What social value do Likes on Facebook hold? This research examines people's attitudes and behaviors related to receiving one-click feedback in social media. Likes and other kinds of lightweight affirmation serve as social cues of acceptance and maintain interpersonal relationships, but may mean different things to different people. Through surveys and de-identified, aggregated behavioral Facebook data, we find that in general, people care more about who Likes their posts than how many Likes they receive, desiring feedback most from close friends, romantic partners, and family members other than their parents. While most people do not feel strongly that receiving “enough” Likes is important, roughly two-thirds of posters regularly receive more than “enough.” We also note a “Like paradox,” a phenomenon in which people's friends receive more Likes because their friends have more friends to provide those Likes. Individuals with lower levels of self-esteem and higher levels of self-monitoring are more likely to think that Likes are important and to feel bad if they do not receive “enough” Likes. The results inform product design and our understanding of how lightweight interactions shape our experiences online.

Are one's individual biases stronger when mediated communication is used? This paper examines the role of self-esteem-related biases and communication channel during romantic couple conflict. Romantic couples communicated about a conflict either face-to-face (FtF) or via instant messenger (IM). Results revealed that for people with lower levels of self-esteem, their negative biases were triggered when they communicated with their partners via IM; people with lower levels of self-esteem had more negative assessments of the conflict discussion and of the impact of the discussion on the relationship when communicating via IM than when communicating FtF. At a theoretical level, this work deepens our understanding of how individual difference variables like self-esteem impact how individuals process information and communicate via technology. At a practical level, findings suggest that the use of mediated communication during conflict is more harmful to certain individuals than to others.

This work explores the role of communication technologies during romantic couple conflict, and the impact that self-esteem has on behavior, preferences for communication channels, and attitudes about mediated communication during conflict. Results revealed that lower levels of self-esteem and communicating via text messaging (vs. face-to-face) were associated with increased distancing and perceived partner distancing behaviors. Lower levels of self-esteem and using mediated communication were also associated with a greater likelihood of thinking that a conflict had a negative impact on the relationship. Yet, there was no evidence to suggest that individuals with lower levels of self-esteem exhibited more negative behaviors and perceptions in text-based communication than in FtF communication. In addition, lower levels of self-esteem were associated with increased use of and preferences for text-based mediated communication over FtF communication during conflict. Overall, this study suggests that both self-esteem and communication channel impact the nature of romantic couple conflict.

This work explores the act of channel switching, or switching between forms of face-to-face (FtF) and mediated communication (e.g., text messaging, instant messaging) during romantic couple conflict. Interviews were conducted with 24 individuals currently involved in a non-cohabitating romantic dating relationship of 3 months or longer. Results revealed that many patterns of channel switching are used during conflict, including switches from mediated to FtF communication and from FtF to mediated communication. In addition, participants had a number of interpersonal motivations for initiating a channel switch, including avoiding conflict escalation, managing one's emotions, and attempting to reach a resolution. Theoretical and design implications are discussed.

While there are tools that allow distributed teams to collaboratively edit in real time, little work examines this practice among real teams doing real work. Even less is known about how teams from different countries make use of real-time collaborative editing tools. The current work highlights results from a qualitative user study of real-world Japanese and U.S. distributed work teams who used LiveDeck, a real-time slide editing and whiteboarding tool. Through the implementation of various novel features used as probes, differences in behavior and attitudes between team members were uncovered. Differences in the use of slide navigation options, anonymity features, and pop-up 'emotes' representing nonverbal gestures are discussed.

This paper examines how different forms of linguistic similarity in a text-chat environment relate to the establishment of interpersonal trust. Sixty-two pairs played an iterative social dilemma investment game and periodically communicated via Instant Messenger (IM). Novel automated and manual analysis techniques identify linguistic similarity at content, structural and stylistic levels. Results reveal that certain types of content (some positive emotion words, task-related words), structural (verb tense, phrasal entrainment), and stylistic (emoticons) similarity characterize high trusting pairs while other types of similarity (e.g., negative emotion words) characterize low trusting pairs. Contrary to previous literature, this suggests that not all similarity is good similarity.

This study examines the relationship between linguistic mimicry and trust establishment in a text-chat environment. Twenty-six participant pairs engaged in a social dilemma investment game and chatted via Instant Messenger (IM) after every five rounds of investment. Results revealed that, within chat sessions, lexical mimicry (repetition of words or word phrases by both partners) was significantly higher for high-trusting pairs than for low-trusting pairs, but that lexical mimicry across chat sessions was significantly higher for low-trusting pairs than for high-trusting pairs. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.