Email as a Speed-Facilitating Device: A Contribution to the Reduced-Cues Perspective on Communication

Email as a Speed-Facilitating Device:
A Contribution to the Reduced-Cues Perspective on Communication

Massimo Bertacco
Division of Social and Organizational Psychology
University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

Antonella Deponte
Department of Psychology
University of Trieste, Italy

Reduced-cues theories of communication assume that the sensorial stimulation of face-to-face interaction is essential for an optimal communicative experience. From a motivational perspective, Wicklund and Vandekerckhove (2000) took this theory further by hypothesizing that people involved in rapid communication in a setting poor in sensorial stimulation would tend to have (a) brief and (b) egocentric exchanges. Two experiments were developed in order to test these points. In Experiment 1, participants had to simulate communication with a long-lost friend either via a computer-typed letter (slow and without sensorial output media) or an email (fast and without sensorial output media). Results showed that email participants wrote shorter messages and were less likely to bring up friendship-related memories than letter participants. The second quasi-experimental study succeeded in extending the external validity of Experiment 1's findings. Research limits as well as scope for future research are discussed in the conclusions.

Until recently, much research has been devoted to determining whether computer-mediated communication (CMC) has negative consequences for human relationships and well-being (e.g., Kraut, Kiesler, Boneva, Cummings, Helgeson, & Crawford, 2002; Kraut, Patterson, Lundmark, Kiesler, Mukopadhyay, & Scherlis, 1998; Wästlund, Norlander, & Archer, 2001). However, recent research findings have not only disproved theoretical claims that CMC has a negative impact on human relationships, but they have shown that online interactions can even be better than face-to-face interactions under certain circumstances. For instance, it has been found that CMC may provide communicative settings in which individuals can take advantage of anonymity to voice their "true self" and free themselves from potentially negative social barriers (e.g., physical appearance and gender) associated with face-to-face interactions (Bargh, McKenna, & Fitzsimons, 2002). CMC modes also enable individuals to interact regardless of spatiotemporal constraints (Cantelmi, Del Miglio, Talli, & D'Andrea, 2000; Kraut et al., 1998), allowing new relationships to form and existing relationships to be maintained at a distance.

Most of the early research on CMC held a pessimistic view of online relationships. It considered online relationships to be shallow and impersonal because of the reduction in communication cues (i.e., contextual, visual, and aural) typical of CMC. Parks and Floyd (1996) used the term "reduced-cues perspective" to refer to theories that stress the richness of face-to-face communicative cues and present face-to-face communication as the heuristic for investigating all other communicative modalities (e.g., Daft & Lengel, 1984; Kiesler, Siegal, & McGuire, 1984). Not surprisingly, the reduced-cues perspective viewed CMC as an inappropriate modality for expressing oneself and receiving personal feedback (see Locke, 1998 for a review). For instance, both social-presence theory (Rice, 1987; Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976) and the social-context cues theory (Sproull & Kiesler, 1991) argued that individuals' awareness of and sensitivity to others are related to the number of channels or codes available for linking them. Therefore, as face-to-face interaction provides the greatest number of channels, these theories expected this mode to foster greater awareness and sensitivity than all other interactive modalities. Currently, however, the reduced-cues perspective is no longer considered a reliable theoretical framework for addressing CMC issues.

Notwithstanding differences in informational richness and communicative synchronization (Treviño, Webster, & Stein, 2000; Webster & Treviño, 1995), CMC modes have successfully enabled individuals to interact regardless of spatiotemporal constraints. However, while much CMC research has focused on the issue of sensorial channels (a spatial issue), less research has addressed the issue of velocity (a temporal issue). Occasionally, authors have acknowledged that CMC allows individuals to greatly reduce communicative delays resulting from the communicators' location and/or daily engagements (Cantelmi et al., 2000; Kraut et al., 1998). The present research extends the original reduced-cues perspective by taking into account not only the reduction in communicative channels but also communicative speed. Surprisingly, to our knowledge, no research has been carried out to explicitly investigate the velocity aspect (i.e., the temporal issue) of CMC. In order to account for the lack of this perspective on mediated human communication, Wicklund and Vandekerckhove (2000) recently produced an analysis in which they consider the psychological consequences of the use of speed communication devices that lack sensorial stimulation.

