Don’t Hang Up on the Telephone Yet!

This paper discusses the effectiveness of different media from a social psychology perspective, and the implications on interactions in social groups and in organizations. In particular, we are interested in the social richness of the media—how effectively they convey the personalities and intentions of their users. We studied CMC (email and chat) and voice telephony, and compared them with faceto-face interaction. Study 1 was a controlled laboratory study in which people got acquainted with a partner. Study 2 was a field survey in which employees reported on naturally occurring interactions at work that took place with people of varying levels of power (supervisor, peer, subordinate). The surprising result is that the telephone generally came out on top in both studies, suggesting that the telephone may provide the optimum blend of richness and presence for natural and satisfying interactions.