Socializing While Alone: Loss of Impact and Engagement When Interacting Remotely via Technology

Advantage FTF

Several studies have found that performance and decision-making are worse in CMC groups than in FTF groups over multiple domains. For example, CMC groups performed worse than FTF groups at designing an advertising campaign (Becker-Beck et al., 2005). In an experimental study that offered a cash prize for the top three (of 64) teams, CMC groups made less accurate decisions in a simulated military-threat environment that involved monitoring aircrafts that entered the team’s airspace (Hedlund et al., 1998). An early longitudinal study found that CMC groups performed worse than FTF groups on negotiation and intellective tasks, but no difference was found for decision-making and idea-generating tasks (Hollingshead et al., 1993). An experiment found that CMC groups were less productive despite feeling more satisfied and exhibiting some signs of higher cohesiveness (Straus, 1997).

More recently, a large investigation with both laboratory and field studies found that FTF groups produced more ideas and more creative ideas than CMC groups (Brucks & Levav, 2022). The FTF participants were more engaged in the immediate moment, as indicated by more eye contact with a partner and by greater memory for the contents of the room, whereas the CMC participants focused more narrowly on the screen, which seems to have reduced the mind’s ability to wander in new, creative directions. The authors noted that although CMC increased looking at the screen and hence the partner, it did not create a feeling of genuine eye contact. Focusing on the screen may also have prevented the wandering gaze sometimes linked to creative thought (Salvi & Bowden, 2016).

Learning is slower and harder with CMC than FTF teaching. An earlier study of Dutch sixth graders found that they learned how to solve math problems less effectively with CMC than FTF instruction and were less satisfied (van der Meijden & Veenman, 2005).

Students working together to construct utterances in a foreign language they were learning collaborated less successfully via CMC than FTF (Kim, 2014). Undergraduate students working in three-person groups on two class assignments achieved lower grades if they were randomly assigned to complete the assignments via CMC compared with FTF groups (Lin, 2020). This may have reflected the asynchronous communication, which slowed the exchange of information and created ongoing uncertainty as to whether other group members were going to respond and communicate. Notably, the FTF groups generally completed their task in a single meeting. The impending end of the meeting may have pushed them to finish, a factor that was absent from the CMC groups.

Advantage CMC or mixed

Evidence for superior performance with CMC, compared with FTF interactions, is sparse. One study found that leaders of CMC groups were better than the leaders of FTF groups at keeping track of which individual team members performed better (Hedlund et al., 1998). This may be due to communicating via typed messages, which do not vanish like spoken words.

In group problem-solving, text-based CMC led to worse performance than FTF interactions on some measures and no difference on others (S.-C. S. Li, 2007). Mixed results were obtained in another study (Tutty & Klein, 2008), perhaps because students were enrolled in a computer-literacy course, which may have given an advantage to computer use. Some studies have found no differences in performance between FTF interactions and CMC. A series of three experiments found group performance was the same on eight of nine problems, and the other one favored FTF groups (Laughlin et al., 1995). An experimental study of focus groups found no differences in either the quality or quantity of information (Underhill & Olmsted, 2003). A study that compared FTF with chat-window CMC on tutoring students on physics problems found that most of the outcomes were the same, although the chat window took longer (Siler & VanLehn, 2009).

The performance difference found in an experimental study by Roch and Ayman (2005) was not significant, although the effect size estimate favored the FTF groups and was nontrivial in size (d = 0.29), and the FTF groups rated themselves as having been significantly more successful than the CMC groups. The most interesting finding from that project was that the group’s rating of its performance was better aligned with its actual performance in the CMC than the FTF groups. The authors argued that CMC “puts the focus on the message and not the messenger” (p. 27). This would be consistent with our hypothesis of lesser engagement (of the person).

