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Testing the Interactivity Model: Communication Processes, Partner Assessments, and the QuaHty of Collaborative Work JUDEE K. BURGOON, JOSEPH A. BONITO, BJORN BENGTSSON, ARTEMIO RAMIREZ, JR., NORAH E. DUNBAR, AND NATHAN MICZO

EE K. BuRGOON IS Professor of Communication and Director of the Center for the Management of Information at the University of Arizona. She is the author or coauthor of seven books and nearly two hundred articles and chapters on topics related to interpersonal and nonverbal communication, deception and credibility, mass media, and new communication technologies. Her current research focuses on interactivity, adaptation, and attunement in communication. JOSEPH A.

BoNrro is Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Arizona. His articles have appeared in Communication Yearbook and Computers in Human Behavior. His research interests include computer-mediated communication, smallgrt)up processes, message production processes, and research methods. is a graduate student of computing science and cognitive science in the Department of Computer Sciences, Utnea University, Sweden. His research deals with virtual communication—a cross-disciplinary area involving computer-mediated communication, human-computer interaction, and virtual reality. BJORN BENGTSSON

is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of Arizona. His interests include interpersonal communication and new technologies. ARTEMIO RAMIREZ, JR.,

E. DLINBAR is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of Arizona. Her research interests include interpersonal communication, relational conflict, and nonverbal communication in mediated contexts. She is currently working on her dissertation on power in marital conflicts. is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of Arizona. His research interests include interpersonal communication. NAIHAN MICZO

major consideration in designing and adopting new communication technologies is their impact on communication processes and outcomes. One way to understand this impact is according to the principle of interpersonal interactivity. ARSTRACT; A

Findings from two investigations are reported here that address how properties of task-related communication conducted with differing interfaces relate to perceptions Journal of Managemfnl Information Systems /Wmei

1999-2000. Vol. 16. No. 3. pp. 33-56 ©2000M.B.Sharpc.lnc. 0742-1222 / 2000 $9.50 + 0.00.

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of interaction partners and the outcomes of their collaborative work. Study I manipulated the interface affordances of mediation, contingency, and modality richness. Study 2 examined the affordance of mediation. Results show that interfaces that promote higher mutuality and involvement lead to more favorable perceptions of patiners' credibility and attraction, and those perceptions are systematically related to higher-quality decisions and more influence. Discussion focuses on the relation between user perceptions, design features, and task outcomes in human-computer interaction and computer-mediated communication. collaborative work, communication interfaces, computermediated communication, decision making, human-computer interaction, interactivity. KEY WORDS AND PHRASES:

RAPIDLY DEVELOPING TECHNOLOGY NOW AFFORDS INDIVIDUALS, ORGANIZATIONS,

and institutions of learning a cornucopia of options for communication and information exchange. Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is becoming ubiquitous in such text-based forms as e-mail and computerized group support systems as well as in multimedia forms such as Microsoft's NetMeeting, audio- and videoconferencing. Augmenting these is human-computer interaction (HCI), in which computer interfaces, which come in a variety of guises (e.g.. the Microsoft "office assistant"), conduct part or all of a transaction with individuals. Through technological advances in voice recognition software, voice synthesis, and computer animation, interactions with these "intelligent" computer agents are becoming increasingly anthropomorphic so that they, too, resemble interactions with humans. The accelerating adoption of these technologies has important ramifications for communication in work and educational contexts. Two central issues are (1) how various CMC and HCI interfaces affect the character of the communication process itself among users and (2) how resultant communication patterns affect such desirable outcomes as positive interpersonal relationships among collaborators, accurate information exchange, and high-quality collaborative work. These issues are addressed here via the principle of interpersonal interactivity (hereafter referred to simply as interactivity). This principle, elaborated momentarily, posits the (deceptively) simple proposition that ! Human communication processes and outcomes vary systematically with the degree of interactivity that is afforded and/or e.xperienced. To investigate the nature and consequences of interactivity, we have begun to decompose interactivity into its relevant properties and to test experimentally the individual and collective impacts of those properties. Reported here are two initial studies, one manipulating the properties of contingency, mediation, and modality richness in HCI and one manipulating mediation in CMC. The interface manipulations are reported elsewhere 13,4, 8]. Our primary objective in this companion report was to ascertain how experiential qualities of interactive communication during

