ABSTRACT

Technology can facilitate communication across large distances. Although today’s technologies enable partners to convey rich verbal and non-verbal information, past research suggests that geographic distance can still hamper remote collaboration. In this study, we investigate whether a telepresence robot, by offering an embodiment of the user, allows communicators to experience their remote partners as being “really there,” overcoming distance effects. We conducted a two-by-two (distance: on-campus vs. across-the-country; embodiment: video-mediated vs. robot-mediated) between-subjects experiment, assessing collaboration in self-disclosure, persuasion, and negotiation tasks. Results showed that, while local participants viewed their remote partners as more present when communicating via telepresence robot, they also exhibited greater impression management in a self-disclosure task than did participants in video-mediated interactions. Consistent with embodiment helping to overcome geographic distance effects, we found that greater geographic distance had a negative impact on collaboration outcomes when a negotiation task was conducted via video-mediated communication, but not when conducted via robot-mediated communication. We did not observe effects of geographic distance, or interaction effects between embodiment and geographic distance, in the self-presentation and persuasion tasks. These findings suggest that a partner’s embodiment may change how individuals present themselves, and how geographic distance is experienced in remote collaboration, although these effects may vary across types of tasks being conducted remotely.

摘要

技术可以促进远距离通信。尽管当今的技术使合作伙伴能够传达丰富的口头和非口头信息，但过去的研究表明，地理距离仍然会阻碍远程协作。在这项研究中，我们调查了远程呈现机器人是否通过提供用户的一个体现，允许通信者将他们的远程伙伴体验为“真的在那里”，克服了距离效应。我们进行了一个两两（距离：校园内 vs. 全国；体现：视频介导 vs. 机器人介导）被试之间的实验，评估在自我披露、说服和谈判任务中的协作. 结果表明，虽然本地参与者在通过远程呈现机器人进行通信时认为他们的远程伙伴更在场，与视频中介互动的参与者相比，他们在自我披露任务中也表现出更好的印象管理。与有助于克服地理距离效应的实施例一致，我们发现，当谈判任务通过视频为媒介的通信进行时，更大的地理距离对协作结果有负面影响，但在通过机器人为媒介的通信进行时则不然。在自我展示和说服任务中，我们没有观察到地理距离的影响，或体现与地理距离之间的交互作用。这些发现表明，合作伙伴的化身可能会改变个人展示自己的方式，以及远程协作中地理距离的体验方式，尽管这些影响可能因远程执行的任务类型而异。