Mediating processes

Other studies shed some insight into underlying mechanisms. In one experiment (Roseth et al., 2011), participants perceived more cooperation in the FTF groups and in the synchronous CMC groups—compared with lesser cooperation in asynchronous CMC groups. Nearly all the FTF and synchronous CMC groups completed the task compared with only 63% of the asynchronous CMC groups. No doubt asynchronous CMC offers some advantages in terms of convenience, but it may reduce motivation and thereby increase attrition. The reduced participation is certainly consistent with our hypothesis of lesser engagement.

In a similar vein, researchers have found some disadvantages for CMC compared with FTF meetings (Strømsø et al., 2007). Specifically, the CMC meetings produced fewer utterances and fewer words per utterance, generated less elaborate working goals for the next meeting, produced more initial comments but fewer responses, devoted less time and energy to communicating about the task itself, and ultimately got less benefit from the learning exercise. The reduced responses are a clear indication of lesser engagement.

In related findings, the normal flow of FTF conversation with spontaneous turn-taking appears to be degraded during CMC (Zoom) interactions (Balters et al., 2023). Brain scans during the interaction revealed that interbrain coordination was less with CMC compared with FTF interactions. A set of experiments found that the flow of conversation was disrupted during Zoom calls, with substantially longer delays in answering questions and between speaking turns in unscripted interaction (Boland et al., 2022). The delays were far longer than the extra time required for electronic transmission.

A revealing pattern of moderation by individual differences was reported in another experiment (Crossley et al., 2016) in which participants were asked to negotiate a purchase of concert tickets. Participants with dark triad traits (narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism) were significantly more successful than other participants in the FTF condition, but not with CMC. This raises the disturbing potential implication that many of the advantages shown for FTF interaction are carried by people high in these dark traits. In any case, it does show that certain interpersonal skills, including illicit ones, may be more effective in FTF than in virtual interactions. This fits the hypothesis of lesser impact in CMC.

In a study involving graduate students, Rockinson-Szapkiw and Wendt (2015) found that groups who used synchronous CMC performed better than those who communicated asynchronously. The difference was significant despite the compression of grades typical of graduate courses. The synchronous groups also rated the experience as better and the teacher as more engaged.

Conclusion

CMC interactions were generally found to be less conducive to good performance and good group decision-making than FTF interactions. There were some scattered advantages for CMC, and some null findings, but most went the other way. Lower engagement was indicated in multiple ways.

Alternative perspectives

Multiple findings confirm that CMC disinhibits people from bringing up alternative perspectives. People are more willing to speak out and express opinions in CMC than FTF interactions (Ho & McLeod, 2008).

Two different measures of communication yielded meaningfully opposite results in a study of “electronic brainstorming” (Kerr & Murthy, 2004). The CMC groups produced higher quantity but lower quality suggestions. More precisely, the CMC groups (using synchronous typed chats) produced 50% more suggestions than FTF groups, consistent with a disinhibition of divergent thinking. However, much of the difference was due to poor-quality suggestions deemed irrelevant by the judges. When researchers discarded the poor-quality suggestions, however, the CMC groups still had a slightly higher quantity of the good ones. These findings fit the view that FTF interactions can be inhibiting, and these inhibitions are reduced during CMC.

As noted earlier, a study of focus groups found no differences in either the quality or quantity of information between FTF and CMC groups (Underhill & Olmsted, 2003). Another study found that the CMC groups considered more alternatives but took longer to reach decisions compared with the FTF groups (Valacich & Schwenk, 1995). This too suggests disinhibition in the form of collectively considering more alternatives.

Sometimes individuals feel pressure to conform to the group, and this could in theory be reduced in CMC groups. Evidence consistent with this was provided in a study in which groups rated products and could see others’ (ostensible) ratings (Schlosser, 2009). People conformed less in the CMC than the FTF groups, thereby incorporating the alternative perspectives into their own judgments.

The disinhibiting effects of CMC were found in another experiment in which group members were given different information to pool to reach the right answer (McLeod et al., 1997). Minority opinions were expressed more readily in the CMC than FTF groups—but, when they were expressed, they had more influence in the FTF than CMC groups. These findings fit the pattern that socializing while alone disinhibits people from bringing up alternative viewpoints but also increases the tendency to ignore what other people say.

