Social anxiety is associated with similar emotional impairments during digital and face-to-face communication in daily life

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Doorley ◽  
Kristina Volgenau ◽  
Kerry Kelso ◽  
Todd Barrett Kashdan ◽  
Alexander J. Shackman
Keyword(s):  
Social Anxiety ◽  
Digital Communication ◽  
Instant Messaging ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
Medium Study ◽  
Reconstruction Method ◽  
Communication Behaviors ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Emotional Impairments ◽  
Emotional Safety

Background:Retrospective studies have found that people with elevated social anxiety (SA) show a preference for digital/online communication, which may be due to perceptions of enhanced emotional safety. Whether these preferences for/benefits of digital compared to face-to-face communication manifest in the real world has yet to be explored. Methods: We recruited samples of college students (N = 125) and community adults (N = 303) with varying levels of SA, sampled their emotions during digital and face-to-face communication using ecological momentary assessment (EMA) (Study 1) and a day reconstruction method (DRM) (Study 2), and preregistered our hypotheses (https://osf.io/e4y7x/). Results: Results from both studies showed that SA did not predict the likelihood of engaging in digital compared to face-to-face communication, and SA was associated with less positive and more negative emotions regardless of communication medium. Study 2 also showed that whether digital communication was synchronous (e.g., in real time via phone/video chat) or asynchronous (e.g., texting/instant messaging) did not impact the association between SA and emotions. Limitations: EMA and DRM methods, despite their many advantages, may be suboptimal for assessing the occurrence of digital communication behaviors relative to more objective methods (e.g., passively collecting smartphone communication data). Using event-contingent responding may have also yielded more reports of digital communication, thus strengthening our power to detect small, cross-level interaction effects. Conclusions:These results challenge beliefs that digital/online communication provides a source of emotional safety for people with elevated SA and suggests a greater need to address SA-related emotional impairments across digital communication platforms.

scholarly journals The effects of text, audio, video, and in-person communication on bonding between friends

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren E. Sherman ◽  
Minas Michikyan ◽  
Patricia M. Greenfield
Keyword(s):  
Emerging Adults ◽  
Digital Communication ◽  
Instant Messaging ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Computer Mediated Communication ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
Video Chat ◽  
Digital Environments

Considerable research on computer-mediated communication has examined online communication between strangers, but little is known about the emotional experience of connectedness between friends in digital environments. However, adolescents and emerging adults use digital communication primarily to communicate with existing friends rather than to make new connections. We compared feelings of emotional connectedness as they occurred in person and through digital communication among pairs of close friends in emerging adulthood. Fifty-eight young women, recruited in pairs of close friends, engaged in four conversations each: in-person, video chat, audio chat, and instant messaging (IM). Bonding in each condition was measured through both self-report and affiliation cues (i.e., nonverbal behaviors associated with the emotional experience of bonding). Participants reported feeling connected in all conditions. However, bonding, as measured by both self-report and affiliation cues, differed significantly across conditions, with the greatest bonding during in-person interaction, followed by video chat, audio chat, and IM in that order. Compared with other participants, those who used video chat more frequently reported greater bonding with friends through video chat in our study. Compared with other participants, those who spoke on the phone more frequently with their participating friend reported greater bonding during audio chat. Use of textual affiliation cues like emoticons, typed laughter, and excessive letter capitalization during IM related to increased bonding experience during IM. Nonetheless, a significantly lower level of bonding was experienced in IM compared with in-person communication. Because adolescent and emerging adults’ digital communication is primarily text-based, this finding has significant real-world implications.

Instant messaging or face-to-face? How choice of communication medium affects team collaboration environments

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chun M Tang ◽  
Adrian Bradshaw
Keyword(s):  
Digital Communication ◽  
Instant Messaging ◽  
Project Work ◽  
Communication Media ◽  
Nonverbal Cues ◽  
Communication Effectiveness ◽  
Communication Medium ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Team Projects ◽  
Project Objectives

Working on team projects is a common feature in higher education as a way to foster team learning and collaboration. For a team to work well towards achieving project objectives, it is important that there is effective team communication. Conventionally, face-to-face interactions allow students to interact with each other in multiple communication channels, simultaneously sending and receiving verbal and nonverbal messages in real time. Today, modern mobile technology offers students a variety of alternative digital communication media for collaboration. Unlike a full-channel communication medium such as the face-to-face interaction, a digital communication medium like instant messaging does not normally transmit nonverbal cues. As a result, to compensate for insufficient nonverbal cues, users of instant messaging services have to put more effort and time into understanding each other. If more effort and time is required to understand each other better, then why is it that today’s students prefer instant messaging to face-to-face interactions for collaborative project work? To answer this question, this study conducted a questionnaire survey to collect responses from university students who have been involved in team projects. This study analysed students’ copresence (a second-order formative construct consisting of two first-order constructs: self-copresence and partner-copresence) and its relationships with media satisfaction and communication effectiveness. It investigated whether these relationships differed between the students who used instant messaging and those who used face-to-face interactions. In addition, this study also examined whether media satisfaction played a mediating role between copresence and communication effectiveness. The findings of this study could help explain how different communication media can facilitate teamwork in collaborative learning environments.

scholarly journals Accessing social media: Help or hindrance for people with social anxiety?

