Researchers find if 'people persons' also 'machine persons' when they interact online

According to a recent study, people's characteristics, such as how extroverted or introverted they are, and gender can be linked to how they engage online and whether they prefer engaging with a system over other people. The researchers' findings were published in the journal 'Computers and Human Behavior' which discovered that individuals thought websites were more dynamic if they contained features to encourage user communication, also known as computer-mediated communication, or CMC.

Male extroverts were more interactive than female extroverts

In contrast to extroverted women, male extroverts thought sites with tools that enabled them to communicate with the computer, known as human-computer interaction, or HCI, were more interactive.

S. Shyam Sundar, co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory and James P. Jimirro Professor of Media Effects in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, said, "when you go to a website, for example, in the Google search engine, you're essentially engaging in HCI, which is different from CMC, which is when you're communicating with other humans through computer technology. When we talk about HCI here, it's really about the degree to which the system or the machine allows us to interact with it, and it includes everything from how we swipe and tap on our mobile devices, to how we try to access different information through links on a website."

He further added that for developers, it's useful to know who will appreciate what types of interactivity you have to offer or what kind of interactivity you should offer to which kind of people. These are actually quite important business decisions because they cost a lot of money and have a lot of backend consequences.

Many of the habits and behaviours people have established in real life influence their online behaviour, according to Yan Huang, assistant professor of integrated strategic communication at the University of Houston's Jack J. Valenti School of Communication and the paper's first author. Huang said, "Our findings largely supported the hypothesis that as people's level of extroversion goes up, they're more likely to recognise the interactive potential of the site, no matter if it's communicating with the machine, or using the computer to talk to other people, but gender also made a difference here. What we saw was that extroversion has slightly different effects for men compared to women, in terms of the types of interactivity that they appreciate more."

Future studies will explore the new details

Future studies could explore how these newer tools affect individuals, according to the researchers, because the tools that developers use to communicate both with the computer and with other users are continually developing and changing.

(Inputs from ANI)

Image- @Arian Darvishi/ Unsplash