Attractive Task Research Articles

Instructor Self-Disclosure and Third-Party Generated Warrants: Student Perceptions of Professor Social Media Use

Guided by warranting theory, this experiment examined students’ perceptions of mediated self-disclosive messages generated by a professor and members of a professor’s social network. Using a 2 (self-disclosive messages: professional or personal) x 2 (warranting cues: present or absent) factorial experiment with Twitter, students’ perceptions of professor credibility and attractiveness were examined. Results showed no main effects for warranting cues on perceived instructor credibility or social attraction. However, a professor who tweeted professional self-disclosures was perceived as higher in competence and task attraction, whereas a professor who tweeted personal self-disclosures was perceived as higher in character and social attraction.

Investigating the relationship between behavioral synchrony and dimensions of interpersonal attraction: Why task attraction rises above the others.

Investigating the relationship between behavioral synchrony and dimensions of interpersonal attraction: Why task attraction rises above the others.

Efficient Learning-Based Recommendation Algorithms for Top- N Tasks and Top- N Workers in Large-Scale Crowdsourcing Systems

The task and worker recommendation problems in crowdsourcing systems have brought up unique characteristics that are not present in traditional recommendation scenarios, i.e., the huge flow of tasks with short lifespans, the importance of workers’ capabilities, and the quality of the completed tasks. These unique features make traditional recommendation approaches no longer satisfactory for task and worker recommendation in crowdsourcing systems. In this article, we propose a two-tier data representation scheme (defining a worker--category suitability score and a worker--task attractiveness score ) to support personalized task and worker recommendations. We also extend two optimization methods, namely least mean square error and Bayesian personalized rank, to better fit the characteristics of task/worker recommendation in crowdsourcing systems. We then integrate the proposed representation scheme and the extended optimization methods along with the two adapted popular learning models, i.e., matrix factorization and kNN, and result in two lines of top- N recommendation algorithms for crowdsourcing systems: (1) Top- N -Tasks recommendation algorithms for discovering the top- N most suitable tasks for a given worker and (2) Top- N -Workers recommendation algorithms for identifying the top- N best workers for a task requester. An extensive experimental study is conducted that validates the effectiveness and efficiency of a broad spectrum of algorithms, accompanied by our analysis and the insights gained.

The effects of interpersonal attraction on service justice

PurposeThis study aims to examine the effects of physical attraction, social attraction and task attraction, which are interpersonal attraction components of service staff, on interactional justice, procedural justice and distributive justice, all of which are components of service justice.Design/methodology/approachThis study was conducted after deriving measurement tools through two preliminary studies. The research sample was made by those who have visited the restaurant where the service staff provides services directly to the customers. Respondents were instructed by investigators to complete the questionnaire based on their most recent visit to the most visited restaurants in the past three months. They received a $5 gift voucher after completing the questionnaire.FindingsPhysical attraction negatively affected interactional justice, procedural justice and distributive justice. Social attraction had a negative impact on procedural justice. Task attraction had the greatest positive impact on all service justice factors.Practical implicationsTo attract customers’ positive perceptions of service execution and outcomes, task attraction should be considered first rather than physical attraction and social attraction of service staff.Originality/valueThis study expanded the scope of research on interpersonal attraction by studying physical attraction, social attraction and task attraction as interpersonal attraction factors at service encounters, and on service justice by setting the interpersonal attraction as a variable affecting service justice.

‘The bot predicted rain, grab an umbrella’: few perceived differences in communication quality of a weather Twitterbot versus professional and amateur meteorologists

ABSTRACTExtending previous research on the human-to-human interaction script, the MAIN model, and the Computers Are Social Actors (CASA) paradigm, this study examines the influence of weather-related communication sources with varying levels of expertise and agency cues (i.e. human versus bot) on impressions of communication quality. Specifically, an experimental design was used to measure people’s impressions of source credibility, task and social attraction, computer-mediated communication competence, and intent to interact in the future for three information sources: a professional meteorologist, an amateur meteorologist, and a weather Twitterbot. Results demonstrated similar perceptions of communication quality for the three Twitter agents. However, the Twitterbot was rated as significantly less socially attractive than the professional meteorologist and as significantly more task attractive than the amateur meteorologist delivering the same messages. Agency-related cues appear to trigger heuristics that account for these differences in perception. Implications for the use of Twitterbots in weather-related and information-sharing contexts are discussed.

