced by the specific social context in which CMC is situated’ ….
P324 specifically ‘ paralanguage is also present in written communication where it takes the form of typographical marks and other features of text that, although they have no lexical meaning, nevertheless signify socially shared meanings.
Social cognition and SIDE
Links this argument to social cognition and eventually to SIDE. P338 ‘ The SIDE approach to analysisng group processes in CMC places emphasis on cognitive representation of the group rather than on sociostructtural variables such as group size and composition
.
P324 ‘ Experiments into social cognition have revealed some of the processes by which we tend to make significant inferences about people’s personality, emotional state, and behavioural intentions on the basis of mimimal cues’ (Fiske and taylor, 1984) .. The over attribution of enduring traits occurs particularl;y where the behavioural cues are consistently observed, and other information is in short supply (Antaki, 1989)
p324/325
‘communicators will use whatever cues are available to construct impressions of each other; a relative lack of cues will place greater reliance on social categorization processes to interpret the available information so as to form an adequate social context. An implication of this argument is that a relatively simple manipulation of the available cues will exert powerful effects on the impressions formed by interactants. A proposal that is consistent with the authors views on de-individuation in CMC.
Study 1 – communication is delivered to computer screen
Hypoth: If paralanguage provides sufficient cues that contribute to impression formation, significant differences in the perception of message senders should be observed depending on which cues, if any, were present.
2 groups 24 novice, 24 expert e-mail users
Participants encouraged to form an overall impression of the sender
IVs 4 conditions ( 4 messages each, all 16 selected from a public bulletin board edited to manipulate the four conditions. Messages 49-78 in length )
1. Misspelling in two of the words
2. Mistyping in two of the words
3. ! added at the end of 1 sentence and elipse at the end of the other
4. control
DV
16 item 7 point rating scale which asked about the attributes of the interactant – warmth, intelligence, dominance, flexibility, competence, originality, liveliness, self-confidence, verbal fleuncey, responsibility, assertiveness, frredom from inhibitions, inner strength and attractiveness.
Asked to rate how much they thought they would like the sender
Asked to rate how much they would enjoy working with them
Note : therefore a lot of demand characteristics
Results
P328 ‘ Both novice and experienced electronic mail users were found to have attended to the paralinguistic cues contained in the sample messages, and to have formed impressions of the personality of message senders that varied according to the type of cue made available to them’
Stage 2 – participants required to engage in group ( 3 participant) discussions – analysis based on spontaneously generated online discussions
Hypoth: p330 ‘ Paralanguage will be evaluated differently by communicators depending on whether group identity or individual identity is made salient’ i.e paralanguage will be interpreted as prototypical in group salience conditions and as competitive individualism’
Manipulation of context ( social and physical) , 4 conditions based on 2 factors
Social – Encouraged/Discouraged to feel part of a work group or ( using we us, I,me & appropriate design of message header, the way in which the task was introduced, etc)
Physical Isolating individuals/ co-present
DVs
1. Transcrips inspected for evidence of paralanguage – ellipses, inverted commas, quotation marks, and exclamation marks. Sequences were double-weighted. Mean (paralanguage devices combined) counts for each of the four conditions
2. Person-perception scales – global measures of attraction and affect, disinhibition and selected items from stage 1 – warm, dominant, unihibited, responsible’likeable and competent – embedded in a questionnaire that assessed subjects’ opinions on the discussion topics and towards the experimental task.
Results
P333 the patterns of correlations ( DV 1 with DV2 ) is in accordance with the hypothesis concerning the social attraction response to paralanguage users under conditions of high group salience as distict from individualistic and competitive responses under conditions of low group salience ( KRO how to do groups work to create salience …. ? social presence) p335 ‘when visual cues are available, the effects of a group context on the perception of paralinguistic cues in CMC is reduced, as predicted’
Discussion
Impression forming behaviors were consitently observed even when cues were subltle or infrequent .
P335 ‘ many of the largest effects were recorded on those scales that would relate most closely to task performance and co-operative working between individuals
P336 ‘ The nature of these effects was predicted by social identity theory, which holds that when a relevant group membership is made salient to individuals, the positive attributes of the group are conferred on the self, and people tend to act in terms of that group identity. As a consequence of the perceived positive group identity, an individual’s behaviour tends to be in the direction of the prevailing group norms, and the behaviour of the group tends to be perceived in terms of the behaviour of the group. Attraction to the group will be high under these conditions and the adoption of specific communication styles, such as the use of paralanguage, will be seen as prototypical for the group and will be evaluated positively’
Implications for the design of CMCs, implementation and use
P337 ‘ identifying the social context in which any given CMC takes place is essential for predicting the outcomes of the CMC. It follows from this that the establishment of a social context, which is appropriate in terms of individual, group and organizational (KRO – learning) goals and task, is an important prerequisite for successful CMC.
P338 ‘attention should be paid to the provision of more advanced facilities for representing and communicating social information because our analysis suggests that the technology, and the conditions in which it is typically used, combine to form a communication environment that is particularly suited to communicating and reinforcing relevant group and organizational norms’
