In daily life interactions, ostracism deprives humans of their basic needs. As a response, humans strive to re-claim their basic needs through communication. However, to do so, re-initialization of communication after experiencing ostracism is a challenging task. In this exploratory research, through a 2 × 2 mixed design subjective evaluation experiment, we explored whether perceived ostracism and communication apprehension depend upon social treatment and social resonance, and have some relationship with each other. Quantitative and qualitative results revealed interesting insights.

In daily life interactions, a considerable number of individuals struggle to achieve social acceptance in their social circles. It is expected to fluctuate considering the kind of social treatment and mode of communication used. However, such insights are yet to be explored. In this manuscript, we explored the effects of kind of social treatment and mode of communication on acceptance in males and females. Two 2 × 2 mixed design experiments are conducted in which kind of treatment, with two levels i.e., inclusion and exclusion, was a between subject factor, mode of communication, with two levels i.e., face-to-face and avatar-mediated, was a within subject factor, and perceived social acceptance was main variable; where social acceptance was measured in terms of sense of belonging to group, meaningful existence in it, control over interaction, and self-esteem. The results revealed main effects of kind of social treatment on belonging to group, meaningful existence in it and control over the interaction for males but not for females. While interaction and main effects of kind of social treatment and mode of interaction on self-esteem of males and females were observed. The results reveal role of social treatment and mode of communication in shaping social acceptance across genders.

People with response time (RT) management issues usually have high situational communication apprehension, and fear of negative evaluation (FNE) in face-to-face (FtF) and online interactions. Decreasing the stress related to RT management can reduce situational communication apprehension and FNE, ensuring communication successful. In this study, we propose an interactive response strategy involving a robot avatar in a video conference that can reduce the stress related to RT management in a person and making communication successful. Two types of robotic video conferencing systems (VCSs) were considered: 1) a conventional robotic video conferencing system (VCS) where interactive response of robot avatar does not change concerning variation in RT of the subject and 2) a robotic VCS where interactive response of robot avatar changes concerning variation in RT of the subject. Situational communication apprehension measure (SCAM), FNE, sense of being attending (SoBA), and intention to use (ITU) are used as indexes for noticing the decrease in stress related to RT management of a subject in a communication scenario. A total of 51 subjects (M = 33.20, SD = 7.58 years) participated in the subjective evaluation of the web-based survey. The proposed interactive response of a robot avatar was found to have a significant effect on the stress related to RT management in a person. A significant decrease in expected SCAM and FNE scores of subjects was observed. Furthermore, a significant increase in expected SoBA and ITU scores of subjects was also observed. This study contributes to the literature in terms of the impact of the proposed interactive response of the robotic avatar on the stress related to RT management in a person in the video conference, assessed by SCAM, FNE, SoBA, and ITU indexes.