A Systematic Review of Social Presence: Definition, Antecedents, and Implications

“Studies suggest that higher levels of social presence are more beneficial in equivocal contexts wherein there is no “correct” outcome, such as negotiations (Daft and Lengel, 1986; Garau et al., 2003).”

“Incontrast to immersion, presence is the subjective experience of actually being in the mediated virtual environment (Slater and Wilbur, 1997; Witmer and Singer, 1998; Walther and Parks, 2002).”

“…with a virtual cat, view virtual humans in pain CA Canada Short et al., 1976; Nowak and Biocca, 2003 Engage in a video call with a remote participant using a telepresence robot AP Korea Choi et al., 2001 Short et al., 1976; Lombard, 1995 affordance(s) that influenced perceptions of social presence.”

“Telepresence can be defined as “the extent to which one feels present in the mediated environment, rather than in the immediate physical environment” (Steuer, 1992, p. 75).”

“Walther (1996) later expanded this theory to posit that people who communicate via text-based CMC platforms could, in some cases, achieve even higher levels of social presence than FtF interactants by carefully selecting which facets of themselves they wish to reveal (i.e., hyperpersonal model of…”

“When the perception of telepresence is strong, people should no longer be aware that their experiences are being mediated through technology (Lombard and Ditton, 1997).”

“William Gibson famously described cyberspace as a “consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation” ( Gibson, 1984, p. 51), portraying the social nature of “stepping through a barrier” (Slater and Wilbur, 1997, p. 2) into the virtual environment.”

“One significant concept that was not included due to this criterion was plausibility illusion (Slater, 2009).”

“In contrast to these medium-centric views of social presence, Walther (1992) argued that individuals are capable of adapting to different communication media, and can thus achieve their communication goals accordingly.”

“…al., 2013 Gerhard et al., 2001; Bailenson et al., 2005 Interact with a virtual cat, view virtual humans in pain CA Canada Short et al., 1976; Nowak and Biocca, 2003 Engage in a video call with a remote participant using a telepresence robot AP Korea Choi et al., 2001 Short et al., 1976; Lombard,…”

“Social Presence primarily influences productivity and is often used to evaluate collaborative work environments [5, 34].”

“…environments [5], a number of works have shown how embodied environments foster richer interactions than traditional 2D communication platforms [69]; combined with experiential learning theory, we can then see how simulation in embodied environments is a highly useful tool for situated…”

“By existing in the virtual space through an avatar, users achieve a high level of immersion [8, 17, 10].”

“In their meta-analysis, Oh et al. [24] identified three key predictors of social presence, namely immersion, context and individual.”

“Age does not appear to have an association with levels of social presence in ICT; however, women tend to report higher levels of social presence when using ICT [24].”

“It is defined as the sense of being with others despite physical separation [13].”

“Higher social presence fosters authentic and nuanced social interactions [57], potentially influencing their social perceptions of the robot.”

“…a sense of embodiment, (ii) social presence and (ii) for exchanging social information via propagation and/or synchronisation, with humans interacting with each other as avatars (L1) or with (semi-) autonomous virtual agents (L2/L3) (Lombardi et al., 2021; Oh et al. 2018; Bailenson, 2021).”

“Prior research suggests that the representation and embodiment of virtual interaction partners can influence users’ sense of social presence and interpersonal engagement within immersive environments [36,37].”

“These findings are consistent with prior research demonstrating that virtual simulations and serious games can achieve ecological validity and usability when grounded in theory and empirically evaluated [71,86-88].”

“social presence was defined as the salience of the interactants and their interpersonal relationship during a mediated conversation [8].”

“Catherine et al. [2] also examined and synthesized 233 findings from 152 studies on social presence.”

“…responses to spatial cues (Biocca et al., 2003; Riva et al., 2003), is related to the user’s experience of the surrounding environment and space (Oh et al., 2018), and is defined as the degree to which the user feels present in the intermediate environment rather than in a direct physical…”

“…make a conscious effort to develop or nurture our social/teacher presence as instructors by communicating with them during class or outside of class, individually or in groups, which has been shown to increase student engagement, motivation, and satisfaction (Jaggars & Xu, 2016; Oh et al., 2018).”

“Notably, the robot’s physical presence has been shown to enhance the sense of social presence (i.e., the feeling of “being there” with another real person; Jung & Lee, 2004; Oh et al., 2018).”

