Attitudes toward Person-Person Communications Media

Abstract

Several recent experiments in fields such as bargaining, opinion change, and problem solving have employed the medium of communication as an independent variable. The present study was designed to investigate attitudes toward three media: face-to-face, loudspeaking audio, and closed-circuit television. Thirty-six pairs of managerial civil servants engaged in three 6-min. discussions, one via each medium, in a completely controlled design. After each discussion, subjects completed a 24-scale, semantic differential, media-attitude questionnaire. There were significant effects of the media upon 20 of the 24 scales. The scale scores were factor analyzed using both orthogonal and oblique rotation of five factors. There were significant effects of the media upon scores from three of the factors (Aestheticism, Evaluation, and Privacy). The differences found have implications both for previous explanations of the effects of media on laboratory task performance, and for the real-life use of person-person communications systems.