Obligation to respond

Indeed, the flip side of the greater willingness to express ideas in CMC than FTF interactions may be less responding to ideas that others express. Adrianson and Hjelmquist (1999) found that CMC was plagued by failures to respond. Socializing while alone may disinhibit people from feeling an obligation to respond to others, resulting in more messages remaining unanswered. Again, this suggests less engagement via CMC than FTF interactions.

Conflict

Straus (1997) found that CMC groups had a higher proportion of communication about the task and, crucially, were more willing to argue about the group task. Note that arguing could signify engagement, however, contrary to our hypothesis. Still, if one disagrees with how others are proceeding, being engaged in an FTF situation may inhibit people from speaking out, whereas they may be more willing to raise the objection via CMC.

Reduced inhibitions can account for the findings that CMC groups showed more conflict than FTF groups (Hobman et al., 2002). Specifically, the CMC groups expressed more disagreement about the process of working on the group project, and they had more relationship conflict. There was no difference in conflicts about the task itself, although earlier work (Straus, 1997) had found more task conflict in CMC groups.

When conflicts do arise, they may be managed differently. Researchers found that FTF groups had more positive conflict management, thus dealing with disagreements in a constructive fashion such as with logic and sharing ideas (Zornoza et al., 2002). In contrast, the CMC groups had more negative conflict management, such as suppressing dissent.

Criticism

Interpersonal evaluations have also been studied (Rains et al., 2019). In each dyad, a confederate described missing a final exam for which they were either responsible (alcohol hangover) or not responsible (food poisoning). The evaluations were most negative among pairs that interacted by instant messaging and had not met in person. They were intermediate with instant messaging following an initial in-person introduction, and they were least negative in FTF interactions. The researchers interpreted this finding as fitting Walther’s theory of hyperpersonal interactions: Participants using CMC may have used their imagination to fill in missing information, thereby making the problem seem worse. It could also indicate that inhibitions about criticizing someone to their face are reduced via CMC. Regardless, the finding indicates that CMC disinhibits criticism.

Interpersonal appraisals were compared by Hebert and Vorauer (2003). Some participants wrote brief essays, and others delivered evaluations. The CMC appraisals were more critical than the FTF appraisals, consistent with the view that CMC disinhibits people from expressing criticism.

An experimental study had groups work together in a competitive system (Tangirala & Alge, 2006). During their work, they were told that the authorities had changed the rules in a way that put their group at a disadvantage. The CMC groups expressed more objections than the FTF groups. The greater outrage does, however, run contrary to our general hypothesis of lesser engagement and impact in CMC. There is unfortunately no way of knowing whether the CMC groups actually felt more outrage (which would contradict our hypothesis) or merely felt freer to express it (which would be consistent with it).

Interpersonal disinhibition

The idea that people are less inhibited in CMC than FTF interactions has received some support from Antheunis et al. (2012). Participants expressed more affection and disclosed more intimate information in CMC, both video-based and text-based, than FTF interactions. The study may have been unusual in that it consisted entirely of mixed-gender dyads whose only task was to get to know each other. They may have been warmer to each other via CMC to compensate for the loss of information vis-à-vis FTF interactions. (The hyperpersonal theory predicts precisely such compensatory intensification.) This finding is contrary to our broad hypothesis of lesser engagement, and contrary to much other evidence we have reported, so it may be specific to this sort of interaction. It does, however, offer a useful example of how the usual pattern can be reversed in favor of CMC. Alternatively, it may be that the CMC disinhibited participants from expressing affection.