TESTING THE INTERACTlVtTY MODEL 35

collaborative tasks relate to users' judgments about partners and to task outcomes. We demonstrate that the degree to which users perceive high interactivity—reflected in indicators of interaction involvement and a multidimensional construct called mutuality—is strongly related to how positively users judge their partner's credibility and attractiveness. In turn, we show that these assessments strongly relate to partner influence, decision quality, and accurate information exchange. The analyses offer insights into why various interfaces sometimes facilitate and sometimes impair group communication and accomplishments. Further, consistent with the principle that media and communication formats should be matched to such situational demands as the tasks to be performed, the group's well-being, and support for individual group members [16. 17], results offer guidance as to what facets of cotnmunication processes contribute to achieving desired outcomes.

Structural Affordances and Experiential Properties of Interactivity SOME CHAMPIONS OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES ARGUE THAT H C I AND CMC

will eventually supplant face-to-face (FtF) communication in the workplace. Others are convinced that some level of FtF interaction must be retained, especially if tasks are complex, involve statistical information or sophisticated inferences and judgments, or depend on trusting and solid interpersonal relationships {see, e.g., [19, 30]). We believe that at issue is not FtF interaction per se but the properties of interactivity that are associated with FtF interaction. Our theoretical goal therefore is to decompose interactivity into its constituent properties. We begin with the assumption that interactivity is value-neutral: that is, the presence of these qualities can be either beneficial or detrimental. For example, limited interactivity might undercut trust, enable undue influence by mediated sources, or produce more understanding and rapport among participants [34, 35]. High interactivity might be distracting, promote ready acceptance of dubious information, or facilitate idea generation. Deciding which communication formats—HCI, CMC, FtF—are most or least advantageous under what circumstances and why depends, then, on understanding the role of interactivity. Although the meaning of interactivity may seem self-evident, the term has been applied to widely divergent phenomena. One way to conceptualize interactivity is according to the structural properties, or affordances, that are present in a given communication format. Some of these distinctive features have emerged from analyses of various electronic media (e.g., [17, 25,33, 36]). We began our analysis instead by identifying intrinsic properties of FtF communication that might be retained, supplemented, amplified, or suppressed in HCI and CMC formats (see [4, 13] for further elaboration). We theorize that these affordances individually and/or collectively account for observed differences in cognitions, communication, and outcomes observed across mediated and nonmediated, human-human and human-computer interaction. The various analyses of affordances can be integrated into an extensive set of properties. Chief among them are the following; ' ''^ '

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BURGOON ETAL.

1. Participation (the extent to which senders and receivers are actively engaged in the interaction as opposed to giving monologues, passively observing, or lurking), 2. Mediation (whether the communication format is mediated or not), 3. Contingency (the extent to which one person's queries, responses, and comments are dependent on the prior ones of the cointeractant), 4. Media and information richness (whether the format utilizes one or more modalities such as text, audio, visual, or touch, and the extent to which it supports symbol variety to present "rich" or "poor" social information). 5. Geographic propinquity (whether users are physically colocated or distributed), 6. Synchronicity (whether interaction is same-time, which permits immediate bidirectional feedback, or asynchronous, which permits rehearsability and editability), 1. Identification (the extent to which participants are fully identified, partially identified, or anonymous), 8. Parallelism (whether the format permits concurrent communication and multiple addressees, as in the case of electronic brainstorming, or only permits serial messages), and 9. Anthropomorphism (the degree to which the interface simulates or incorporates humanlike characteristics). A second way to conceptualize interactivity is according to the qualitative experiences that users equate with interactivity. These properties are what make a mode of communicating or information exchange look and feel interactive. These qualities can be conceptualized as the mediating communication processes through which structural properties exert their impact. Our theorizing about what properties create the experience of interactivity is in its eariy stages, but there are three that we believe are salient: 1. Interaction involvement (the degree to which users perceive they are cognitively, affectively, and behaviorally engaged in the interaction), 2. Mutuality (the extent to which users perceive and create a sense of relational connection, interdependence, coordination, and understanding with one another), and 3. Individuation (the extent to which users perceive they have a rich, detailed impression of the other's identity and personalizing information). This report centers on the first two properties of involvement and mutuality. In the context of communication, interaction involvetnent concerns the extent to which users experience high cognitive, sensory, visceral, and motor engagement in an interaction—that is, the interaction creates a sense of presence, of "here and now." Nonverbally, involvement may be expressed through such behaviors as close proximity, frequent eye contact, facial and vocal expressivity, coordinated conversation, attentiveness, fluent speech, and moderate relaxation. Verbally, it may be expressed through linguistic choices and personal disclosures [7, 15].

