Social presence reinforcement and computer-mediated communication: the effect of the solicitor's photography on compliance to a survey request made by e-mail.
Personal information is scarce in computer-mediated communication. So when information about the sender is attached with an e-mail, this could induce a positive feeling toward the sender. An experiment was carried out where a male and a female student-solicitor, by way of an e-mail, requested a student-subject to participate in a survey. In half of the cases, a digital photograph of the solicitor appeared at the end of the e-mail. Results show that subjects agreed more readily to the request in the experimental condition than in the control condition where no digital photograph was sent with the e-mail. The importance of social information on computer-mediated communication is used to explain such results.
Guéguen
Nicolas
N
IUT de Vannes--Département TC, Université de Bretagne-Sud, Vannes, France. Nicolas.Gueguen@iu-vannes.fr
Jacob
Céline
C
D000328:Adult; D003142:Communication; D003201:Computers; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D008297:Male; D010781:Photography; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology; D012919:Social Behavior; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires