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 is the feeling of being present with real people [3]; realism refers to the extent to which the virtual experience corresponds to that of the equivalent physical environment [4,5]; while engagement requires a strong experiential connection with the elements of the virtual…”

“In a virtual environment, co-presence is commonly characterized as sense of being with another [10, 47].”

“Social presence or “ co-presence, ” refers to the “ sense of being with another ” (Biocca et al., 2003, p. 456) within the same environment, whether that other is other real humans or human-like arti fi cial intelligences (Oh et al., 2018).”

“Social presence is the feeling of being there with a real person during online interaction [1].”

“Media and communication studies have shown that social presence is associated with various positive communication outcomes (e.g., persuasion; Oh, Bailenson, and Welch 2018), and in marketing Hennig-Thurau et al. (2023) fi nd that social presence is the dominant source of user value across several…”

“These tools, however, may only partially mediate social presence, the sense of being together [18, 49, 54, 63].”

“…think more carefully about constructing responses in discussion forums (Holmberg et al., 2005; Shandra & Chystiakova, 2021; Varkey et al., 2023) while synchronous forums are well-known for their benefits in inducing social presence online (Hollebeek et al., 2021; Oh et al., 2018; Zou et al. 2021).”

“Since gender infuences user’s behavior in collaborative virtual environments [15], we investigate the efect of the partner’s avatar gender on collaboration quality while performing a male-dominated task.”

“, and as manifested in our dataset, the term “social presence” seems to be an umbrella term used to describe multiple concepts [18, 98].”

“Social presence refers to the subjective experience of perceiving real individuals and their emotions in a shared space, which can also facilitate the establishment of trust [47].”

“Towards the goal of quantifying the effect of the uncanny valley, affinity has been introduced [8] to measure how appealing, eerie and familiar a character appears.”

“Social presence has been shown to contribute to favourable views of the interaction context and its interactants (Oh et al., 2018) in various learning contexts, such as educational camps.”

“Based on the outcomes of these sessions, we derived three indicators for the user experience (UX) of mediated (AR or video calling) communication: enjoyment, spatial presence (’being there’ [10, 11]) and social presence (’being together with an intelligent other’ [6]).”

“This finding can also be explained by the stronger sense of social presence that it is associated with social influence (Oh et al., 2018).”

“, avatars) [40] and in particular, through social cues [41].”

“…(hereafter HCI) literature, several studies show that these agents that mimic social behaviours increase users’ perception of social presence (Oh et al., 2018), the perception that a social interaction is occurring, and the quality of the interaction (Loveys et al., 2020; Potdevin et al.,…”

“…review length depends on the structure of the review text environment (Sachdeva et al., 2024). more anthropomorphic that communication technologies are, the more humans treat them as social actors, relating to them in the same manner as they would with humans (Nass & Moon, 2000; Oh et al., 2018).”

“This occurs even in situations in which there are already established tools in the literature, as was shown by Oh and colleagues [14] in the context of social presence, for which over 40 questionnaires have been developed to measure this construct.”

“The feeling of co-presence can enhance players’ reactions to environmental efects, such as threats from the enemies or opportunities in the game [67].”

“Although human appearance and voice are more realistic than AIPA, previous research (Oh et al., 2018 ) found that agents’ visual realism and consistency in appearance and behaviour are essential in conveying social presence.”

“According to existing conceptually related studies, physical presence refers to the sense of being physically located in the virtual environment (Yuan and Hong 2023), while social presence is described as the subjective sense of being together (Oh et al. 2018; Yung et al. 2022).”

“Therefore, we concur with the systematic review by Oh et al. (2018), which af fi rms mixed results regarding the impact of others ’ realism on co-presence.”

“Various HCI studies have been exploring methods of promoting remote co-presence: “the sense of being together with another” [3, 49].”

“(2018) nicht merklich zwischen Video- und VR-Konferenzen unterscheiden [44].”

“Compared to VR, one important advantage of the 360IV is its ability to provide photorealistic images but also realistic behaviors (e.g., breathing, walking, postures) which are recognized as strong predictors of social presence (Oh et al. 2018).”

“In addition to embodiment and spatial presence, we need to focus on the concept of social presence, defined as “ sense of being with another in a mediated environment” [1 7] or the sense that another person is “real” and “there” when using a communication medium [18, 19].”

“It has been identified as an approach to meeting the mental health needs of older adults through interaction or information exchange (Oh et al., 2018).”

“…of executing their effective agency in the virtual world, and strongly associated social presence (Slater et al., 1994; Lombard and Ditton, 1997; Oh et al., 2018) — the illusion of being together with others in that world, even if they are geographically distant, it is possible to create a…”

“Presence, therefore, is a construct for how much people feel attached to virtual objects or experiences (Biocca, 1997; Oh et al., 2018) and how much people feel like they can act in the virtual world (Diemer et al., 2015; Lee, 2004).”