Using a motivational analysis of human interactions (Lewin, 1926, 1935) as a starting point, Wicklund and Vandekerckhove (2000) argue that the speed of some communication devices might promote a substitutive effect (cf., Mahler, 1933) between mediated and face-to-face interactions. In other words, if an individual perceives that the speed of the communication device is similar to that of the face-to-face mode (i.e., the recipient is perceived to be at hand), the individual's motivation to use mediated communications would be equivalent to that for the face-to-face modality. As a consequence, communication speed-facilitating devices should lead the communicators to behave as they would in a face-to-face interaction, which is conceptualized as being the "original interaction form." Crucially, individuals undertaking speedy communication would also require sensorial stimulation for an optimal communicative experience (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), like in face-to-face interactions. Yet, in many speed-facilitating devices sensorial stimulation is completely missing (e.g., email and chat rooms) or quite poor (e.g., video chat rooms). According to Wicklund and Vandekerckhove (2000), the use of speed-facilitating devices lacking in multidimensional stimulation might bring about important social-psychological consequences. Specifically, the authors expect users of such devices (a) to abbreviate their interactions and (b) to be more egocentric than individuals who communicate by means of either slow communication or face-to-face modes. In contrast, it is important to note that the reduced-cues perspective on communication (Parks & Floyd, 1996) cannot predict a similar pattern of social-psychological differences.

Wicklund and Vandekerckhove (2000) use the term "egocentrism" to refer to a decrement in an individual's capacity to take the other's perspective into account during an interaction, i.e., a shortfall in cognitive processes devoted to working out the other's point of view. Wicklund and Vandekerckhove (2000) argue that a multiplicity of sensorial stimulations enables individuals to have (a) prolonged interactions and (b) an optimal degree of perspective taking in the face-to-face mode. In contrast, in asynchronous and slow interactions (e.g., the traditional letter), both the interactive duration and perspective taking are supported by increased cognitive processes such as thinking about and remembering the other, associated with the delayed perception that is typical of these modalities. More precisely, the perception delay due to slow interaction might work as a frustrating stimulus that boosts the individual's cognitive processes (e.g., thinking about the partner) likely to reduce the frustration state (Amsel, 1958; Mischel, 1974). Speed-facilitating devices, since they reduce communication delay and therefore its perception, should lead to a breakdown of these delay-related cognitive processes without, however, providing individuals with the external stimulation to replace them. In other words, the speed afforded by these devices would deplete the communicators' "patience" that is required to actively cope with the interactive delay (cf., Mischel, 1996) of the feedback, i.e., the time needed to write the answer.

Clark and Schaffer (1989) have referred to the notion of common grounding to describe the process that makes comprehension possible among different individuals. Within their framework, common grounding is understood in terms of perspective taking, in which a central role is attributed to the knowledge shared by the individuals. This relationship could be described in linear terms: The more the communicators' perspective taking increases, the more they will rely on shared knowledge. In "static communication," i.e., non-interactive situations in which messages are written and recipients cannot respond, there is evidence that communicators take others' knowledge and perspectives into account when they formulate their messages (Krauss & Fussel, 1991). Based on these observations, a reduction of perspective taking in asynchronous communications should coincide with a reduction of cognitive and behavioral aspects associated with the communicators' shared knowledge. Specifically, as the communicators' perspective taking decreases, the amount of shared knowledge in the message should decrease as well.

The purpose of the present investigation was to test Wicklund and Vandekerckhove's (2000) hypothesis by comparing email to postal letter communications. Contrary to postal letters, email gives the person a sense that the recipient can be reached and dealt with quickly (Manger, Wicklund, & Eikeland, 2003). Therefore, speed communication analysis (Wicklund & Vandekerckhove, 2000) would consider email, but not postal letters, to be a speed-facilitating device that leads people to (a) abbreviate their communication and (b) reduce their perspective taking. It is important to note that the reduced-cues perspective cannot explain differences between email and postal letter communications. Wicklund and Vandekerckhove (2000) argued that, by focusing almost exclusively on sensorial channels, earlier theories had little explanatory power in that they did not take into account communicative speed in their theoretical frameworks.

In order to disentangle the specific contribution of speed communication analysis (Wicklund & Vandekerckhove, 2000) from the previous reduced-cues perspective (Parks & Floyd, 1996), an experiment was developed in which students were asked to simulate communication with a long-lost friend either by email or postal letter. In line with Wicklund and Vandekerckhove's analysis (2000) and the theoretical stance on perspective taking in written communication described above (Krauss & Fussel, 1991), we predicted that, compared to individuals who use postal letters, individuals who use email will be (a) more concise, (b) make fewer references to shared knowledge at the explicit level, and (c) be less inclined to recall the implicit level of shared knowledge. In order to measure perspective taking, the present research considered the participants' tendency to refer to friendship memories with their recipient (e.g., "Do you remember our last dinner?"). This communicative category represents a clear and unquestionable reference, within an ordinary message to a friend, to the communicators' shared knowledge.

46 students (26 women, 20 men) of the University of Trieste volunteered for this study. The mean age was 24.98 (SD=2.56) for women and 25.80 (SD=.72) for men.

Participants were recruited individually in the Department of Psychology for a study on friendship. They were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: Email (n=23) and Computer Typed Letter (n=23). After being asked to read and follow the instructions (consisting of a four-page booklet), the participant was left alone in a room with a personal computer, which was running the Yahoo email service or Microsoft Word depending on the condition. First, s/he was asked to recall a distinct same-sex friend with whom s/he had had no contact in the last three months. Then s/he had to answer the following questions about the friend: (a) first name, (b) first letter of last name, (c) date of birth, (d) country of origin, (e) hair color, (f) height, (g) time passed since the last face-to-face meeting, and (h) last indirect contact.

Subsequently, the instructions requested the participants to write a message to the friend they had just recalled without worrying about the address. Specifically, participants were asked to behave as if¹ they had to get in touch with their "long-lost friend." Moreover, they were told that they were free to write as much and for as long as they wished. In order to improve the participants' perception of the postal letter condition (Aronson, Brewer, & Carlsmith, 1985), an envelope with a stamp was placed near the computer screen. The size of the writing frame for the word processor was equal to that of the Email condition.

When the participant had finished writing, s/he called the experimenter into the room. At this point the participant's readiness to recall friendship memories was measured by means of a free recall procedure (cf., Waldfogel, 1958). More precisely, the participant was given two minutes to fill in a sheet with as many memories (one-sentence length) as possible about their shared experiences with the recipient. It was assumed that the more numerous the memories retrieved, the greater the perspective taking. In order to check whether the cognitive shortfall was specific to the cognitive processes related to shared knowledge, or if it concerned other aspects, the participant could also recall personal opinions about the recipient (i.e., personality traits), also within the two minutes.² Finally, the experimenter debriefed the participant and explained the true nature of the experiment.

The presence of a friendship memory within the messages was considered as an indicator of the participant's effort to base the communication on shared knowledge with the recipient. Two independent judges assessed the friendship memories (presence = 1; absence = 0). Judges agreed on 43 out of 46 messages, i.e., in 93.47% of the cases. In order to check whether other contents of the messages were affected by the communication condition or not, judges also assessed the messages for the presence of updating statements (e.g., "I bought a new car") and intentions to continue the relationship (e.g., "I will call you as soon as possible").³ Judges agreed on 44 (95.65%) and 42 (91.30%) of the 46 messages for updates and intentions, respectively. Disagreements were resolved by randomly attributing the score given by one of the two judges.

In order to determine whether or not the media manipulation led to the recall of a qualitatively different friend as recipient, two one-way ANOVAs were run with the communicative condition as between factor (Email vs. Computer Typed Letter), and the time that had elapsed since the last face-to-face meeting and mediated contact with the recipient, as dependent measures. Results indicated no differences due to the media so that, on average, participants recalled a recipient with whom the last face-to-face meeting dated from about 22 months (SD=27.05) and the last mediated contact about 16 months (SD=23.58), F(1,45)=.13, p=.71 and F(1,45)=1.11, p=.29.

Our first hypothesis predicted shorter messages in the Email condition than in the Computer Typed Letter condition. In order to test this hypothesis, a one-way ANOVA was run with communication condition (Email vs. Computer Typed Letter) as between factor and message length as dependent measure. As expected, email messages (M=113.08, SD=38.47) contained fewer words than computer-typed letters (M=160.56, SD=72.73), F(1,45)=7.65, p<.01, η²=.15.

We also hypothesized that email messages would be less likely to contain friendship memories than postal letter messages. To test this prediction, we computed the chi-square statistic on three 2 X 2 contingency tables of presence/absence of content category (friendship memories, updates, and intentions) from the Email and the Computer Typed Letter conditions. Consistent with the hypothesis, the frequency analysis indicated that only friendship memories were affected by the communication condition (see Table 1).

Table 1. Frequency of messages and chi-squares as a function of content categories and communicative condition for Experiment 1 (df=1, n=46)
Note: *p<.05

Our last hypothesis was that, after the communication, email participants would recall fewer friendship memories than participants in the postal letter condition, while there would be no differences in recalling other information, such as the recipient's personality traits. As Figure 1 shows, the means for personality traits were almost identical (Ms=1.17 and 1.09 and SDs=2.39 and 1.24 for Email and Computer Typed Letter, respectively) whereas those for friendship memories differed significantly, F(1,45)=4.90, p<.05, η²=.10. People retrieved more friendship memories in the Computer Typed Letter (M=5.26, SD=2.53) than in the Email condition (M=3.74, SD=2.12).

Figure 1. Means for friendship memories recalled and personality traits mentioned as a function of condition (Experiment 1)

The results provide evidence for the abbreviation hypothesis derived from the speed communication analysis. That is, given the same communicative task, email users wrote shorter messages than did other participants. Furthermore, the speed communication analysis hypothesized that there would be diminished perspective taking in those participants undertaking communication mediated by a speed-facilitating device. This hypothesis was confirmed by two results. First, email messages were less likely to contain explicit references to shared knowledge (i.e., friendship memories) than postal letter messages. Moreover, this effect was restricted to common ground contents. When we checked for differences in frequency of other two important kinds of content (i.e., updates and intentions) among communicative conditions, no significant result was found. This result is in line with the notion that emails were shorter than postal letters because of the scarcity of contents related to shared knowledge. Second, email writers recalled fewer shared memories with the recipient than did postal letter writers. Again, the effect was restricted to the communicators' shared knowledge and did not occur in the case of the communicators' "private knowledge" of the friendship. Taken together, these results lend support to the notion that the paucity of shared knowledge found in emails was not just a matter of unexpressed behavior but, rather, that it was associated with a cognitive shortfall, i.e., an actual loss of perspective-taking.

One could argue that the findings of Experiment 1 were caused by different social norms or media formats associated with the use of the email and postal letters respectively. More precisely, people might become accustomed to associating email with messages that are shorter than that of a postal letter. This argument, however, is not economical since it requires further explanations about the origin of such a social norm. In other words, those who advocate the social norm outlook should also provide a non-tautological reason for the occurrence of this social norm. In fact, one could point out that a social norm of brief email messages could be a consequence of the email speed-facilitating property.⁴

Another possible interpretation of these results is that participants in the email condition were forced to use a communicative setting that was inappropriate for accomplishing the experimental task (i.e., getting in touch with a long-lost friend). Yet previous findings provide abundant evidence of the spread of email use throughout society (e.g., Kraut, Mukhopadhyay, Szczypula, Kiesler, & Scherlis, 1999; Odom-Gunn & Gunn, 2001), and its corresponding substitution for other communication modes because of its easy availability (see D'Ambra, Rice, & O'Connor, 1998).

