Though phone calls create stronger bonds than text-based communications, many people choose a text message or email out of fear of awkwardness, according to new research.
After months of social distancing, people are leaning heavily on technology for a sense of social connection. But the new study suggests people too often opt to send email or text messages when a phone call is more likely to produce the feelings of connectedness they crave.
In the study, people chose to type because they believed a phone call would be more awkward—but they were wrong, says Amit Kumar, assistant professor of marketing at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin.
“People feel significantly more connected through voice-based media, but they have these fears about awkwardness that are pushing them towards text-based media,” he says.
In one experiment, researchers asked 200 people to make predictions about what it would be like to reconnect with an old friend either via email or phone, and then they randomly assigned them to actually do it. Even though participants intuited that a phone call would make them feel more connected, they still said they would prefer to email because they expected calling would be too awkward.
“When it came to actual experience, people reported they did form a significantly stronger bond with their old friend on the phone versus email, and they did not feel more awkward,” Kumar says.
In another experiment, researchers randomly assigned strangers to connect either using text during a live chat, talking over video chat, or talking using only audio. Participants had to ask and answer a series of personal questions such as, “Is there somethi ..
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