Effects of implied social presence and interaction on attention in a virtual setting

ABSTRACT

Social interactions are crucial to successfully navigate daily life, and the presence of others can influence attention. With increases in online interactions, we investigated whether implied social presence (e.g., visual depiction of a fictitious player) and implied social interactions (e.g., instructing participants to cooperate or compete) affects attention in virtual settings. Participants completed a visual search task and were either told they were completing the task alone (controls) or they were cooperating/competing with another. Competition instructions led to faster but less accurate responses than cooperation instructions, however changing visual depictions did not affect performance. Compared to control conditions, participants prioritized accuracy during cooperation and speed during competition. Solo search for points led to significantly faster but less accurate performance compared to no points. Our findings suggest that there may be a low threshold to imply social presence, yet our beliefs regarding social interactions plays a role in affecting our attention.

KEYWORDS:

• Visual search
• attention
• cooperation
• competition
• implied social presence

Acknowledgements

Thank-you Daniela Teodorescu for programming the task, and volunteers Tiffany Riedel, Suha Rehman, and Gurvinder Dhaliwal for acting as confederates. This research was partially funded through internal start-up funds (DAH) and an NSERC Discovery Grant (DAH).

Ethics Approval

The research procedure was reviewed and approved by the University of Alberta, Research Ethics Board 2. The procedures used in the study adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki.

Author contributions

D.A.H. and Y.S. developed the initial study concept and study design. Y.S administered data collection and conducted initial data analyses, overseen by D.A.H., while H.M. conducted additional data analyses, again in consultation with D.A.H. Y.S and D.A.H wrote the initial manuscript, and H.M. and D.A.H. wrote the revised manuscript. Authors approved the final version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data is availableon the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/283bt/).

Notes

1 Participants were allowed to participate without penalty regardless of whether they did or did not consent to the fictitious pictures. Of note, all participants consented to having their picture taken.

Additional information

Funding

This research was partially funded through internal start-up funds (DAH) and an NSERC Discovery Grant (DAH).