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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
This weekend, I talked with a friend. It had been nearly five whole years since we last talked at length. It was a curious development -- a kind of which I seem to be seeing more often than not. One of us got in touch with the other with a short email, then using that medium to set up a phone call. We used email to set up a phone call, instead of engaging in an extended textual exchange. This isn't the first time such a thing has happened to me. Late last year, an analogous series of events occurred, culminating in a two hour phone call. After both these occasions, I distinctly recall being glad that we had talked in voice, and feeling much more reconnected than we would have through email. It seems to be an accepted principle (though face to face contact is of course still preferred) that the phone still trumps other mediums when it comes to reconnecting and reinstating confidence with others. I distinctly remember some graduate course of mine which stressed the importance of periodic face to face interaction in business, a course which also insisted that the phone is next in line when it comes to the quality of communication. I wonder why this is the case. Is it because we feel the other's presence through his voice, triggering something somewhere in our brains? Is it because we can actually have a conversation using the phone, whereas emails are effectively a series of monologues? Is it because of our awareness that a phone call implies a larger commitment and desire to actually converse (as opposed to platitudinal communication)? I am not sure why phone calls feel more intimate, more valuable. But I suppose that that is a smaller matter than the knowledge and conviction of its value. It is, of course, not always feasible to arrange a phone call with others. But all things being equal, it should be the medium of choice for us.
Crossposted from my main blog
 
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Newschool uses email to set up skype video chat 
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Is it because we feel the other's presence through his voice, triggering something somewhere in our brains?
As someone who HATES phone calls because I feel like I am talking to empty air, I would argue that the only reason people like phone calls is if they've made a lot of them and developed a positive association to them. I wouldn't argue there's anything natural about enjoying it, because it is a really weird experience if you don't have them often. Like, everyone in the house can only hear your half of the conversation, there's no face to match the words to... It creeps me out yo.
I vastly prefer IMs for keeping in touch with people. It's really a shame so many people gave up on it for Facebook, which is like you said a series of monologues
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On March 27 2012 00:52 thedeadhaji wrote:I distinctly remember some graduate course of mine which stressed the importance of periodic face to face interaction in business, a course which also insisted that the phone is next in line when it comes to the quality of communication. </p><p>I wonder why this is the case. Is it because we feel the other's presence through his voice, triggering something somewhere in our brains?
Hearing your friends voice is way more personal to you, than reading his/her words - It implies less filtering on his/her part, as the "live" conversation removes any chance to reformulate sentences etc..
This is an excerpt from the abstract of my BA-assignment about mediated communication. This is my understanding of the subject anyway:
The higher the level of mediation, the more likely credibility issues are to occur. In a conversation between two people standing face to face reliability and credibility is strong, while communication in more complex situations deteriorate these ‘forms of trust’*. Just by changing the setting to a conversation in an internet chatroom for instance we eliminate our senses of sight, hearing and smell. This loss hampers our ability to correctly assess and read our conversation partner. If we add additional intermediaries between the participants in a conversation, or the content is edited or translated to a different semiotic form (i.e. from lingual to textual), the communication becomes yet more unreliable.
It basically says that the more communication is being mediated, the less convincing it is. Banalities really, but this is the function of academics --> understanding/elaborating on banalities.
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I am actually much less honest in person. How do you account for the natural tendency to be more reserved in a live conversation (due to the threat of not being able to think out everything as clearly)? What studies have you found which support your arguments? Are you accounting for conversations with friends vs conversations with mere acquaintances? What about the motivation to lie with people you know in person, vs the considerably diminished motivation to lie to people who live too far away to affect your personal life?
Perhaps it's not dishonesty precisely, but that all of my conversations in person tend to be reactionary because there is no time to think, and that reaction is the practiced least offensive response. If someone asks me how I'm feeling, I don't even have time to think how I'm feeling because I'm in reaction mode. Any information I don't have time to assess whether or not it's okay to share with a person simply doesn't get shared.
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There is so much more information in a voice conversation than in text. With text you can guess a bit from the way things are formulated etc but with voice you have all the information from the way things are said like which words are emphasized and also the emotions behind it. Also easier to respond to said information in real time and for the people talking to influence each other.
Still no body language but better than nothing.
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On March 27 2012 02:20 Chef wrote:
I am actually much less honest in person. How do you account for the natural tendency to be more reserved in a live conversation (due to the threat of not being able to think out everything as clearly)? What studies have you found which support your arguments? Are you accounting for conversations with friends vs conversations with mere acquaintances? What about the motivation to lie with people you know in person, vs the considerably diminished motivation to lie to people who live too far away to affect your personal life?
Perhaps it's not dishonesty precisely, but that all of my conversations in person tend to be reactionary because there is no time to think, and that reaction is the practiced least offensive response. If someone asks me how I'm feeling, I don't even have time to think how I'm feeling because I'm in reaction mode. Any information I don't have time to assess whether or not it's okay to share with a person simply doesn't get shared.