In order to enhance the external validity of the previous results, a second experiment was conducted in which the communicative conditions were as natural as possible. In this quasi-experimental study, participants were not assigned to the conditions randomly. Although quasi-experiments present systematic threats to internal validity, they are accepted as a useful way to test the external validity of theories and hypotheses already investigated in the laboratory (Cook & Campbell, 1979).

Since Wicklund and Vandekerckhove (2000) refer to perspective taking and egocentrism as equivalent concepts, a direct measure to tap such a conceptual relation was used in the present study. Specifically, the "Drawing an 'E' on one's forehead" method designed by Hass (1984) was used to measure egocentrism.⁵ It consisted of having the participant drawing, one at a time, some asymmetric consonants and/or vowels on his/her forehead and then registering their orientation, which can be either self-oriented (egocentric) or other-oriented (non-egocentric).

As in Experiment I, there were two asynchronous communicative conditions: email and postal letter. Moreover, a face-to-face condition was added in order to compare the reduced-cues perspective (Parks & Floyd, 1996) with the speed-communication analysis (Wicklund & Vandekerckhove, 2000). The reduced-cues perspective (Parks & Floyd, 1996) would predict that the face-to-face interaction leads to the highest level of perspective taking in communicators. Conversely, the speed-communication analysis (Wicklund & Vandekerckhove, 2000) would expect a high degree of perspective taking even for individuals undertaking slow and asynchronous communication such as writing a postal letter.

The hypotheses were as follows: Email users were expected (a) to write shorter messages than postal letter users, and (b) to manifest less perspective taking and more egocentrism with respect to both the postal letter and face-to-face communicators.

72 students (36 women, 36 men) of the University of Trieste volunteered for the study. Their mean age was 24.6 (SD=2.58) for men and 24.8 (SD=4.24) for women. There were three non-random groups: (1) Students who were writing an email to a friend at the University Internet Points (email condition), (2) students who were talking with friends in a face-to-face setting (face-to-face condition), and (3) students who were at various resting points (e.g., pubs and gardens) of the campus (postal letter condition).

The quasi-experiment had a basic between-subjects design with communication condition (Email, Face-to-face, and Postal Letter) as the independent variable, and message length, retrieval of friendship memories, and egocentrism as dependent measures. The retrieval of friendship memories was measured by means of a free recall procedure like the one in Experiment I. As for Hass's (1984) measure of egocentrism, the letters E, L, G, and R were used. Every non-egocentric letter was given 1 point and their sum formed an index with endpoints at 0 (Egocentric) and 4 (non-egocentric).

Since the procedure differed slightly among conditions, the conditions are described separately as follows.

Emails were expected to be shorter than postal letters. A one-way ANOVA with communication condition (Email vs. Postal Letter) as the between-subject factor and message length as the dependent measure was run. As expected, participants in the Email condition wrote significantly shorter messages (M=60.79, SD=53.04) than participants in the Postal Letter condition (M=117.70, SD=65.67), F(1,47)=10.91, p<.005, η²=.19.

On the basis of the speed-orientation analysis, we also expected that the email participants would be more egocentric than both the postal letter and face-to-face participants. To test this hypothesis, we ran a one-way ANOVA with communication condition (Email, Postal Letter, and Face-to-face) as the between-subject factor and the egocentric index as the dependent measure. Contrary to our expectation, the one-way ANOVA did not support our prediction, F(2,69)=.12, p=.88.

