Testing the Interactivity Principle: Effects of Mediation, Propinquity, and Verbal and Nonverbal Modalities in Interpersonal Interaction

Abstract

Early channel reliance research compared different modes of communication to assess relationships among nonverbal and verbal cues. Emerging communication technologies represent a new venue for gaining insights into the same relation-ships. In this article, the authors advance a principle of interactivity as a framework for decomposing some of those relationships and report an experiment in which physical proximity-whether actors are in the same place ("co-located") or interacting at a distance ("distributed")-and the availability of other nonverbal environmental, auditory, and visual information in distributed modes is varied. Results indicate that both proximity and availability of nonverbal cues affect communication processes, social judgments participants make about each other, and task performance. The authors discuss implications about gains and losses due to presence of nonverbal features.The study of how verbal and nonverbal systems interact, compensate, and substitute for each other has a long and storied tradition in the context of interpersonal communication under the rubric of "channel reliance." Extensive research on channel reliance has demonstrated systematic differences in communication processes, interpretations, and other outcomes associated with utilization or exposure to various communication "modalities" or modes of communication such as textJudee K. Burgoon is a professor of communication, professor of family studies and human development, and director for human communication research, Center for the Management of Information,

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