Emotional experiences in technology-mediated and in-person interactions: an experience-sampling study

Abstract

As the ubiquity of technology-mediated communication grows, so does the number of questions about the costs and benefits of replacing in-person interactions with technology-mediated ones.In the present study, we used a daily diary design to examine how people's emotional experiences vary across in-person, video-, phone-, and text-mediated interactions in day-to-day life. We hypothesized that individuals would report less positive affect and more negative affect after less life-like interactions (where in-person is defined as the most life-like and text-mediated as the least life-like). In line with this hypothesis, the analysis of 527 unique interactions reported by 102 individuals (mean age = 19.3; 85.6% female) over the course of 7 days reveals that people feel lonelier, sadder, less affectionate, less supported, and less happy following less lifelike interactions. Additional analyses show that the links between life-like communication and momentary experiences are independent of properties of individual interactions such as interaction length and participants' overall evaluations of interaction quality. These findings provide initial evidence that there may be inherent properties of common technology-mediated communication tools that may lead to momentary changes in affective experiences and make social connection more challenging.

Within- and between-person associations between social interactions and loneliness: Students’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…In contrast, positive remote interactions were not associated with loneliness at the between-person level. In line with previous studies (e.g., Petrova & Schulz, 2022), it is possible that the nature of inperson interactions, which provide easily visible non-verbal behaviours, is a crucial piece of interaction quality that makes it more impactful on loneliness. Previous research also indicates that remote social interactions can have negative implications for well-being, such as passive social media use (e.g., scrolling without directly interacting with others) being associated with greater loneliness and lower well-being (Lou et al, 2012;Verduyn et al, 2017).…”

“…Results from both experimental (Petrova & Schulz, 2022) and daily diary (Silva et al, 2023) studies indicate that face-to-face interactions may be more effective in reducing loneliness than remote (e.g., texting, video calls) interactions. These differences may be related to how in-person interactions can offer easily visible non-verbal behaviours, such as eye-contact (Petrova & Schulz, 2022;Silva et al, 2023) that may be harder/impossible to assess in digitally-mediated contexts. However, remote interactions may have a different impact on loneliness under conditions of wide-spread restrictions to in-person social interactions, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic (Towner et al, 2022).…”

Face-to-face more important than digital communication for mental health during the pandemic

“…Interestingly, phone calls and video chats had no significant association with well-being. Petrova and Schulz 16 again used the COVID-19 pandemic situation to analyze the impact of different forms of communication (from most life-like communication, i.e., face-to-face to least life-like communication, i.e., text-based) onto well-being by using an ESM design. They found that the more life-like the communication was, the less lonely, less sad, more affectionate, more supported, and more happy people felt when compared to less life-like situation.…”

Extraversion, social interactions, and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic: Did extraverts really suffer more than introverts?

“…In particular, individuals had to restrict FtF interactions because of the high risk of infection and were encouraged to increase their computer-mediated interactions (e.g., talking on the phone, videoconferencing, texting) in both private and professional contexts. Previous studies have suggested that FtF interactions are associated with higher well-being than computer-mediated interactions (Kroencke et al, 2023; Petrova & Schulz, 2022). This finding suggests that decreases in the proportion of FtF interactions may be related to lower well-being.…”