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,…”

“During the autumn semester of 2020, teachers also experienced how students’ social presence was different online (Oh et al., 2018).”

“A focus on design is necessary to ensure that virtual spaces build connection rather than disrupt it [65] and ensure equitable access.”

“…away from current educational technologies towards more flexible pedagogical solutions for social knowledge construction and intense engagement, for example, the use of extended reality, such as social virtual reality, its immersive affordances tapping into the need for social presence [23,24].”

“Previous research suggests that these same benefits have not been found simply by adding a video component to teleconferences (Oh, Bailenson, and Welch 2018).”

“Over the past 20 years researchers have been studying social interactions between real humans and virtual humans (VHs) primarily by varying VH-specific characteristics or factors associated with a VH’s contextual existence [41,44].”

“According to social presence theory [88], two critical components of being socially present are intimacy and immediacy.”

“These technologies also reduce the social presence of users (Short et al., 1976; Oh et al., 2018; Borup et al., 2012), defined as the perception of an individual’s presence in the communication (Calefato and Lanubile, 2010).”

“Moreover, spatialized tele-conferences might heighten the sense of being part of an actual conversational scene [6] and evoke feelings of “togetherness” with the other talkers [7].”

“Users likely require a basic feeling of “being there” before higher-order social presence can emerge [79], but once that baseline is reached, social and self-related factors dominate the impact on user experience.”

“Multiple theoretical perspectives—including social information processing, construal level theory, and telepresence—explain variations in social presence across communication modes and psychological distance (Oh et al., 2018).”

“…point to a profound distinction: regardless of whether artificial agents are displayed as characters on a computer screen or represented as robots (Oh et al., 2018; Pan and Hamilton, 2018), they may be ascribed a capacity to act and do (i.e., to make choices, recognize others, or remember things;…”

“Furthermore, some participants indicated a feeling of a social presence during the interaction with Pepper [150, 151], as illustrated by their mentioning of the feeling that they encountered ‘almost a little person’ when interacting with Pepper.”

“The integration of haptic feedback in shared virtual spaces has consistently enhanced user experiences and increased perceived social presence [86, 135, 203].”

“” Closeness to others is important [32, 56] for the senses of presence (and embodiment) because “it’s stronger when people are closer to me, like closer friends.”

“…particular, the trainer remotely instructs the trainees with a live-controlled virtual avatar (rather than with mere voice, text, or fixed animation) to boost trainee engagement, immersion, and the sense of co-presence — where the trainee feels as if they share the same space with the trainer [61].”

“This desire for more visual and sensorial communication is in line with prior social presence literature which states that media better suited to reproduce rich social information (e.g., face-to-face video vs. text communication) is perceived as having a higher social presence (Oh et al. 2018).”

“As such, this concept is essential for successful computer-generated environments that aim to elaborate on social interaction and communication (e.g., assisted driving frameworks and teleconferences) [6, 7].”

“…of social presence (i.e., the subjective perception that one is communicating with ‘‘real’’ people who are psychologically present in the conversation; Oh et al., 2018) and social interaction than face-to-face learning environments (Mays, 2016), potentially leading to poorer learning outcomes.”

“To achieve the above outcomes, three different e-presence relationships need to be nurtured and sustained: social presence, teaching presence, and cognitive presence [36–38].”

“…or virtual environments feel temporally distant, such as future health risks that seem far off from the current period, users may find it challenging to perceive the information as immediate or urgent, thereby reducing their sense of presence in the VR health communication process [30, 61].”

“Augmenting the real or virtual experiment setup with such information in LLL-4 can support taking the other person’s perspective or to interact with them naturally [33].”

“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…”

“One important measure to evaluate the enjoyment of a cooperative VR game is the level of perceived social presence (Oh, Bailenson, & Welch, 2018).”

“…than as images seen” (Slater & Wilbur, 1997, p. 3), entailing (a) a spatial perception of actually being in the virtual environment and (b) a social perception of being with others in the virtual environment (Lombard et al., 2009; Oh et al., 2018; Schubert et al., 2001; Slater & Wilbur, 1997).”

“Social presence, which is described as the feeling of being there with a “real” person [22], has been found to be significant factor affecting PX [23].”

“Self-presence is a state in which one experience a virtual self as the actual self [42], [43] and the connection to the virtual body or identity [44], [45].”

“…as well as the perception of social presence, intelligence, and likeability toward them, is enhanced by realistic behavior and movement, the lack of overlap between objects, and interactivity, haptic feedback, audio, and proximity (Fox et al., 2015; Kim et al., 2017, 2018; Oh et al., 2018).”

“…levels of comfort, intimacy, self-reliance, and self-knowledge (Shepherd & Bolliger, 2019; Zhan & Mei, 2013); improved learning and learner satisfaction (Martin et al., 2018; Oh et al., 2018; Richardson et al., 2017); and better online interaction quality (Fiock, 2020; Weidlich & Bastiaens, 2019;).”

“This result is plausible as social presence per definition refers to the feeling of being connected with a “real” person (Oh et al., 2018).”

“Prior research has suggested that, when a visual representation is present in CMC interactions, people are more likely to perceive a higher degree of social presence from the communication partner [20].”

