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,…”

“As Blascovich et al. (2002) and Nass et al. (1994) argue, the appearance of the visual representation might simply be less important than behavioral social cues.”

“Both intimacy and immediacy are determined by verbal and nonverbal cues such as facial expressions, vocal cues, gestures, and physical appearance (Gunawardena and Zittle, 1997).”

“In their meta-analysis on the impact of immersion on telepresence, Cummings and Bailenson (2016) similarly found that general modality (e.g., comparing an HMD with head-tracking to a desktop computer) was one of the most frequently studied predictors of telepresence.”

“…age and social presence are as follows: Cho et al. (2015): 21– 44, Felnhofer et al. (2014): range not reported ( M = 23.34, SD = 2.73), Hauber et al. (2005): 19–63, Kim et al. (2004): not reported, Lim and Richardson (2016): 24–58, Richardson and Swan (2003): 19–63, Siriaraya and Ang (2012): 22–80.”

“Similarly, participants felt higher levels of social presence when their partner’s virtual representation was similar to his or her actual physical appearance (Jin, 2012), which resonates with findings regarding preference for consistency (Festinger, 1962).”

“As Blascovich et al. (2002) and Nass et al. (1994) argue, the appearance of the visual representation might simply be less important than behavioral social cues.”

“Finally, social presence or co-presence, refers to the “sense of being with another” (Biocca et al., 2003, p. 456) and is dependent on the ease with which one perceives to have “the access to the intelligence, intentions, and sensory impressions of another” (Biocca, 1997, p. 22).”

“In addition, researchers frequently hypothesize that increasing the salience of the mediated communication partner will naturally lead to more positive social outcomes (e.g., Fogg and Tseng, 1999; Hassanein and Head, 2007).”

“In addition, researchers frequently hypothesize that increasing the salience of the mediated communication partner will naturally lead to more positive social outcomes (e.g., Fogg and Tseng, 1999; Hassanein and Head, 2007).”

“Finally, social presence or co-presence, refers to the “sense of being with another” (Biocca et al., 2003, p. 456) and is dependent on the ease with which one perceives to have “the access to the intelligence, intentions, and sensory impressions of another” (Biocca, 1997, p. 22).”

“…in a virtual bar, for example, participants reported contextual factors (e.g., appearance of bar, responsiveness of other characters, believability of dialogue with victim) as issues that brought them out of the virtual experience (“breaks in presence” Slater and Steed, 2000; Slater et al., 2013).”

“…and Benbasat (2010) found that participants were more likely to feel higher levels of social presence when they interacted with a virtual product recommendation agent whose appearance matched their ethnicity than one that did not, replicating findings based on social identity theory (Tajfel, 1979).”

“Of the nine studies identified in Table 1 ( de Greef and Ijsselsteijn, 2001; Yoo and Alavi, 2001; Sallnäs, 2005, Study 1 & 2; Bailenson et al., 2006; Bente et al., 2008; Homer et al., 2008; de Greef, 2014; Gimpel et al., 2016) that offered a comparison between audio-only and audio-video modalities,…”

“…an increase in social presence when the visual representation is more photographically or anthropomorphically realistic (e.g., Kang and Watt, 2013), others report no differences (e.g., Bailenson et al., 2001; Bente et al., 2008) or even a reduction in social presence (e.g., Nowak and Biocca, 2003).”

“Of the nine studies identified in Table 1 ( de Greef and Ijsselsteijn, 2001; Yoo and Alavi, 2001; Sallnäs, 2005, Study 1 & 2; Bailenson et al., 2006; Bente et al., 2008; Homer et al., 2008; de Greef, 2014; Gimpel et al., 2016) that offered a comparison between audio-only and audio-video modalities,…”

“Another study wherein social presence was operationalized to focus on the extent to which participants felt like they were together with their partner similarly found that social presence predicted attraction toward a physically embodied agent (i.e., robot; Lee et al., 2006a).”

