Machines and Mindlessness: Social Responses to Computers

Final Words

We have spent the past 10 years surprising ourselves (and others) with the breadth and depth of people's social responses to computers. This article represents the second generation of research in our paradigm in that it focuses on an explication of the process by which social responses occur. The second generation will be complete when theory and experiments answer the following question: Which characteristics of computers (and other media) lead which individuals to follow which social rules how similarly to human-human interaction, and why?

CLIFFORD NASS is an Associate Professor of Communication at Stanford University, with appointments by courtesy in Science, Technology, and Society, Sociology, and Symbolic Systems. He is Co-Director of the Interface Lab at the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University. He is author of The Media Equation (with Byron Reeves), as well as numerous papers on computers as social actors, human-computer interaction, organization theory, and statistical methodology. He has consulted on the design of over 100 software products and services. His present research focuses on voice-based and character-based interfaces.

YOUNGME MOON is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Marketing unit at the Harvard Business School. Her research focuses on interactive marketing technologies and electronic commerce. In particular, she is interested in situations in which a given interactive technology--usually a computer interface--becomes a primary point of contact with consumers. She has published numerous papers in various journals, including Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, and Public Opinion Quarterly.

(*.) Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Clifford Nass, Department of Communication, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-2050 [e-mail: nass@leland.stanford.edu]; or to Youngme Moon, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, Boston, MA 02163 [e-mail: ymoon@hbs.edu].

(1.) We use the term "computer" to refer to the standard hardware and software that is encountered by the Vast majority of users. Although there are certainly computers that do provide first steps toward emulating a wide range of human capabilities and behaviors, these machines are extremely rare, perform very poorly as compared to humans, and do not seem to have influenced the vast majority of people's thinking about computers.

(2.) Throughout the article, "we" refers to Byron Reeves as well as the authors.

(3.) Voice might be another cue that encourages social interaction (Amalberti, 1993).

(4.) Faces have been argued to encourage social responses (Ekman, Friesen, & Ellsworth, 1972; Reeves & Nass, 1996, chap. 3; Shepard, 1990).

(5.) In its use of placebic information to generate compliance, this study is related to Langer, Blank, and Chanowitz (1978).

(6.) Of course, any difference between the programmer and computer conditions would lead us to reject the "computer as programmer" explanation.