“Offering high level of immersion is one noticeable feature of immersive VR. Immersion reflects individual’s psychological feeling of being in the virtual environment [34].”

“Studies indicate that a heightened social presence can alleviate discomfort or “creepiness” in human-AI interactions (Oh, Bailenson, and Welch 2018; Lukacik, Bourdage, and Roulin 2022).”

“Conversely, increased social presence of a disliked communication partner may lead to negative communication outcomes (Oh et al., 2018).”

“Oh et al. (2018) have previously indicated that “immersion can be objectively measured by the technological affordances of a medium” (p. 2).”

“This particular factor has demonstrated the potential to improve interaction and elicit behavioral changes in participants [26].”

“Since then, researchers have been pursuing the difference in the levels of social presence depending on the richness of medium involved in CMC (Oh et al., 2018), but some researches suggest that richness of media can sometime have negative impact on the communication (Dinakar et al.”

“The meta-analysis of Oh et al. [7] lists numerous studies and iden-tifies several immersive, contextual and psychological factors impacting the sense of social presence in virtual environments.”

“Another application is social virtual reality, allowing interpersonal touch that enhances social presence in a virtual environment [3].”

“Empirical research has examined both the factors influencing social presence and the effects of perceived social presence in several contexts (Oh, Bailenson, & Welch, 2018).”

“While there is evidence that highly photo-realistic avatars can improve perceptions of human likeness and acceptance of virtual bodies [65], the impact on perceived Social Presence is ambiguous [65, 83, 111].”

“Avatars , on the other hand, have been explored in various compelling scenarios for decades, including virtual presence, education, and social therapy, among others [4,25,36, 44].”

“Indeed, a review of virtual interaction [8] shows that communicative social AI agents can be engaging even if they are not in visually humanoid form.”

“With the perceived social presence in particular, someone can feel the presence of another in the same environment, whether the other is a real person or a human-like artificial intelligence [7, 31].”

“In essence, properly designed INMPs are likely to enable musicians to experience the perception of the so-called “social presence” (i.e., the sensation of “being there” in the virtual environment with other users), which is a crucial factor in collaborative virtual environments [15], [46].”

“Primarily, researchers have focused on human perceptions of the robot or agent as it relates to speech behaviors, whether from the standpoint of likeability and animacy (Bartneck et al., 2009) or more complex notions of social presence (see Section 1.1) (Oh et al., 2018).”

“In particular, users’ bodies can be merged into the simulation in order to increase their feeling of self [2], [3] and social presence [4].”

“Meanwhile, physical presence is a key factor documented to explain the effectiveness of various VR stimuli (Liu, Kralj et al., 2025; Oh et al., 2018).”

“Virtual worlds offer unique opportunities for collaboration in education, as the immersive and interactive nature of these environments facilitates active engagement and participation among learners [12,13].”

“We call the need for further research into the longitudinal and long-term effects of video passthrough immersion to better understand how physiological indicators such as simulator sickness and psychological factors such as social absence can be minimized.”

“Seeing other people who share or interact with the same virtual environment as the user increases social presence (Oh et al., 2018).”

“Other explorations have explored how technology-supported meetings progress or break down through a range of coordination phenomena including collaborative coupling and problem-solving [28], social presence and co-presence [56], and hybrid meeting experiences [51, 76].”

“As a consequence, we are now able to create an illusion of being with “someone” in a virtual space, which is called co-presence (or social presence; Oh et al., 2018).”

“Since physical proximity is a factor of social presence [4], feelings of spatial presence may enhance the perception of social closeness and intimacy to others [35, 36].”

“According to a systematic review (Oh et al., 2018), research generally shows that people feel higher levels of social presence when there is a visual representation available (e.”

“For instance, an AI agent that displays high levels of anthropomorphism and social presence may evoke positive emotional responses (e.g., enjoyment, trust), leading to higher satisfaction and engagement (Oh et al., 2018; Vanden Abeele et al., 2016).”

“That is, it can be influenced by contextual factors affecting the psychological distance between interacting individuals (Catherine et al., 2018).”

“…(which constitute XR) have had a significant impact on our capacity to communicate and collaborate remotely, bestowing a sense of collocation with remote partners (known as social presence [39]) and allowing rich non-verbal cues such as gaze, pointing and deictic gestures for interaction [14, 48].”

“While there are many ways to measure spatial presence (Souza et al., 2021) and social presence (Oh et al., 2018), few VR studies consider object presence .”

“In these scenarios, accurate representation of the user’s appearance and motion are key to creating a sense of embodiment for the user themselves, and immersion for other users interacting with them [8, 26].”

“Previous research suggests that social context is also an important moderator in Human-AI interactions (see 36 for a review).”