Superficially different findings were reported in another study (Croes et al., 2018). Participants chose among various possible interaction formats (FTF, video-based CMC, text-based CMC, and audio-only CMC) to make either a positive or negative self-disclosure (randomly assigned as either regarding surpassing one’s personal best jogging time or receiving a diagnosis of a sexually transmitted infection). Video-based CMC was the least favorite, whereas FTF interaction was the most preferred, with the audio-only and text-based CMC in second and third place, respectively. The low general preference for audiovisual CMC may seem surprising, but perhaps it seemed less intimate than FTF interactions but more embarrassing than text-based communication.

Some patterns of individual differences support the disinhibition hypothesis by showing that CMC appeals to people worried about threats. Researchers found that people who reported higher competence at email than FTF interactions scored higher on fear of negative evaluation (related to shyness) and preferred to rely on email to handle difficult personal situations (Keaten & Kelly, 2008). People who have online relationships score higher on shyness than other people (Ward & Tracey, 2004), again suggesting that the social safety of remote interaction enables them to connect better with others and avoid the inhibitions associated with FTF interactions. Indeed, the higher people scored on shyness, the more problems they had with both FTF and CMC relationships, but the problems were greatly attenuated with CMC.

Further evidence of the disinhibiting benefits of CMC was provided in a study of how people requested resources (Roghanizad & Turetken, 2024). Such requests were far more effective when made in person than via email, but people underestimated the difference in effectiveness and therefore often used email instead. Requesting resources via email helped avoid any awkwardness or embarrassment associated with help-seeking, although there was a reduced chance of getting the request fulfilled.

The threat of embarrassment may be minor or absent for many people most of the time, but one particularly vulnerable group is people learning to speak a foreign language. Even comparing different kinds of CMC, students learning English as a second language worried more about making mistakes and looking stupid when communicating by video rather than an instant-messaging chat (van der Zwaard & Bannink, 2014). The latter allows individuals more time to double check their utterances and prevents others from seeing them blush or look flustered. This constitutes a positive benefit of remote interaction.

A seemingly contrary finding was that pairs of students worked together to construct utterances better via FTF interactions than CMC (Kim, 2014). We suspect the difference revolved around the interaction partner: The fear of embarrassing oneself is greatly reduced when talking with someone else who is learning at the same level.

Tokunaga (2009) found that people disclosed less via CMC than FTF, contrary to the ostensibly disinhibiting effect. This effect was substantially stronger among collectivistic versus individualistic students. Presumably the collectivistic students were more susceptible to threat insofar as their focus was on how they appeared to others in the group, whereas the individualistic students may have been more oriented toward expressing their inner selves and feelings rather than worrying about what others might think. The lesser disclosure might reflect lesser engagement.

As noted earlier, Kennedy et al. (2010) found that participation in decision-making was lower in text-based instant-messaging groups than in FTF groups. There was also more initial conflict among members, which could have stemmed from people being less inhibited and hence more willing to express disagreement in CMC groups. However, in the end, the CMC groups apparently enabled some individuals to hang back and not take part in the group decision, which was perhaps more difficult to do when the group met FTF. Still, this finding is somewhat at odds with the evidence that shy people are more willing to participate in CMC than FTF interactions.

Insight into possible mediating mechanisms comes from evidence that CMC groups generate more suggestions that receive no response (Adrianson & Hjelmquist, 1999). When interacting FTF, people may feel a normative obligation to respond to whatever is said to them. CMC interactions make it particularly easy to desist from responding. This may be another form of disinhibition: One feels freer to fail to respond to email than to an FTF comment.

Conclusion

The bulk of findings indicate that CMC reduces some inhibitions. Interacting via technology makes people more willing to bring up alternative perspectives (including some lower quality ones), disagree and not conform, criticize others, and fail to respond. All these patterns are consistent with lower engagement of the self, with its inhibitions and obligations.

Equality

An early study found greater equality in CMC than in FTF groups (Dubrovsky et al., 1991). The researchers manipulated status by having each group consist of one high-status graduate student and three lower status first-year undergraduate students. In the FTF groups, the high-status person quickly dominated the conversation and was often the first to advocate a decision (which was influential), but these differences were attenuated in the CMC condition. Apparently lower status people are more willing to speak up in CMC than in FTF interactions.