Investigating antecedents of task commitment and task attraction in service learning team projects

ABSTRACTThe authors investigated the antecedents of team task cohesiveness in service learning classroom environments. Focusing on task commitment and task attraction as key dependent variables representing cohesiveness, and task interdependence as the primary independent variable, the authors position three important task action phase processes as mediators in the analyses. Overall, results provide strong support for hypothesized relationships. Task interdependence in student teams significantly influences task cohesiveness through these action phase processes. The authors highlight important implications for faculty who are interested in how to best structure student teams, particularly when course projects incorporate service learning.

Understanding adoption of intelligent personal assistants

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive research model that can explain customers’ continuance intentions to adopt and use intelligent personal assistants (IPAs).Design/methodology/approachThis study proposes and validates a new theoretical model that extends the parasocial relationship (PSR) theory. Partial least squares analysis is employed to test the research model and corresponding hypotheses on data collected from 304 survey samples.FindingsInterpersonal attraction (task attraction, social attraction, and physical attraction) and security/privacy risk are important factors affecting the adoption of IPAs.Research limitations/implicationsFirst, this is the first empirical study to examine user acceptance of IPAs. Second, to the authors’ knowledge, no research has been conducted to test the role of PSR in the context of IPAs. Third, this study verified the robustness of the proposed model by introducing new antecedents reflecting risk-related attributes, which has not been investigated in prior PSR research. But this study has limitations that future research may address. First, key findings of this research are based only on data from users in the USA. Second, individual differences among the survey respondents were not examined.Practical implicationsTo increase the adoption of IPAs, manufacturers should focus on developing “human-like” and “professional” assistants, in consideration of the important role of PSR and task attraction. R&D should continuously strive to realize artificial intelligence technology advances so that IPAs can better recognize the user’s voice and speak naturally like a person. Collaboration with third-party companies or individual developers is essential in this field, as manufacturers are unable to independently develop applications that support the specific tasks of various industries. It is also necessary to enhance IPA device design and its user interface to enhance physical attraction.Originality/valueThis study is the first empirical attempt to examine user acceptance of IPAs, as most of the prior literature has concerned analysis of usage patterns or technical features.

Task Platform Pricing Scheme Model Based on Task Attraction

Task Platform Pricing Scheme Model Based on Task Attraction

Using Rhetorical/Relational Goal Theory to Examine College Students’ Impressions of Their Instructors

Guided by rhetorical/relational goal theory, the purpose of this study was to examine whether students’ impressions of their instructors’ credibility, attraction, and homophily are influenced by four specific rhetorical and relational communication behaviors that instructors use when communicating with their students in the classroom. Participants were 193 undergraduate students enrolled in a variety of introductory communication courses at a large mid-Atlantic university. Using a series of multiple regression analyses, it was found that (a) clarity emerged as the sole indicator of instructor competence, trustworthiness, and task attraction; (b) clarity and confirmation emerged as indicators of goodwill; and (c) humor and confirmation emerged as indicators of social attraction and attitude homophily.