In line with the results of Experiment 1, the email participants were expected to retrieve fewer memories about their friendship. A one-way ANOVA with the communication condition as the between subject factor (Email, Postal Letter, and Face-to-face) and number of friendship memories as the dependent measure was run. Results indicated that the number of friendship memories significantly differed depending on the communication condition, F(2,69)=5.22, p<.005, η²=.13. As expected, the LSD post-hoc comparisons showed that participants in the Email condition recalled fewer friendship memories (M=3.00, SD=1.79) than did participants in the Postal Letter (M=4.91, SD=2.51) and the Face-to-face (M=4.70, SD=2.38) conditions (p<.005 and p<.05, respectively).

Figure 2. Means and standard errors for friendship memories recalled as a function of condition (Experiment 2)

This second study succeeded in extending the external validity of our previous laboratory experiment. Indeed, its findings supported both the abbreviation effect and the decrement of friendship memories' retrieval expected by the speed communication analysis (Wicklund & Vandekerckhove, 2000). Furthermore, we were able to compare the Face-to-face condition with both the Email and the Postal Letter conditions. As anticipated by the speed communication analysis (Wicklund & Vandekerckhove, 2000), neither face-to-face nor postal letter participants were negatively affected in their capability of retrieving friendship memories. It is worth noting that the reduced-cues theoretical stance (Short et al., 1976; Sproull & Kiesler, 1991) would have predicted a different pattern of results, with the email and postal letter participants being equal in their retrieval performance, and the face-to-face participants showing the highest performance on this task. On the contrary, the pattern of results supports Wicklund and Vandekerckhove's (2000) analysis.

Contrary to our initial hypothesis, email participants were not more egocentric than the others. Even though the "Drawing an E" method mirrors closely Wicklund and Vandekerckhove's notion of egocentrism (2000), this measure is usually applied after a personal threat to measure cognitive orientation toward an egocentric state (Wicklund & Steins, 1996). It might be that drawing an "E" on one's forehead is a method that is too insensitive to measure the participants' egocentric states elicited by a particular communicative setting. It is possible that people need a stronger eliciting situation, or a more threatening one (Steins & Wicklund, 1996; Wicklund & Steins, 1996).

Even when bearing in mind the quasi-experimental limitations of this research (i.e., the presence of relevant potentially interfering variables), the results are particularly meaningful in light of Experiment 1 since the laboratory results were confirmed in a more natural setting. However, it is always possible to argue that the lack of random assignment typical of a quasi-experiment weakens our argument. Specifically, participants were recruited and assigned to the conditions on the basis of their personal occupation at a particular moment. Therefore, we cannot fully rule out the possibility that the differences we found among conditions were caused by systematic differences in the communicative conditions due to individuals' attitudes and/ or motivations rather than to the distinct interactive settings.

By comparing emails and postal letters, the present study can be considered the first step towards empirically addressing part of Wicklund and Vandekerckhove's analysis (2000). This comparison is theoretically relevant for two reasons: First, email is a communication format that shares properties with postal letters, i.e., both of them allow written and asynchronous interactions (Clark & Brennan, 1991). Second, email, in contrast to regular mail, is a speed-facilitating communication device. The comparison between email and postal letter thus enabled us to disentangle the issue between the reduced-cues perspective and the speed communication analysis. On the basis of the reduced-cues perspective, and as long as the communicative goals are equal (e.g., to get in touch with a long-lost friend), email messages should be similar to postal letter messages because both of these modes lack sensorial stimulation. On the contrary, the results of Experiments 1 were consistent with the speed communication explanation: The email messages were, on average, shorter and poorer in "common ground" contents (i.e., fewer friendship memories) than postal letter messages. Moreover, Experiment 2 succeeded in enhancing the external validity of these results and provided further evidence supporting the speed communication analysis.