“Co-location Co-location and co-presence are two similar experiences, referring to networked virtual environments that enable participants to interact with others (co-location) and feel as if they are present in a virtual space together (co-presence) (Oh et al., 2018).”

“Self-presence in a social environment is the ability to project oneself socially and emotionally as a "real person" in a community (Oh et al., 2018), which results in the subjective experience of being present (Heater, 1992).”

“To this end, using an immersive medium (head-mounted display), we display a detailed virtual observer which makes realistic eye contact with participants, a known factor in co-presence (Oh et al., 2018).”

“…the sense of touch while probing the softness of a virtual object can be desirable for a diversity of applications, such as simulators for medical training [1], tele-operation systems [2], computer-aided design [3], 3D model exploration [4] and tele-presence systems for social interactions [5].”

“A recent study by Oh et al. (2018) also supports the fact that social presence plays a critical role within networked environments such as virtual teams.”

“This approach is supported by past research showing that people often treat virtual beings as real entities, regardless of how photorealistic they appear (e.g., Oh et al., 2018; Slater, 2009).”

“…de l’instructeur est justifié par des re-cherches antérieures indiquant que le degré selon lequel une entité virtuelle est perçue comme une représentation d’une personne réelle (agentivité perçue) influence l’expérience uti-lisateur et la présence sociale dans un environnement virtuel [16, 34].”

“This is due largely to the absence of shared physical space, which is an often underacknowledged aspect of social or co -presence (Oh, Bailenson, & Welch, 2018).”

“According to Oh et al. [30], social presence is positively correlated with social cues and the presence of others.”

“To assess social presence in social VR apps, this work makes use of criteria based on Oh et al.'s (2018) research [45].”

“text only channel offers reduced social presence to users compared to audio-only [40,41].”

“mesurer, les analyser et expliquer leurs influence les uns sur les autres, notamment entre présence et incarnation [26, 27, 51, 63, 64].”

“Various positive communication outcomes, such as persuasion and attraction, are linked to social presence, according to studies (Oh et al., 2018).”

“45 (32) 15 “4 minutes per question was quite pressuring to fill” “Ticking down time was off-putting”.”

“Spatial presence is enhanced when adaptation of the camera to suit the remote user’s need is provided [16].”

“With face-to-face interaction being considered the baseline for social presence [5], we learned that CaminAR made participants desire higher levels of”

“Faktoren, die zu einer Steigerung des sozialen Präsenzerlebens führen können, sind (non-)verbale Hinweisreize, wie zum Beispiel der Blickkontakt (Biocca et al., 2003; Oh et al., 2018).”

“A definition of social presence is the extent to which a person feels 'socially connected’ to others in their online environment (Oh et al., 2018; Stone & Springer, 2019).”

“Several self-report measures have been created to assess users’ experiences of presence and immersive tendencies (e.g., Witmer & Singer, 1998; for review, see Oh et al., 2018).”

“Beispielsweise beschreibt die räumliche Präsenz (Cummings & Bailenson, 2016), inwieweit Personen sich selbst als in der VR-Welt wahrnehmen, die soziale Präsenz (Oh et al., 2018 Chemielabor für Experimente) zeit-und kostenintensiv und muss von Expert*innen übernommen werden.”

“The psychoeducation module’s interactive elements positioned the agent as an active facilitator rather than a passive instructor, aligning with findings that virtual agents’interactivebehaviorsenhancesocialpresence[8].”

“Oh et al. (2018) reviewed 152 studies on perceived social presence and attempted to provide a holistic understanding of the most influential features in predicting social presence.”

“The characteristics of digital media, such as immediacy, immersiveness, and a sense of presence [39], provide adolescents with diverse contexts for emotional learning and social interaction.”

“Immersion can be defined as the extent to which a computer display is able to deliver an inclusive, extensive, surrounding and vivid illusion of reality to the senses of a user interacting with a VE [13], [32].”

“Leveraging this quale may benefit positive communication outcomes, like persuasion among others [21].”

“This kind of instant feedback mechanism satisfies users' emotional needs while also enhancing their immersion experience through Haptic Feedback (Oh et al., 2018).”

“As the survey [17] nicely points out, the majority of the related literature converges to the conclusion that avatars generally elicit greater social presence value than agents, in the sense that users typically feel higher levels of social presence when a virtual counterpart was thought to be…”

“Social activities in this system include greetings [28] [47], chats [48] [49], and images [50] [51].”

“Previous research supports this expectation, indicating that individuals in general are more likely to trust representations that appear human-like (Oh et al., 2018).”