I know what you mean completely. The fact that everyone at my office is always doing good, has always had a good weekend, and is constantly interested in the weather is either a sign that more people are optimists who wanted to major in meteorology than you would think - or it's a sign that people just stick to the standard responses.
On the other hand it somewhat misses the point. There is a distinction between what is more meaningful and what feels more meaningful. We're people - we value people. You do not look like a person to me. You look like a bunch of words on a screen. I'd like to think I know there's a person there, too. But the concept is kind of abstract and I'm not sure our brains are actually capable of thinking of a bunch of text in the same way that they'd see a person standing near them and talking to them. One experience is so much more primal, it's hard to think that at least the animal in you wouldn't prefer it that way.
Academically speaking, on the other hand, I express myself through writing far better than I do in person. But then, in person, I'm only very rarely thinking that I should aim to achieve something academic.
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On March 27 2012 02:20 Chef wrote:
I am actually much less honest in person. How do you account for the natural tendency to be more reserved in a live conversation (due to the threat of not being able to think out everything as clearly)? What studies have you found which support your arguments? Are you accounting for conversations with friends vs conversations with mere acquaintances? What about the motivation to lie with people you know in person, vs the considerably diminished motivation to lie to people who live too far away to affect your personal life?
On March 27 2012 03:07 Treehead wrote:
Academically speaking, on the other hand, I express myself through writing far better than I do in person. But then, in person, I'm only very rarely thinking that I should aim to achieve something academic.
I agree, most people would get their point across a lot clearer in writing. Having time to proofread and restructure your opinion is a huge help compared to "live" conversation. This is the case for transfering information as clearly as possible.
Looking at it from another angle though, how YOU express yourself, the spoken conversation would say so much more about who you are, how your'e feeling, if you're nervous or if you have little interest in maintaining the conversation.
A "live" conversation/communication situation thus feels more real and unmanipulated. Even though one or both participants may be lying and doing simple small talk. At least you have a chance to detect dismay, enthusiasm, aversion or whatever. In a textual communication situation this is very hard/almost impossible.
I think we need to draw a distinction between the message and the context. When the OP talks about preferring to talk to his buddy on the phone, I'm sure it's not because the message is being transferred more clearly. I think he prefers it because the atmosphere is more personal, revealing more genuine feelings like awkwardness, pure joy (laughter says a lot more in a phone call, than your plethora of "LOLs", "LMAOs", "HEhehehehehehehehe- GGs" and "ROFLs" in text based communication. In voice-driven conversations you can detect finer nuances like fake laughter, hilarious cracking up or polite affirming chuckling.
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Many people don't laugh at all when watching something funny alone. Laughter is a learned behaviour that we do to show someone we understand / affirm them. It serves exactly the same function as "lol" even though most people when they type that don't actually laugh out loud (though they would if they were talking in person). I expect over the phone it's the same. There will be a need to vocalise emotions which would otherwise be silent, like a smile.
I will give you this one point: Pretty much every human being finds it necessary to express themselves in person. There isn't any getting away from that, it starts as soon as your born, so it's what you become the most skilled at first. BUT I don't think that means that it is superior to other forms of communication, which need only learning to become as expressive as speech. The expression "he says what's on his mind" when talking about a child implies that we believe an adult is capable of mediating his or her thoughts before speaking them, and necessarily must do so to avoid the embarrassment of a child. I would argue that we filter much more in person because we don't have the time to consider what isn't that embarrassing. Because this happens so often, as a matter of personal anecdote, I find I don't even know how to express most emotions things I want to say out loud, the way I would be able to easily in writing, which is specific to me because most of my communication with others is done through writing. There are fine nuances to be detecting in writing as well, which are lost in the clumsy speech of someone who doesn't often express feelings out loud.
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Phone calls take more time and attention to an IM... there are few people I am willing to give what must be my more or less undivided attention for a Skype date. That said, I agree wholeheartedly.
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@Chef:
I think we actually agree on most of this  . There's literally no way to determine a factual right/wrong description of how communication works.
Assuming a conversation where one or both participants are unwilling to speak their mind/are lying/are holding back information, writing would likely be preferable to them. I still believe that the "live" conversation tells a lot more about what is going on, as this filtering will likely shine through.
Example --> A: "How's it going?", B: "I'm fine, I guess". In this short conversation it would be fairly easy to detect if B might in fact NOT be fine, and A can easily choose to accept the fact, that B doesn't want to talk about it (A: "Oh okay"), or choose to prod further. I find it would be harder to determine in a chat conversation, where you don't have access to mannerisms, intonation etc to guide you.
Filtering/Limiting the information you give may not even be meant in a negative way.
Most people adapt to different communication situations, whether they talk to close friends, parents, a child, aquaintances or their boss ie. (In this case we're drifting towards another area of media theory --> public/private performance or front/back stage behaviour --> Erving Goffman, Joshua Meyrowitz etc.)
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EPT