TESTING THE tNTERACTIVlTY MODEL 37 I

Mutuality also has multiple facets. Among the essential preconditions for communication to occur are a mutual other-orientation and belief in shared background (see [261). Psychologically, mutuality may take such forms as feeling connected and similar to others. Cognitively and affectively, it may take the form of group members perceiving they share common meanings, are responsive to one another, and are understood. Behaviorally, it may take the form of users' actions being interdependent and mutually influential and their verbal and nonverbal communication within and across episodes being coordinated and harmonized with others. An important objective in many interpersonal and group interactions is that collaborators regard one another as competent, reliable, trustworthy, attractive, and useful contributors [2]. To the extent that greater involvement and mutuality lead to favorable judgments of credibility and attractiveness, they may also promote such outcomes as greater productivity, better decision making, and more accurate understanding of messages that are exchanged. Hence, involvement and mutuality may have an indirect impact on other group outcomes by virtue of their direct impact on perceptions of group members. Figure 1 illustrates this hypothesized set of relationships. In our initial HCI experimental test [4], we hypothesized that FtF interaction and highly anthropomorphic computer interfaces would be more influential. Instead, we found the opposite: Computer agents using only text or text and voice (rather than still images or animated faces) achieved higher decision quality and were more influential than human partners. In other words, creating highly anthropomorphic features yielded less influence and lower quality decisions. On social judgments, however, FtF interaction created more favorable perceptions of the partner's credibility than did the computer conditions, on average. These counterintuitive results led us to undertake the additional analyses reported here. Specifically, we tested the model in figure 1 by correlating (I) users' self-reported experiences of involvement and mutuality, (2) judgments of partner and/or format credibility, attractiveness, and utility, and (3) the outcomes of influence, decision quality, and accuracy.

Relationship of Involvement and Mutuality to Partner/Format Assessments IF PARTtCIPANT INVOLVEMENT AND MUTUALITY ARE NECESSARY (but not necessar-

ily sufficient) preconditions for effective communication and group outcomes during collaborative work, then interfaces that enable greater involvement and mutuality between collaborators should promote attraction and credibility. Conversely, interfaces that are distracting, that create a sense of distance and detachment between participants, or that make users feel "unplugged" from the interaction may lead them to judge the partner or interface more harshly. Research on FtF interaction, for example, has shown that senders communicating under a high-participation format were perceived as more involved, dominant, pleasant, and believable 110], and participative receivers achieved greater understanding than did eavesdropping observ-

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Processes

Social judgments

Outcomes

Task attraction Involvement Structural affordances

Credibilily

Decision quality

Utility

Accuracy

Mutuality

Figure I. Hypothesized relationships among experienlial properties of interactivity, social judgments ofpartners/format, and interaction outcomes ers [24]. These findings imply that involvement and mutuality relate systematically to social judgments and outcomes. It may seem peculiar to think of judging computers or computer agents in the same manner as humans. But computers, by virtue of their participation, functionality, and appearance, may be responded to in fundamentally social ways by users and are subject to the same kinds of communication evaluations that are commonly reserved for humans (e.g., [23,28, 291). They may be thought of, for example, as more or less competent, engaging, or influential. Mass media research has demonstrated that people ascribe high credibility to the media (e.g., [20]). It may be that mediated communication forms in general are accorded a positivity bias such that users assume whatever is delivered through a mechanical or electronic medium has already been authenticated and so is, de facto, regarded as credible. There is also evidence of credibility rising as a medium becomes "richer" in the sensory channels that are engaged and the amount of social information it supplies [31].