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 204380871983781 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie E. Carruthers ◽  
Emma L. Warnock-Parkes ◽  
David M. Clark
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Anxiety ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
Laboratory Setting ◽  
Socially Anxious ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Negative Thoughts ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
Use Of Social Media

Despite increasing use of social media and the potential benefits for people with social anxiety (SA) disorder, little is known about the online experience of people with SA. Our study aimed to investigate the occurrence of cognitive and behavioral processes during a series of online and off-line Facebook (FB)-based tasks among individuals with high and low levels of SA. Sixty-one undergraduates with low or high SA were asked to use FB in a laboratory setting, to make an FB post, and to imagine three ambiguous FB scenarios. Participants with high SA reported higher anxiety throughout the study with an interaction effect, indicating greater relative increases in anxiety for those with high SA over low SA across tasks. The high SA group were more likely to negatively interpret the ambiguous FB scenarios than the low SA group. They also reported using more safety-seeking behaviors and having more negative thoughts. The findings suggest that the cognitive and behavioral processes that characterize socially anxious face-to-face interaction are also evident in online communication. Suggestions are made for the clinical implications of such findings.

scholarly journals Predictors of Parental Contentment with the Amount of Encouraging Digital Feedback from Teachers in Finnish Schools

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 253
Author(s):  
Anne-Mari Kuusimäki ◽  
Lotta Uusitalo ◽  
Kirsi Tirri
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Digital Communication ◽  
Parental Attitudes ◽  
National Curriculum ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
School Communication ◽  
Highly Educated ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Urban And Rural Areas

The Finnish National curriculum obligates teachers to give parents encouraging feedback about their children’s learning and development, the aim being to build a constructive relationship between homes and schools and to encourage close collaboration among all parties. Teachers in Finland nowadays use digital platforms that allow effective online communication. The frequency and quality of such communication vary a great deal. In particular, there seems to be a lack of clarity concerning the amount of encouraging feedback delivered in this way. The focus in this paper is on the extent to which Finnish parents (N = 1117) in both urban and rural areas are content with the amount of such feedback. We carried out a logistic regression analysis to predict parental contentment with the amount of encouraging messaging, with the pupil’s grade level, parental attitudes to digital communication, as well as parental educational level and gender as independent variables. In sum, parents who were less highly educated, with a neutral-to-positive attitude to digital communication and with a child in lower secondary school were most likely to be content with the amount of communication. These results have both research and practical implications in terms of enhancing the understanding of how best to deliver encouraging digital feedback between homes and schools. Furthermore, it seems that teacher education should focus on communicative competence early on. The current study completes our three-part series of studies on digital home–school communication in Finland.

scholarly journals An experimental test of the effects of online and face-to-face feedback on self-esteem

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen G. M. Vossen ◽  
Maria Koutamanis ◽  
Joseph B. Walther
Keyword(s):  
Negative Feedback ◽  
Experimental Test ◽  
Indirect Effect ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Communication Mode ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Negative Comments

This study investigated the effect of receiving confirming vs. disconfirming feedback to individuals’ self-disclosure on their self-esteem, the role of giving reciprocal feedback in this relationship, and how these effects differ between online and face-to-face communication. Using a two (communication mode: online vs. face-to-face) by two (feedback valence: confirming vs. disconfirming) between-subjects experiment, we found that feedback had a significant indirect effect on self-esteem, through the receiver’s reciprocal feedback. This indirect effect of feedback differed in online communication from offline: In online communication, participants reciprocated negative feedback when they received it, more than in face-to-face communication. The reciprocal feedback enhanced their self-esteem in online communication, but not in face-to-face communication. Although people tend to respond more negatively to negative comments in online conversations, the process, overall, boosts rather than hinders their self-esteem.

scholarly journals Internet-Delivered Cognitive Therapy for Social Anxiety Disorder: A Development Pilot Series