“Asmall number of studies (e.g., Steed et al., 1999; Slater et al., 2000; Moreno and Mayer, 2004) have also compared immersive virtual platforms (e.g., HMD, cave automatic virtual environment; CAVE) with non-immersive ones (e.g., Desktop).”

“While there are a few exceptions (e.g., Qiu and Benbasat, 2005; Kim and Sundar, 2012), most of the current evidence indicates that people feel higher levels of social presence when there is a visual representation available, as can be noted in Table 1 .”

“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).”

“…the most suitable job candidate (Management decision task) (hire most suitable job candidate) AP Germany Bouchard et 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…”

“…interpersonal evaluations (e.g., similarity attraction, social penetration theory, social identity theory, preference for consistency, etc.) to technology-mediated contexts to explore their relevance in interpersonal perceptions (e.g., Reeves and Nass, 1996; Jin, 2012; Verhagen et al., 2014).”

“Finally, while we are aware of the strengths of behavioral and physiological measures and limitations of self-report measures (Slater, 2004; Friedman et al., 2006), we did not include studies that exclusively used behavioral and/or physiological measures of social presence to reduce variance and…”

“Subsequent studies have since shown that individuals adopt different strategies to convey socioemotional cues on platforms with relatively limited verbal and nonverbal cues (e.g., Ramirez et al., 2002; Antheunis et al., 2010).”

“The remaining half of the studies, however, suggests that participants perceive similar levels of social presence for both agents and avatars (Nowak and Biocca, 2003; von der Pütten et al., 2010; Dalzel-Job, 2014, Study 2; Kothgassner et al., 2014, 2017; Felnhofer et al., 2018).”

“…considering that multiple studies reviewed in this paper show that increasing immersive qualities does not linearly increase social presence (e.g., Moreno and Mayer, 2004; Sallnäs, 2005; Homer et al., 2008), it would be critical to understand if, and if so when, there is a ceiling effect of…”

“With the exception of one study (Sallnäs et al., 2000), all of the 10 studies that we identified found a positive relationship between haptic feedback and perceptions of social presence ( Table 1 ).”

“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.”

“…identified in Table 1 ( de Greef and Ijsselsteijn, 2001; Yoo and Alavi, 2001; Sallnäs, 2005, Study 1 & 2; Bailenson et al., 2006; Bente et al., 2008; Homer et al., 2008; de Greef, 2014; Gimpel et al., 2016) that offered a comparison between audio-only and audio-video modalities, only four found…”

“Considering the fact that both gesture and posture have a significant influence on person perception in FtF contexts (Riggio and Friedman, 1986), it is possible that this added layer of technology in CMC will impact experiences of social presence.”

“Subsequent studies have since shown that individuals adopt different strategies to convey socioemotional cues on platforms with relatively limited verbal and nonverbal cues (e.g., Ramirez et al., 2002; Antheunis et al., 2010).”

“…not explore the impact of agency on social presence using a questionnaire, another study showed that participants showed higher physiological arousal while playing a computer game when they thought their opponent was an avatar compared to when they thought it was an agent (Lim and Reeves, 2010).”

“, immersive features) impact social presence are based on the assumption that certain affordances of a medium can increase or decrease social presence when all other circumstances are equal (e.g., Axelsson et al., 2001; Moreno and Mayer, 2004; Zhan and Mei, 2013).”

“Directly germane to this hypothesis, studies (Joinson, 2004; Hertel et al., 2008; Hammick and Lee, 2014) consistently show that less socially oriented individuals prefer interacting through a medium that is considered to be “leaner” (e.g., text-based CMC), while more socially oriented individuals…”

“…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.”

“Among the 10 studies that we identified, only two studies found significant differences in social presence between an immersive platform and a non-immersive one (Schroeder et al., 2001; Heldal et al., 2005).”