서비스기업 종사원의 대인매력이 고객의 지각된 가치에 미치는 영향

This study examines the effect of interpersonal attraction among service company employees on a customer's perceived value. This was done in order to confirm the interpersonal attraction of service employees needed to enhance the performance of service companies. The categories of interpersonal attraction were defined in terms of physical attraction, social attraction, and task attraction. Perceived value was divided into quality value, emotional value, price value, and social value. The samples used were taken from those who had experienced receiving service in restaurants. This was done because restaurants are one of most common places in which most people often experience the attraction of a service provider. The survey was conducted in Seoul Station in an area of constant human movement with 317 questionnaires being used to obtain the results. By applying factor analysis, interpersonal attraction converged into three factors according to the research design. However, as the quality value and the price value converged into one factor, perceived value separated into three factors being: quality-price value, emotional value, and social value. As a result, task attraction had a positive effect on quality-price value but physical attraction had a negative effect on it. Task attraction and social attraction had a positive effect on emotional value. Physical attraction, task attraction, and social attraction all had a positive effect on social value.

Chronemics in Instructor–Student E-Mail Communication: An Experimental Examination of Student Evaluations of Instructor Response Speeds

Text-based computer-mediated communication (e.g., e-mail) lacks nonverbal cues afforded by traditional face-to-face interaction in the classroom. A lack of cues may cause students to place increased importance on elements that are still present, such as how long it takes an instructor to respond to a message. This study experimentally explored how instructor e-mail response speed and message content interact to influence student perceptions of instructor interpersonal attraction and credibility. Results (N = 385) suggested that the quicker an instructor responds to a student e-mail message, the more positively s/he is evaluated in terms of social attractiveness, task attractiveness, competence, character, and caring. However, the content of the message did not significantly influence student perceptions of the instructor. These findings offer practical implications for instructor e-mail communication in the classroom and extend what is known about chronemics in computer-mediated communication to the instructional setting.

Examination of group cohesiveness levels and goal orientations of basketball players

This research intends to examine goal orientation and group cohesiveness levels of basketball players. 243 mature players who play in the leagues of Turkish Basketball Federation in 2016- 2017 season participated the study. “Task and Ego Orientation in Sports” and “Group Cohesiveness” questionnaires are used in study. While frequency, arithmetic mean and standard deviation is used for the analysis of data, T-Test, One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Post-Hoc test statistics (Tukey HSD) are used for independent samples. Depending on the variables of gender and educational background of players, a significant difference is identified in sub-dimension of Task Attraction of Group and a low-level negatively significant difference is identified between Ego Orientation in terms of age and sportive age. Significant differences are identified between the Perception of Team Success and sub-dimensions of Social Integration of Group and Social Attraction of Group. No statistically significant difference can be found for the variable of time spent in team in terms of group cohesiveness and goal orientation.

Public engagement with CEOs on social media: Motivations and relational outcomes

This study provides one of the earliest empirical analyses to explore how and why publics engage with corporate CEOs on social media and why such engagement matters. It tested a conceptual model linking CEO-public engagement to the interpersonal communicative variables of perceived authenticity and approachability as well as organization-public relational outcomes. Through a web survey of 332 social media users, results showed that publics are primarily motivated by reasons of thought leadership and task attraction when they engage with CEOs on SNSs. CEO-public engagement showed significant positive effects on perceived CEO authenticity and approachability, which in turn, positively influenced public trust and satisfaction. Public engagement with CEOs on social media also directly influenced the quality of organization-public relationships.

Application of Expectancy Violations Theory to communication with and judgments about embodied agents during a decision-making task

Because users treat embodied agents (EAs) as social actors, users hold expectations about human-to-EA communication (HtEAC) similar to those in human-to-human communication. This study extends Expectancy Violations Theory (EVT) to examine how different forms of interfaces that confirm or violate user expectations affect the communication process, social judgments, ability to influence, and accuracy of recall associated with HtEAC. Positive violations of expectancy are acts or characteristics of the EA that are unexpected but evaluated favorably by the human partner. Results suggest that when the EA deviates from expectations, effects on the HtEAC process and related outcomes can be more pronounced. EAs evaluated as positive violations had more favorable effects on task attractiveness than other human or EA interaction partners. As predicted by EVT, EA interactions that were positively evaluated elicited more perceived connectedness, feelings of being understood/receptivity, and dependability than those EA interactions evaluated negatively. However, negative violations did not produce worse outcomes than negative confirmations. EVT offers a useful lens for examining the communication effects of HtEAC and points to benefits of creating EAs that evoke positive violations of expectancy.