Relationship of Partner/Format Assessments to Task Outcomes A FAMILIAR THREAD IN COMMUNICATION RESEARCH IS THAT INTERACTION OUt-

comes are often a function of the credibility and attractiveness of the source [9]. Credible and attractive sources are usually more persuasive. By the same token, users routinely base their satisfaction with new technologies on how useful and userfriendly they are. When the interface is a surrogate human, as is sometimes the case in HCI, then the utility judgment becomes basically another social judgment, much as one would judge how helpful a human partner is in achieving one's work objectives. The prediction that greater credibility and attraction foster infiuence. accuracy, and decision quality, although straightforward when applied to humans, may seem a bit strained when applied to computer agents. However, if one thinks about such applications as search engines, web agents, filtering devices, and decision support systems (i.e., the kinds of tools that will surely become commonplace very soon), then the

TESTING THE [NTERACTIVITY MODEL 39 I

application may seem more plausible. For many kinds of communication transactions, users may neither need nor expect highly contingent interaction or the sense of social presence that multiple modalities are intended to afford [25]. Thus, it stands to reason that interfaces that are perceived as more useful, attractive, or credible should produce better outcomes on collaborative tasks. If this is Uiie, then the higher decision quality, influence, accuracy of understanding, and credibility that Bengtsson et al. [4] found in text- and voice-ba.sed versions of HCI should be attributable partly to these mediating assessments. Conversely, formats or interfaces that are perceived as less userfriendly, believable, or attractive should be associated with lower-quality outcomes. Casting possible doubt on this prediction is the further Bengtsson et al. finding [4], in which the HCI conditions were, on average, more influential but also less credible than FtF interaction on judgments of truthfulness, sociability, and dynamism. Among the HCI interfaces, the text-only condition, rather than more anthropomorphic ones, received the most consistently favorable ratings. This raises the possibility that credibility might be unrelated or negatively related to interaction outcomes in the special case of HCI. If so, when selecting or designing interfaces, might one achieve gains on influence and decision quality at the expense of positive regard for coactors, or vice versa? The answer to this question resides in the correlations among the credihility and attraction dimensions and the other outcome measures. We reasoned that there might be enough variability within and between HCI conditions that, despite the mean ratings between conditions not comporting with the predicted association between credibility and attraction on the one hand, and influence, decision quality, and accuracy on the other, those individuals who judged the partner or interface to be competent, trustworthy, dependable, and useful might be more influenced by their partner than those who held their partner or the interface in low regard. Put differently, analyses conducted at the individual level, via correlations, might reveal patterns that had failed to emerge at the between-groups level due to heterogeneity within and across the HCI modalities. We also anticipated that the gain in statistical power achieved by examining data from all seven conditions might pay dividends in terms of achieving more statistically reliable findings.

Experimental Tests: Study 1 Method Participants and Confederates Details of the method and experimental conditions are given more fully in [4].' In brief, participants (N= 70) were male undergraduate students in the social sciences at Umea University, Sweden, who were paid approximately $10 (100 Swedish crowns) to engage in a study of alternative problem-solving methods. Participants were randomly assigned to one of seven experimental conditions in which they conducted a decision-making task with a human or computer partner. Two male confederates served as the human partners.

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Experimental Conditions and Procedures The experimental conditions varied the "humanness" of the partners with whom participants were paired. In the five computer conditions, which ranged from a textonly interface to a human-like image with synthesized speech and matching lip synchronization, the cotnputer output was preprogrammed. In the remaining two FtF conditions, human confederates presented the same scripted responses as in the HCI conditions but either adhered strictly to the script (noncontingent interaction) or interacted "freely" (i.e,, in a normal, contingent turn-taking fashion) white still introducing the same information supplied in the script. The task—the Desert Survival Problem—asked participants to imagine that their jeep has crashed in the Kuwaiti Desert, with no sign of potable water but some salvageable items from the wreckage. They then rank-ordered twelve items for their survival value (e.g., a gun, matches, a flashlight, a magnetic compass). This task was selected because it allows a fair amount of experimental control while still approximating features of normal conversation. Unlike some tasks that would stretch credulity among computer-savvy participants, it is also amenable to use in both HCI and CMC contexts (as well as immersive virtual environments, where additional extensions of the work are being conducted). This same task was used in Study 2. In Study 1, participants first completed their own rankings of the twelve items then interacted with their partner (computer or human). During this task discussion, participants and confederates (human or computer) alternated giving their rankings and reasons on each of the twelve items. Unbeknownst to the participants, confederate rankings and reasons were based on ones arrived at previously by groups of experts. Participants then reranked the items and completed a survey instrument that queried them about their partner and the interaction itself The instructions, description of the Desert Survival Problem, initial rankings, postrankings, and all other postmeasures were collected on the Worid Wide Web via a Macintosh computer. Interaction Measures To measure interaction involvement, participants rated perceived involvement with two Likert-format items taken from Burgoon and Hale's |11] Relational Communication Scale (coefficient alpha reliability = 0.71). To capture the range of possible perceptions that might correspond to mutuality, participants also rated partners on receptivity and similarity subscales from the RCS (reliabilities = 0.64 and 0.87, respectively). To these measures were added Aron, Aron, and Smollan's [ 1 ] pictorial instrument, which uses seven increasingly overlapping circles to depict degrees of perceived connectedness and fifteen items from Cahn and Shulman's [14] Feelings of Understanding/ Misunderstanding Scale (reliability = 0.80). To further facilitate interpretation, these measures were also all averaged together to create an overall mutuality score. Social Judgments and Outcome Measures Assessments of the partner and format were created from several previously validated measures, including utility and liking scales from [28]; credibility and dominance

