Gender, personality influence use of interactive tools online
People’s personality — such as how extroverted or introverted they are — and their gender can be linked to how they interact online, and whether they prefer interacting with a system rather than with other people.
In a study, a team of researchers found that people considered websites more interactive if they had tools to facilitate communication between users, often referred to as computer-mediated communication, or CMC. However, male extroverts also considered sites with tools that let them interact with the computer, called human-computer interaction, or HCI, to be more interactive compared to extroverted women, who viewed sites with CMC tools to be more interactive.
“When you go to a website — for example, the Google search engine — you’re essentially engaging in HCI, which is different from CMC, which is when you’re communicating with other humans through computer technology,” said S. Shyam Sundar, James P. Jimirro Professor of Media Effects in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory. “When we talk about HCI here, it’s really about the degree to which the system or the machine allows us to interact with it, and it includes everything from how we swipe and tap on our mobile devices, to how we try to access different information through links on a website. When we talk about CMC, it is about the tools to chat with somebody else, like a customer service agent through an online portal, or when we’re having a video chat via zoom, for example.”
Knowing who your web visitors are and what engages them is an important part of creating good user experiences, added Sundar, who is also an affiliate of the Institute for Computational and Data Science. “For developers, it’s useful to know who will appreciate what types of interactivity that you have to offer, or what kind of interactivity should you offer to which kind of people.
“These are actually quite important business decisions, because they cost a lot of money and have a lot of backend consequences,” said Sundar. For example, in an e-commerce site, which may be primarily trafficked by women, the findings suggest that efforts should be made to provide ways to talk to other people, such as chat tools, rather than simply tools to interact with the computer, such as being able to turn an image of a product in all directions.
Real world behaviors in the virtual world
When people use websites, many of the habits and behaviors they have adopted in real life influence their behaviors online, said Yan Huang, assistant professor of integrated strategic communication in the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication, University of Houston and first author of the paper. The study is in line with that, she added, demonstrating how people who are extroverted in real life also like to interact in virtual settings. More