“Researchers including Jeremy Bailenson have led thorough explorations of human-human communications using virtual media within lab settings (e.g., Oh, et al., 2018).”

“© The International Journal of Indian Psychology, ISSN 2348-5396 (e)| ISSN: 2349-3429 (p) | 71 possible relationship between social presence and learning outcomes (Biocca et al., 2003; Garrison & Arbaugh, 2007; Oh et al., 2018).”

“In-deed, the stylization level of virtual characters could affect the way users interact and impact their sense of social presence in immersive environments [Gar03, NB03, OBW18].”

“Touch is associated with many important experiential factors in VR such as increased body ownership [79] and social presence[82], as well positive emotional outcomes for VR social touch [103].”

“This finding aligns with previous research reporting effects of gesture size on preference [45] and direct eye gaze enhancing social presence [40].”

“Collaborative VR learning leverages VR’s ability to create social presence — the illusion of being physically present with others in a virtual environment [38, 52].”

“We will now discuss our findings, design implications, applications, study limitations, and future work.”

“In educational technology, empathic interaction design has been found to enhance learning motivation, foster social connectedness, and facilitate emotional resonance and collaboration among learners (15, 17).”

“…evaluative reasoning and eudaimonic meaning-making rated significantly higher than affective resonance or visual realism—challenges design assumptions prioritizing hyperrealistic synthesis [30, 62] and suggests that complex decisions benefit more from reasoning partners than emotional mirrors.”

“We address this issue through our conceptualisation of social presence and the use of an instrument which discerns varied aspects of social presence, including co-presence, while the symmetries are utilised as representation of interpersonal dynamics [26, 50].”

“Because social presence often predicts positive communication outcomes it is relevant in the study of technology-mediated communication [54].”

“Prior studies have shown that when agents exhibit interactive behaviors such as gaze-following or gestures, users tend to allocate greater attentional resources to them [44].”

“The absence of age-related effects on rapport is consistent with meta-analytic findings by Oh et al. [56], who analyzed 152 studies and found that demographic factors like age have little influence on social presence, especially when compared to psychological traits such as extraversion and the…”

“However, the authors later challenged their explanation by referencing prior literature 43,52 suggesting that photorealism is not a precursor to the sense of co-presence in virtual environments.”

“…employing more ‘ we ’ pronouns in communication with end users, might boost the perceived social presence (the feeling of being ‘ there ’ with other people in a mediated environment; Oh et al. 2018), what further might improve their chances of success while pursuing goals (e.g., losing weight).”

“Specifically, social presence is defined a subjective sense of “being with” virtual characters in a mediated space (Biocca et al., 2003; Nowak, 2001; Oh et al., 2018).”

“…factors contributing to low or nonuse of e-government services among older adults, including inadequate design, poor accessibility, limited digital literacy, cognitive and motor limitations, and low proficiency (Almathami et al., 2020; Coiera, 2007; Oh et al., 2018; Rodriguez-Hevía et al., 2020).”

“They are often used to evaluate how successful social interaction is in emulating face-to-face communication [19].”

“Social presence theory, examining the sense of being with others in mediated environment, has illustrated the influence of oth - ers’ presence on shaping attitudes and behaviours (Oh et al. 2018; Hassanein and Head 2007; Fogg and Tseng 1999).”

“Immersion is more of a technical concept to describe the potential to be captivated (Oh et al., 2018).”

“Such connection, mediated by technology, makes possible not only the personalized enjoyment of content, but also for active participation in collective dynamics, thus contributing to the emergence of new models of interaction [33].”

“We do not conflate it with social presence , its parent dimension, which past studies have mainly employed to investigate whether a virtual entity is perceived like a person [39].”

“…and consequences of social presence in human-computer interactions [9] and human-avatar and human-robot interactions in virtual or immersive environments [10], and expanded to encompass non-verbal cues and social behaviours (see for example the Computers As Social Actors [CASA] paradigm [11]).”

“This might be remedied by including design features that increase the users’ sense of social presence such as increased sensory immersion [17].”

“To underscore the fact that linear increases in immersion do not necessarily lead to corresponding increases in social presence, Oh et al. [56] suggest that one of the main differences may be the nature of the task proposed by the studies.”

“Additionally, we employed the Networked Minds measure of social presence to gauge the immersive quality of the interactions [56, 57].”

“This experience is shaped by how intuitively users’ actions and intentions are translated into the environment [81, 90, 91].”

“In SVEs, visual interaction, which is crucial for users to communicate with each other [6], enhances social presence by providing the feeling of “being there” [7].”

“For the factors that influence social presence, a systematic review by Oh et al. [87] was consulted.”

“Research has underscored the interdependence among design attributes, interaction contexts, and user perspectives, which determines the valence of social presence’s effects (Oh et al., 2018).”

“Over the years, immersive technologies gradually became more accessible in homes and work environments, which led to increased user numbers [ 4 ] .”

“Online presence operates under the assumption that refining the sense of reality in online media will also create a seamless interactivity close enough to actual physical presence that the latter would not be missed (Oh et al., 2018).”