TESTING THE INTERACTIVITY MODEL 41

measures found in [12,32]; and an attraction measure reported in [27]. In the original Bengtsson et al. study, these scales were utilized to measure utility, six dimensions of credibility, and task attraction. However, to reduce multicollinearity and increase interpretability, we used principal components factor analysis with varimax rotation to reduce these data to a smaller subset of composite measures. The composites were created by averaging the unit-weighted items. The factor analysis on the semantic differential items produced five measures—dominance, expertise, dependability, sociability, and trust—with respective reliabilities of 0.66, 0.82, 0.87,0.74, and 0.71. Dominance was comprised of the qualities of dominant, confident, and energetic. Expertise incorporated such attributes as expertise, competence, and experience. Dependability combined elements of the character and competence dimensions of credibility with format qualities related to utility; it included such attributes as reliable, helpful, clever, useful, intelligent, and efficient. Sociability combined being sociable and friendly. Trust was measured by such attributes as truthful, trustworthy, high character, and very credible. Task attraction was measured separately because it utilized a Likert format. It included the partner showing the participant different ways to view the situation, approaching the task with professionalism, being satisfied with the partner's contribution and enjoying working with the partner. Decision quality, absolute influence, and relative influence were calculated from participants' rankings of the salvaged items prior to interaction ("prerankings") and following the interaction ("postrankings"). Decision quality was measured as the mean absolute discrepancy between participant and confederate (expert) rankings on the twelve items. A small score thus indicates high decision quality, that is, close correspondence to the expert rankings. Influence was computed as the distance participants moved toward the confederate's position by calculating differences between (a) each person's preranking and partner preranking and (b) each person's postranking and partner postranking. A large score reflects a substantial shift. Three measures were utilized to tap actual understanding. Accuracy of recall was assessed by asking participants to record the partner's ranking for the three top-ranked and three bottom-ranked items. It was scored as number of correct matcbes. Deviations from partner ranking (the absolute distance from actual partner ranking) were also calculated to capture close but not perfect matches. A small distance indicated high accuracy. Content understanding was measured by asking participants to paraphrase what they believed to be their partner's position and reasoning on the six middle-ranked items (selected because they might be less obvious and less biased by subjects' own preferences). These responses were rated by two independent coders (interrater reliability r = 0.92). Individual ratings were averaged to produce a single score.

Results Correlation Analysis Table 1 presents the correlations among involvement, mutuality, and partner/format assessments. The correlations between involvement and social judgments strongly

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BURGOON ETAL.

Table 1. Correlations of Involvement and Mutuality with Credibility, Utility, and Attraction Judgments, Study 1

Involvement

Mutuality:

Mutuality: Perceived

Mutuality: Feeling

Similarity

Receptivity

Understood

Connectedness

Mutuality:

Credibility/utiiity Dominance Expertise Dependability Sociabiiity

0.249* 0.291** 0.446" 0.175

0.212* 0.027 0.413" 0.226*

-0.180 0.104 0.086 0,229*

-0.108 0,165 0.230* 0.291"

-0.050 -0.073 0.180 0.258*

Trust Task attraction

0.440** 0.375**

0.258* 0.341"

0.027 0.252*

0.142 0.180

0.011 0.170

*/7