Medium or Message: Communications Medium as a Determinant of Interpersonal Evaluation

Abstract

A review of studies of interpersonal attraction as related to the transmission of various nonverbal cues indicates that there is some evidence for a relationship, but the external validity of many of these studies is marred by the limited form of the communication allowed -usually one-way only -and by the unnatural and stereotyped nature of the communications. The use of various communications media is suggested as a method of overcoming these limitations, and an experiment demonstrating the effect of communications medium upon evaluations of a conversation and the conversation partner is reported. A post hoc hypothesis is advanced to explain an unexpected effect of conversation task in this experiment.