2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 383-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Stott ◽  
Jennifer Wild ◽  
Nick Grey ◽  
Sheena Liness ◽  
Emma Warnock-Parkes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Anxiety Disorder ◽  
Social Anxiety ◽  
Randomized Controlled Trials ◽  
Cognitive Therapy ◽  
Social Anxiety Disorder ◽  
Controlled Trials ◽  
Secure Messaging ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Randomized Controlled ◽  
The Face

Background: Randomized controlled trials have established that individual cognitive therapy based on the Clark and Wells (1995) model is an effective treatment for social anxiety disorder that is superior to a range of alternative psychological and pharmacological interventions. Normally the treatment involves up to 14 weekly face-to-face therapy sessions. Aim: To develop an internet based version of the treatment that requires less therapist time. Method: An internet-delivered version of cognitive therapy (iCT) for social anxiety disorder is described. The internet-version implements all key features of the face-to-face treatment; including video feedback, attention training, behavioural experiments, and memory focused techniques. Therapist support is via a built-in secure messaging system and by brief telephone calls. A cohort of 11 patients meeting DSM-IV criteria for social anxiety disorder worked through the programme and were assessed at pretreatment and posttreatment. Results: No patients dropped out. Improvements in social anxiety and related process variables were within the range of those observed in randomized controlled trials of face-to-face CT. Nine patients (82%) were classified as treatment responders and seven (64%) achieved remission status. Therapist time per patient was only 20% of that in face-to-face CT. Conclusions: iCT shows promise as a way of reducing therapist time without compromising efficacy. Further evaluation of iCT is ongoing.

Revitalizing Eastern and Western Online Communication: A Micro-Meso-Macro Link of Temporal Digital Change

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Faust ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Temporal Change ◽  
Instant Messaging ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
Smart Devices ◽  
Online Journalism ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
Media Synchronicity ◽  
Eastern Culture ◽  
Pace Of Life

This paper explains in a de-westernized sense (Gunaratne, 2010) how internet-mediated communication changes the way we deal with and plan time both individually and culturally in Germany and China. Therefore, it blends Western and Eastern culture and media theories. The paper focuses on two distinct phenomena: temporal change due to social media, and Online journalism, as the core of Internet-mediated communication (for Germany 39% communication, media use 24% Projektgruppe ARD/ZDF-Multimedia, 2016; for China 90.7% instant messaging, 82% Internet news China Internet Network Information Center, 2017), with other temporal change via smart devices touched upon (Ash, 2018). General research on time in post modern societies, recently more focused on media’s temporal change phenomena (e.g. Barker, 2012; Barker, 2018; Castells, 2010; Eriksen, 2001; Hartmann, 2016; Hassan, 2003; Innis, 2004; Neverla, 2010a, 2010b; Nowotny, 1995; Rantanen, 2005; Wajcman, 2010; Wajcman and Dodd) has not yet linked the different societal and cultural levels of temporal change. Thus, we suggest the following to fill this research gap: For a micro perspective the notions of network theories (e.g. Granovetter, 1973; Schönhuth, 2013), media synchronicity (Dennis, Fuller, and Valacich, 2008) and the idea of permanent connectivity (Sonnentag, Reinecke, Mata, and Vorderer, 2018; van Dijck, 2013; Vorderer, Krömer, and Schneider, 2016) are linked. On a meso level, institutional change in Online journalism with a focus on acceleration is modeled (Ananny, 2016; Bødker and Sonnevend, 2017; Dimmick, Feaster, and Hoplamazian, 2011; Krüger, 2014; Neuberger, 2010). On a macro level, mediatization theory (Couldry and Hepp, 2017; Krotz, 2001, 2012) and recent acceleration theory (Rosa, 2005, 2012, 2017) is discussed. The levels are systematically linked suggesting a micro-meso-macro-link (Quandt, 2010) to then ask if and how many of the dimensions of the construct temporal understanding (Faust, 2016) can be changed through Internet-mediated communication. Temporal understanding consists of nine dimensions: General past, general future, instrumental experience (monochronicity), fatalism, interacting experience (polychronicity), pace of life, future as planned expectation and result of proximal goals as well as future as trust based interacting expectation and result of present positive behavior. Temporal understanding integrates the anthropological construct of polychronicity (Bluedorn, Kalliath, Strube, and Martin, 1999; Hall, 1984; Lindquist and Kaufman-Scarborough, 2007), pace of life (Levine, 1998) and temporal horizon (Klapproth, 2011) into a broader framework which goes beyond Western biased constructs through the theory driven incorporation of Confucian notions (Chinese Culture Connection, 1987).  Finally, meta trends are laid out.

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