Psychology of Technology Class 4 nonconscious social responses to interactive media: The Media Equation (Nass and Reeves)

1. PSYCHOLOGY OF
TECHNOLOGY:
SOCIAL RESPONSES
TO COMPUTERS
DAVE MILLER
LORIN DOLE

2. ITINERARY
 MAJOR PAPER TOPIC SUBMISSIONS
 THE MEDIA EQUATION
 NONCONSCIOUS RESPONSES TO SOCIAL INTERACTION
 WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR AGENTIC SYSTEMS?

3. THE CHARACTERS
BYRON REEVES CLIFFORD NASS
Media Psychology and Communication Theory Sociology and Psychology

4. THE MEDIA EQUATION
 “Individuals’ interactions with computers, television, and new media are
fundamentally social and natural, just like interactions in real life” (p. 5).
 “media are perceived as real people and place, and that human responses
to media are determined by the rules that apply to social relationships and
navigating the world” (p.10).
 “All people automatically and unconsciously respond socially and naturally
to media” (p.7).
 Media use the same pathways as elements of the natural environment and
thus elicit the same responses – there are no pictures of snakes on the
savannah

5. ONE, OR TWO?
http://boryanabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Shari-Lewis-Lamb-Chop.jpg

6. TESTING THE MEDIA EQUATION
Two humans Human and computer

7. PROCEDURES
1. Find a psych experiment testing
interactions between people or
reactions to the environment
2. Find the natural principle postulated
3. Replace “person” or “environment”
and replace it with “media” or
computer
4. How did the authors of the prototype
project test their theory?
5. Substitute media (or a computer) for
the interactant or the environment
6. Run the experiment just like the
original version (obviously modified as
necessary)
7. Draw implications for the effects of
interacting with media or
computers/robots

8. BARNEY!

9. MACHINES AND MINDLESSNESS
 How close does the machine have to
be to elicit a social response from a
human?

10. THE MEDIA EQUATION IS AN
UNCONCIOUS REACTION
 “We reject the assumption of anthropomorphism, largely based on the fact
that the participants in our experiment were adult, experienced computer
users. When debriefed, they insisted that they would never respond
socially to a computer, and vehemently denied the specific behaviors they
had in fact exhibited during the experiments. Because these behaviors
extended over many minutes and relied on intentional responses on the
part of the user (as distinct from physiological or other automatic
responses, such as shouting at the computer), we believe that the
participants were sincere in their protestations.” – Nass and Moon (2000)

11. ALTERNATE EXPLANATIONS
 Anthropomorphism
 When interviewed, participants say they didn’t believe the computer was
humanlike
 Orientation to the programmer
 If you brief participants to think of the programmer/think of a computer, you get
different results
 Demand characteristics
 There isn’t a “suspension of disbelief” in the studies
 The phenomena measured are hard to consciously manipulate

12. EFFECTS OF THE MEDIA EQUATION
 “The iCat is a very sophisticated little
robot with a mind of its own”