Exploration of Verbal Aggressiveness and Interpersonal Attraction through Social Network Analysis: Using University Physical Education Class as an Illustration

Analyzing a network sample of 67 students and professors at university physical education class, the authors aim to detect informal structures (hierarchies of targeting of verbal aggressiveness and interpersonal attractiveness), to point out determinants of these structural properties, and to formulate a typology of verbal aggression targets and attractive persons. Complete network analysis was applied on the sample. Four network analysis centrality indicators were used: in-degree, Katz status, pagerank and authority. Non-network and network determinants of being target of verbal aggressiveness or attractive were discussed. Basic results of the study were that, at least in particular university milieu the verbal aggressiveness does not seem to depend on the education level of the parents. Male nodes seem to be quite susceptible to become a target of verbal aggressiveness and also to be physically attracted (especially, of course, by female nodes). The professor that the students appreciate proves to be a determinant of targeting students for verbal aggressiveness. The appreciation proved to be related with social and physical attractiveness while the task attractiveness seems to be significantly correlated with the friends number. As for the attractiveness, the following types were proposed: a) the “perfect image”: the one who is socially and physically attractive tends also to be task attractive and b) the “handsome” is the socially attractive. Regarding verbal aggressiveness in combination with attractiveness, two types of target emerged: a) the “immune star”, namely a person who exerts social, physical and task attractiveness, without being a target, and b) the “targeted star”, who attracts being a target.

Exploring Teachers’ Verbal Aggressiveness through Interpersonal Attraction and Students’ Intrinsic Motivation

This study is aiming at: 1) exploring the relationship between perceived teachers verbal aggressiveness, interpersonal attraction and student intrinsic motivation; 2) investigating the influence of teachers verbal aggressiveness on their interpersonal attraction and student intrinsic motivation in physical education context and 3) proposing a students’ and teachers’ typology. The sample consisted of 223 Greek students (125 males, 98 females) aged 10 - 12 years old (M = 11.2, SD = 0.49) from primary schools. The results supported the internal consistency of the instruments. Statistically significant differences were observed in instructors’ verbal aggressiveness, physical attraction, enjoyment/importance, competence and pressure/tension between the genders of the students. ANOVA’s findings supported that there was a significant dependence between schools regions on the factors of effort/interest and pressure/tension. Perceived instructors’ verbal aggressiveness was negatively related to social attraction, task attraction, physical attraction, enjoyment/importance, effort/interest and competence, while there was a positive significant relationship between verbal aggressiveness and pressure/tension. The results of regression analysis revealed that perceived instructors’ verbal aggressiveness could significantly predict the variables of social, physical attraction and students’ effort/interest, competence and pressure/tension. Distinct types of relations between students and instructors may be distinguished: The “motivation by attraction” and “student autonomy”.

Examining the Effects of Performance-Based Pay and Performance Monitoring on Task Performance

Past research suggests that individual, task, and environmental factors interact to affect task performance in the workplace. This study reports the results of a laboratory experiment where 88 participants completed both an algorithmic clerical task and a creative problem-solving task, in a factorial experiment that manipulated the presence and absence of performance-based pay (PBP) and performance monitoring (PM). Additionally, we collected participants’ perceptions of the attractiveness and difficulty of the two tasks, as well as other affective reactions to the control environments. Contrary to hypotheses, PBP improved performance of the creative problem-solving task, but degraded performance of the algorithmic clerical task, while PM had less effect on task performance. Although the effects of PBP were surprising, consideration of the mediating effects of perceived task attractiveness and perceived task difficulty, along with affective reactions to PBP, offer an explanation. These results shed light on how individual, task, and control factors may interact to affect task performance, and highlight the difficulty of predicting the effects of internal controls in a complex work environment.