“While two studies (Bracken, 2005; Ahn et al., 2014) found that more immersive displays (i.e., higher definition, larger screen size) led to higher social presence, two others (Skalski and Whitbred, 2010; James et al., 2011) were unable to find a significant effect of display on social presence.”

“In their study on social agents, for example, Skalski and Tamborini (2007) invited participants to listen to a health message on blood pressure.”

“…in a virtual bar, for example, participants reported contextual factors (e.g., appearance of bar, responsiveness of other characters, believability of dialogue with victim) as issues that brought them out of the virtual experience (“breaks in presence” Slater and Steed, 2000; Slater et al., 2013).”

“For example, participants felt higher levels of social presence when they received haptic feedback as they lifted a (virtual) box with a partner compared to when such feedback was not available (Kim et al., 2004).”

“…studies reviewed in this paper show that increasing immersive qualities does not linearly increase social presence (e.g., Moreno and Mayer, 2004; Sallnäs, 2005; Homer et al., 2008), it would be critical to understand if, and if so when, there is a ceiling effect of immersion on social presence.”

“Researchers have also explored the impact of the personality of the virtual human (Pan et al., 2015), level of coherence to the user’s expectations (Skarbez et al., 2017), and the physicality of the virtual human (Chuah et al., 2013) on plausibility illusion.”

“…modalities (e.g., audio, video, avatar) also found that participants felt the lowest level of social presence when communicating via text-based CMC compared to “richer” forms of media, when given the same amount of time (e.g., Bente et al., 2008; Appel et al., 2012; Kim et al., 2013b).”

“Presence can be further divided into three distinct subcategories: telepresence (spatial presence), self-presence, and social presence (Lee, 2004).”

“Mühlbach et al. (1995) similarly found that participants felt greater social presence when they engaged in a video conferencing session using a stereoscopic display compared to a monoscopic one.”

“The studies that were identified in the present paper (Mühlbach et al., 1995; Takatalo et al., 2011; Kim et al., 2012; Ahn et al., 2014) suggest that the inclusion of depth cues increase social presence.”

“Asmall number of studies (e.g., Steed et al., 1999; Slater et al., 2000; Moreno and Mayer, 2004) have also compared immersive virtual platforms (e.g., HMD, cave automatic virtual environment; CAVE) with non-immersive ones (e.g., Desktop).”

“This is an important issue to consider when designing communication systems; more social presence may not always be better (Allmendinger, 2010).”

“In terms of gender, the majority of the surveyed studies found that females experience higher levels of social presence compared to males (e.g., Giannopoulos et al., 2008; Johnson, 2011).”

“…interpersonal evaluations (e.g., similarity attraction, social penetration theory, social identity theory, preference for consistency, etc.) to technology-mediated contexts to explore their relevance in interpersonal perceptions (e.g., Reeves and Nass, 1996; Jin, 2012; Verhagen et al., 2014).”

“…that technological features such as audio delays differentially influence communication outcomes depending on the relationship between the partners (Koudenburg et al., 2014), this avenue of research may help researchers and practitioners understand how to design social VR systems when…”

“…studies show an increase in social presence when the visual representation is more photographically or anthropomorphically realistic (e.g., Kang and Watt, 2013), others report no differences (e.g., Bailenson et al., 2001; Bente et al., 2008) or even a reduction in social presence (e.g., Nowak and…”

“More recent studies (Choi and Kwak, 2017, Study 2; Lee and Nass, 2004; Lee et al., 2005; Kim and Sundar, 2014; Daher et al., 2016; Kim, 2016; Robb et al., 2016) have examined how the number of people or the mere presence of another person who is aware of the virtual environment (i.e., social cues)…”

“The studies that were identified in the present paper (Mühlbach et al., 1995; Takatalo et al., 2011; Kim et al., 2012; Ahn et al., 2014) suggest that the inclusion of depth cues increase social presence.”

