“What you say and how you say it” matters: An experimental evidence of the role of synchronicity, modality, and message valence during smartphone-mediated communication

Abstract

Nowadays, smartphone-Mediated Communication (SMC) has become a popular form of social interactions. The present experimental study manipulated three aspects of messaging in a WhatsApp chat as a form of SMC: synchronicity (immediate vs. time-lagged response), modality (with or without emojis), and valence (empathic accurate vs. empathic inaccurate response). The aim of this study was to investigate whether these three aspects had an impact on perceived social support, interpersonal trust, and personality attribution of the communication partner. The partial mediation of perceived social presence (the evaluation of the communication partner’s accessibility) and subjective social presence (the perception of being concordant with him/her) was also examined. Participants were 160 young adults, balanced in gender. They were randomly assigned to different the experimental conditions where they engaged in a manipulated WhatsApp chat with a fictitious same-gender communication partner. Post-questionnaire data were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling. Message valence (empathic accurate response) and modality (with emojis) significantly predicted higher levels of both forms of social presence. Synchronicity (immediate response) predicted higher levels of perceived but not subjective social presence. Social presence, in turn, was positively associated with social support, while subjective, but not perceived social presence, was positively associated with personality attribution. Neither perceived nor subjective social presence were related to interpersonal trust. Our results show that both what is said and how it is said impact the experience of interpersonal relations in SMC.

The Relationship between Social Anxiety, Smartphone Use, Dispositional Trust, and Problematic Smartphone Use: A Moderated Mediation Model

“…The data for this study were collected during the baseline assessment of two experimental studies on smartphone-mediated communication conducted in spring and autumn 2019 [ 80 ]. Participants were recruited through flyers, Facebook advertisements, and snowball sampling in Canton Ticino (Switzerland).…”

Exploring the Emotional Experience During Instant Messaging Among Young Adults: An Experimental Study Incorporating Physiological Correlates of Arousal

“…When it comes to message valence, our previous experimental study revealed that positive messages increased the perception of social presence, which was associated with a more favorable evaluation of the IM situation and the communication partner. On the contrary, in the condition where participants received negative messages, the IM situation and communication partner were perceived as unpleasant ( Petrocchi et al, 2020 ). The question remains how message valence may affect emotional arousal measured by HR and EDA.…”

“…To date, research has focused on the understanding of what is communicated, how and when it is communicated, and which are the effects of IM (e.g., Derks et al, 2008a ; Al-Khawaldeh et al, 2016 ; Blabst and Diefenbach, 2017 ; Flores-Salgado and Castineira-Benitez, 2018 ; Matassi et al, 2019 ; Resende et al, 2019 ; Ayan, 2020 ; Petrocchi et al, 2020 ). For example, a study using Ecological Momentary Assessments to evaluate person- and situation-level factors of the responsiveness to WhatsApp messages found that individuals tend to respond more quickly in a one-to-one chat compared to group chats ( Dogruel and Schnauber-Stockmann, 2021 ).…”

“…Another exploratory survey study found that a high number of single IM chats via WhatsApp with only one communication partner was considered stressful and a waste of time ( Blabst and Diefenbach, 2017 ). Furthermore, an experimental study on the role of synchronicity, modality, and message valence of WhatsApp communication found that positive messages, emojis, and quasi-synchronous responses within a 1-min time frame increased the perceived social presence of the communication partner and augmented the sense of social support ( Petrocchi et al, 2020 ). To note, the cited examples relied on self-report perceptions of the IM situation and the communication partner.…”

“…In particular, messages can differ with regards to their valence (e.g., positive, negative), latency (e.g., immediate, delayed), and modality [e.g., text, (m)emojis, pictures, videos]. While some evidence exists on the associations of these characteristics with social presence ( Park and Sundar, 2015 ; Petrocchi et al, 2020 ), trust ( Friend and Fox Hamilton, 2016 ; Petrocchi et al, 2020 ), and self-disclosure ( Nguyen et al, 2011 ), none of the previous studies has incorporated psychophysiological correlates.…”