In a comparative study looking at email vs. face-to-face in negotiation, Morris, Nadler, Kurtzberg, and Thompson (2002) found that email negotiators disclosed only one-third the amount of information about non-negotiation issues than did face-to-face negotiators. This result, together with ours, may be interpreted in the sense that email communication inhibits disclosure; however, this view must be considered with caution. This type of interpretation does not seem to fit with other research (e.g., Bargh et al., 2002; Joinson, 2001) that has documented greater self-disclosure (Jourard, 1971) among new acquaintances through CMC video conferencing than in face-to-face communication, due to anonymity and reduced public self-awareness. However, this incongruence can be attributed to differences due to the kind of relationships and/or the media that were investigated in our experiments. For instance, unlike participants in Joinson's studies (2001), our participants had to communicate with a person who was already known to them by simulating an email communication.

Moreover, Experiment 1 showed that students in the Email condition retrieved fewer memories of shared experiences than students in the Postal Letter condition but that they remembered the same number of the recipient's personality traits. In line with this result, Klein, Loftus, and Kihlstrom (1996) found experimental data suggesting that two different memory systems were involved in (a) personality traits and (b) event memories. According to them, personality traits would be processed by semantic memory, while friendship memories would be stored in episodic memory (Tulving, 1989; 1991). This outcome is compatible with the possibility that speed-facilitating devices change people's activation of episodic memory only. Experiment 2 confirmed this interpretation in that participants communicating by email retrieved fewer friendship memories than either face-to-face or postal letter communicators.

In summary, the present study found evidence in support of the speed communication analysis. As expected, students communicating with a friend via email wrote shorter messages and were less inclined to ground their communications in shared knowledge than students communicating by postal letter. Of course, our contribution neither intends to be exhaustive nor to give a full account of Wicklund and Vandekerckhove's thesis (2000). There are theoretical aspects and limitations that call for additional investigation. First of all, although Clark and Brennan's (1991) notion of common ground relates to Wicklund and Vandekerckhove's (2000) theoretical analysis, Experiment 2 failed to directly support the egocentrism hypothesis. The cognitive aspect of egocentrism may not be sufficient to fully capture the psychological nuances occurring among students in an email setting. Future research should also investigate the emotional aspect of egocentrism. Second, we argued that the social norms view did not offer a more adequate explanation for our results than the speed communication analysis. However, for more direct evidence, one should develop an experiment in which the number of sensorial channels and feedback speed are respectively manipulated while interactive social norms are excluded. Given the ubiquity of social norms in human behavior, however, this experiment seems difficult to set up. Third, our results stem from non-interactive experiments. In order to extend the validity of the theoretical arguments, experiments addressing interactive mediated communications should be undertaken. Finally, this research only considers email as a speed-facilitating device and disregards other relevant communication technologies, such as the cell phone, the chat-line, and the landline telephone. Obviously, a speed communication analysis should also be extended to these communicative settings to verify its theoretical validity throughout all communication media.

The University of Trieste supported the present research through a fellowship to Dr. Massimo Bertacco. We are particularly grateful to Professor Robert A. Wicklund for his comments on an earlier version of this manuscript, and his constant insightful suggestions for carrying out the present research. We thank Dr. Federica Gomboso and Dr. Teresa Bonifacio, who helped us at different stages of our research. Thanks are also extended to Dr. Angels Colome, who read the first draft of this manuscript, and to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. We are also grateful to Professor Jacques-Philippe Leyens, who patiently helped us to improve the final draft of this article.

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Massimo Bertacco (Ph.D., University of Trieste, Italy) is a Post-doctoral researcher at the University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. His research interests are mediated communication and Self psychology. At present, his research focuses on the relation between the Self and cultural transitions.
Address: Division of Social and Organizational Psychology, Université Catholique de Louvain, Place du Cardinal Mercier 10, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

Antonella Deponte (Ph.D., University of Trieste, Italy), after a post-doctoral fellowship, is now teaching Social Psychology at the University of Trieste. Her research interests vary from the impact of CMC on human relations, to age-related stereotypes and intrinsic motivation.
Address: Department of Psychology, University of Trieste, Via S. Anastasio 12, 34134 Trieste, Italy