Nonverbal Content and Swift Trust: An Experiment on Digital Communication

Abstract

We experimentally study the effect of the mode of digital communication on the emergence of swift trust in a principal-agent relationship. We consider three modes of communication that differ in the capacity to transmit nonverbal content: plain text, audio, and video. Communication is pre-play, one-way, and unrestricted, but its verbal content is homogenized across treatments. Overall, both audio and video messages have a positive (and similar) effect on trust as compared to plain text; however, the magnitude of these effects depends on the verbal content of agent's message (promise to act trustworthily vs. no such promise). In all conditions, we observe a positive e ect of the agent's promise on the principal's trust. We also report that trust in female principals is sensitive to the availability of nonverbal cues about interaction partners.

Deception by device: are we more self-serving on laptops or cell phones?

“…It is also an open question whether or not the device used would have a similarly strong impact if the participants were interacting via video (or even audio) instead of text. Some research has shown that video improves negotiated outcomes as well as prompting the IJCMA 33,4 development of trust and satisfaction (Kurtzberg et al, 2018), and others have shown that both audio and video build significantly more trust than text alone (Babutsidze et al, 2020). Thus, it is possible that adding video or audio would lead to enough of a personal feeling that even the laptop would then show lower rates of deception.…”