However, not all findings fit the theory that CMC promotes equality. Participants in a first experiment simulated a job interview in which one was assigned to be the hiring boss and the other a candidate (Boucher et al., 2008). The status difference was effective with both types of communication, but it was stronger with CMC. A follow-up study that had participants interact without assigning different roles with different statuses found no difference, so status differences did not emerge from a starting point of equality. Participants in the first study may have compensated for the loss of information in CMC by being more explicit in their role enactment, which then established the status difference.

Interaction patterns, engagement, and reciprocation

A methodologically sophisticated study by Zhao et al. (2023) had people interact in the same room, either FTF or via CMC. In the latter condition, they sat the same distance apart as in the former, but in between them was a screen that showed their facial image in real time. Thus, the image was identical in the two conditions (as was the physical distance). Despite this, people seemed to engage less with the computer-image face, as indicated by several measures. First, their gaze dwelled less long on the virtual than the actual face, suggesting lesser affective bonding or engagement.

Pupil dilation indicated that people were more aroused in the FTF condition, indicating that some of the excitement of social interaction was missing from those who engaged with a face on a screen. Pupil dilations tended to match up between participants and reciprocate in the FTF condition but were less successful at matching in the CMC condition. The lesser matching may be a sign of lesser coordination between the interaction partners.

Taken together, these results suggest that the eye-to-eye communication and reciprocation that facilitate live interaction are hampered with computer mediation. In discussing their findings, Zhao et al. (2023) noted that Zoom does not really enable eye-to-eye communication because one must look either at the camera or at the other person’s image, which are not exactly in the same place.

Brain activity was also measured in this study, and again there were differences between FTF interactions and CMC. These differences indicated separate processing, possibly showing that computer-image faces are processed separately from live ones in the brain. Cross-brain synchrony was reduced such that the various brain parts were not working together as a unit as much with CMC. All of this is consistent with our hypothesis of lesser engagement.

Again, we emphasize that the physical presence was the same in both conditions, which indicates that physical presence is not the sine qua non of impactful interaction. Some studies on social facilitation have also found no impact from the physical presence of another person when that person was blindfolded and inactive (Cottrell et al., 1968).

Cohesion

Mixtures of FTF interactions and CMC were examined in a field study (Y. Shin & Song, 2011). The more FTF time the group had, the more social cohesion the group had. Time spent in CMC was irrelevant to social cohesion. These findings were correlational, so causality remains ambiguous and quite possibly bidirectional. Still, they fit the view that interpersonal engagement is reduced during CMC, allowing more task focus but detracting from bonding.

In a study with similar implications (Sprecher & Hampton, 2017), pairs of participants engaged in three interactions. Some had the first one via texting, then video CMC, and finally FTF, whereas others did all three FTF. CMC produced less positive feelings toward the interaction and the partner than FTF interactions. But the differences between conditions vanished after the third interaction, which was FTF for all. Thus, CMC did not damage the relationship, and it was apparently easy to catch up in positivity, so to speak, once they had made the transition to FTF. Still, FTF interaction was clearly better at building cohesive relationships.

Suggestive support was provided in a study of romantic relationships (Scott et al., 2006). Online romantic relationships were rated as less intimate than FTF ones. The people who had online romantic relationships also reported lower intimacy in their FTF relationships, which suggests the difference is less in the medium than in the person. Thus, perhaps people who have issues with intimacy may favor online relationships.

Building on prior evidence that CMC and other non-FTF interactions contribute to idealizing one’s relationship partner, one study surveyed friendships that were previously FTF but switched to CMC (Brody, 2013). Consistent with the idealization hypothesis, the longer the relationship had been CMC (i.e., length of time since last FTF interaction), the higher the relationship satisfaction. This could mean that CMC produces more idealization of the partner. However, it could also mean that unsatisfactory relationships are less likely to survive physical separation, so they drop out, thereby boosting the mean satisfaction of the continuing ones.

