The Cognitive and Interpersonal Costs of Video

Abstract

As advances in communication technology proliferate, organizations are rapidly incorporating new communication media into their environment. Unfortunately, not much is known about the effect of communication technologies on the processing of interpersonal information. Interactive communication media that place more cognitive demands on interactants may impoverish the process of impression formation. Today's video, because of the additional information conveyed and problems with signal quality, may reduce systematic processing of information and interfere with the impression-formation process. Three studies explore the relationship between communication media, cognitive load, and impression formation. Study 1 establishes that interacting over an audio-video system requires more cognitive load than does interacting over audio only. Study 2 replicates work by Ford and Kruglanski (1995) that finds that people's impressions are more biased toward a primed trait under high cognitive load. Study 3 assesses the impact of audio-only and audio-video media on impression formation. As expected, participants in Study 3 formed impressions more biased toward a primed trait when interacting over audio-video as compared to audio only. Implications for the design and use of communication media in organizations are discussed.