Monitors and Camera Zooms Affect Dominance in Video-Mediated Communication

Last week, we mentioned about the Video-Mediated Communication. The Video-Mediated Communication become more and more popular as a way of supporting informail remote interaction. Compared to Face-to-Face interaction, it makes the connection among remote offices and cities, and can make people working together as if they were in the same place. However, monitors and camera zooms can affect domiannce in Video-Mediated Communication.

“Camera Angle Affects Dominance in Video-Mediated Communication”, an article written by Wei Huang, Judith S. Olson, and Gary M. Olson, introduces a very interesting experiment. In this experiment, the researchers designed an interact through a Video-Mediated Communication while engaged in a group decision-making task. The researchers set the monitor and camera angle high in one room and low in another to simulate a situation where a “tall” person is talking to a “short” person.

To prevent the effects of age, gender and other factors, the participants were all white American men. The participants were told to work a problem seperately, and then negotiated a final solution with another by the Video-Mediated Communication. After that, they filled out a post-test scale in order to evaluate their perceived influence on the final decision.

From this experiment, the researchers made a conlusion that “tall” person are significantly more influential than “short” person. This conlusion has geart significant: The monitor placement and the camera zoom setting can affect the person's dominance in a Video-Mediated Communication. Similarly, there are a lot of other factors can affect the person's dominance, and these are under studying.

Reference:
http://www.crew.umich.edu/publications/02-09.pdf