An experimental study found that trust among members was slower to develop in CMC than FTF groups over a 3-week period, although it did eventually reach comparable levels (Wilson et al., 2006). These findings all indicate that CMC sacrifices some of the personal connection, but this is not permanent damage. Similarly, an early study of groups that met repeatedly over several weeks found that good relations were slower to develop in CMC than in the FTF groups, but eventually they reached the same level of harmony (Walther & Burgoon, 1992).

Positive evidence for both kinds of communication was likewise found by Saltarelli and Roseth (2014). However, asynchronous text-based communication was less effective. Thus, CMC can work well, but more is lost when the communication shifts away from real time. It is easier to drop out of asynchronous than synchronous groups.

There are other benefits of CMC, too. First-year college students who had not yet made friends on campus benefited from staying in touch with old friends via CMC (Ranney & Troop-Gordon, 2012). Others who had friends on campus but were dissatisfied with the low quality of their local friendships felt better insofar as they used CMC with old friends. Students who reported depressive affect were particularly prone to use CMC with old friends to offset low-quality local friendships.

Some studies found no differences. Romantic couples in one study discussed a conflict in their relationship (Pollmann et al., 2020). Whether they discussed the conflict FTF or with CMC made no difference in outcomes. However, these couples already had well-established FTF relationships.

In sum, these studies suggest that trust, cooperation, and other hallmarks of cohesion develop more slowly with CMC than FTF interactions, consistent with the hypothesis of lesser impact and engagement. Switching to FTF allows the groups to catch up quickly in terms of higher cohesion, and sometimes the cohesion develops in CMC groups eventually.

Hyperpersonal intensification

There has been a variety of support for the hyperpersonal model of CMC (Walther, 1992, 1996), which posits that some interpersonal processes are intensified because people compensate for the lesser information by elaborating on what they do receive, figuratively filling in the gaps. People made more extreme attributions about their interaction partners in CMC than FTF interactions in one experiment (Jiang et al., 2011). Research assistants posing as naive participants made identical self-disclosures either FTF or with CMC. These disclosures either revealed an important personal problem or a lesser issue. The personal problem caused the participant to feel greater intimacy toward the confederate, especially in the CMC condition. Intimacy was statistically mediated by making more extreme trait attributions to the confederate. To be sure, this may have been around the time that people were beginning to realize the risks of textual self-disclosure, and so the fact that the confederate put the problem in writing may have contributed to the stronger impact.

A follow-up investigation confirmed that people perceived identical disclosures as more intimate in CMC than FTF communication. Moreover, they responded to this seemingly heightened intimacy by disclosing more intimate material themselves.

Earlier work by Hancock and Dunham (2001) had two actual participants interact either FTF or via instant messaging, after which they filled out impressions of each other’s personality traits. The text-based interaction led to less detailed impressions—but more intense ones.

In contrast, a meta-analysis on self-disclosure failed to confirm the “hyperpersonal” notion that intimacy (depth of self-disclosure) can be greater in CMC than FTF communication (Ruppel et al., 2017). It found that people disclose more in FTF interactions than in CMC, contrary to the disinhibition hypothesis (but consistent with the engagement hypothesis). The effect was mainly associated with intimacy of self-disclosure rather than with greater breadth (i.e., variety of topics), which particularly speaks against the hypothesis that CMC facilitates intimacy. It may well be that people had begun to realize that information disclosed via CMC remained in existence after the conversation, thereby reducing plausible deniability. Consistent with that view, the effect was greatest with text-based self-disclosures. The effect was still there but weaker with video-based self-disclosures. To be sure, such studies have found relatively few disclosures that were high in intimacy, and the variance has been mostly between low and moderate levels of intimacy.

In sum, there is evidence for hyperpersonal intensification with CMC but also some evidence against it. Most plausibly, it happens sometimes but not always. The fact that it happens sometimes is of more importance than the fact that it does not always happen.