The Valence of Self-Generated (Status Updates) and Other-Generated (Wall-Posts) Information Determines Impression Formation on Facebook.

We examined whether self-generated (status updates) or other-generated (wall-posts) information on Facebook influenced the impression formed of the target individual. Along with examining reliance on particular types of information, we explored the valence (positive/ neutral/ negative) of the information, as reliance on self-generated or other-generated information may depend on whether self-presentation is perceived (i.e., presenting oneself positively / not negatively). Self-presentation may be perceived if the targets have positive/ neutral statuses, while negative statuses would indicate a lack of self-presentation. In line with previous research, participants should rely on other-generated information (wall-posts) to form an impression when participants are viewed to have self-presented (positive / neutral status updates), as this information could be viewed as unreliable. Forty participants rated nine Facebook profiles where statuses and wall-posts portrayed personality traits varying in valence. Each profile consisted of a neutral profile photo, three status updates (all positive, negative, or neutral) and three wall-posts (all positive, negative, or neutral). Materials were established in two pilots. Impression formation was measured as perceived social, task, and physical attractiveness of the target individual. Participants also ranked the profiles for likeability. Supporting our expectations, other-generated information (wall-posts) dominated impression formation for social attractiveness when self-generated information (status updates) was positive/ neutral. Task attractiveness was affected by information valence, regardless of source (self or other). Despite the inclusion of neutral photos, physical attractiveness was affected by self-generated information, with negative statuses lowering physical attractiveness. We suggest that these findings have implications for impression formation beyond the Facebook setting. The 557 traits analyzed in Pilot 1 are available as supporting information (S1 Dataset) and may be useful for other impression formation researchers.

Instructor Misbehaviors as Digital Expectancy Violations

This study examines students’ motives for communicating with their instructors when the instructor exhibits inappropriate or unprofessional online behavior. To understand the relationship between what we call instructors’ digital expectancy violations and students’ motives for communicating with instructors, students’ levels of task, social, and physical attraction are measured. Pearson correlations were used to assess relationships among the presence of digital expectancy violations, motives to communicate, and attraction. Results revealed that students’ motivation to communicate with instructors who commit digital expectancy violations differs based on preexisting social, physical, and task attraction to the instructor.

On the Modulation of Social Inference from Faces across Viewing Distance

Inference of social traits from faces is a prominent factor in everyday social interactions. As such it is supposed to be susceptible to evolutionary pressures affecting detection sensitivities of specific social context. Previous studies have shown in a multi trait rating task (Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008), that the valence dimension (first principal component) has been found to capture most of the variance (68%) whereas the second principle component, well aligned with dominance, was found to capture only 18% of the variance. It has been suggested that the latter structure expresses the priority of evaluation of intention over evaluation of dominance in a chance encounter. Here we address the issue of the modulation of social impression from faces across varying viewing distance. In a four social trait rating task (trustworthiness, dominance, attractiveness and aggressiveness) and simulation of varying viewing distances ranging from 2.5 to 80m we addressed this question by (i) evaluating the composition of diagnostic information across that viewing distance by classification images (ii) reconstructing the structure of the viewing-distance-dependent social space by measuring its principal components. The results show a varying composition of diagnostic information across viewing distance. Whilst in long viewing distance face and hair color (e.g. face redness) serve as major diagnostic features, in short viewing distance inner facial features (such as eyebrows) become diagnostic as well. In addition we show that at a long viewing distance loading on the first principal component of dominance is high and that of trustworthiness is low. When viewing distance is becoming shorter the loading on the first principal component of dominance becomes lower and that of trustworthiness becomes higher. The latter results suggest a viewing distance dependent tuning of social perception: priority of evaluation of counterpart's capacity in far viewing distance and priority of intentions in short distance.