“These results are in line with the findings of Kim (2016) and Lee and Nass (2004), who also found that multiple virtual communicators increase feelings of social presence.”

“The age range of the seven studies that explored the relationship between age and social presence are as follows: Cho et al. (2015): 21– 44, Felnhofer et al. (2014): range not reported ( M = 23.34, SD = 2.73), Hauber et al. (2005): 19–63, Kim et al. (2004): not reported, Lim and Richardson (2016):…”

“…2002; Tu, 2002 Hire the most suitable job candidate (Management decision task) (hire most suitable job candidate) AP Germany Bouchard et 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,…”

“Directly germane to this hypothesis, studies (Joinson, 2004; Hertel et al., 2008; Hammick and Lee, 2014) consistently show that less socially oriented individuals prefer interacting through a medium that is considered to be “leaner” (e.g., text-based CMC), while more socially oriented individuals…”

“…communication apprehension, weaker need to belong, etc.) feel less social presence than their more social counterparts (Giannopoulos et al., 2008; Jin, 2010; Cortese and Seo, 2012; Kim et al., 2013a) offers some empirical evidence that socially withdrawn individuals may be less motivated to…”

“…Kumar and Benbasat, 2002; Tu, 2002 Hire the most suitable job candidate (Management decision task) (hire most suitable job candidate) AP Germany Bouchard et 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.,…”

“Visual realism consists of photographic, anthropomorphic, and behavioral (or communicative) realism (Harris et al., 2009).”

“…isolate the Networked Minds Questionnaire ( Biocca et al., 2001 ) Get-acquainted task AP Germany Bente et al., 2008 Biocca et al., 2001; Nowak, 2001; Kumar and Benbasat, 2002; Tu, 2002 Hire the most suitable job candidate (Management decision task) (hire most suitable job candidate) AP Germany…”

“The remaining half of the studies, however, suggests that participants perceive similar levels of social presence for both agents and avatars (Nowak and Biocca, 2003; von der Pütten et al., 2010; Dalzel-Job, 2014, Study 2; Kothgassner et al., 2014, 2017; Felnhofer et al., 2018).”

“Researchers have also found that social presence can be influenced by contextual and individual factors that impact perceptions of the psychological distance between interactants (e.g., Siriaraya and Ang, 2012; Kang and Gratch, 2014; Verhagen et al., 2014).”

“Similarly, Poeschl (2017) found that perceiving the virtual audience to be more socially present tended to lead to a worse speech-giving performance.”

“While this decision was made to achieve a higher level of internal validity, it led to the exclusion of research on important concepts, one of which is plausibility illusion (Slater, 2009; Slater et al., 2010).”

“…explored the provision of identity cues (e.g., name, portrait picture) as a contextual factor that influences social presence, and found that increasing the number of identity cues enhances feelings of social presence (Li et al., 2015; Feng et al., 2016; Choi and Kwak, 2017; Schumann et al., 2017).”

“…affordances of a medium (e.g., immersive features) impact social presence are based on the assumption that certain affordances of a medium can increase or decrease social presence when all other circumstances are equal (e.g., Axelsson et al., 2001; Moreno and Mayer, 2004; Zhan and Mei, 2013).”

“In contrast, it is possible that people will prefer lower levels of social presence when they are feeling more vulnerable; the success of text-based counseling and support systems (Dinakar et al., 2015) lends some support to this conjecture.”

“…explored the provision of identity cues (e.g., name, portrait picture) as a contextual factor that influences social presence, and found that increasing the number of identity cues enhances feelings of social presence (Li et al., 2015; Feng et al., 2016; Choi and Kwak, 2017; Schumann et al., 2017).”

“Although it is less common, a small number of studies also compare different types of virtual environments (e.g., Heldal et al., 2005; Johnsen and Lok, 2008).”

“Researchers have also explored the impact of the personality of the virtual human (Pan et al., 2015), level of coherence to the user’s expectations (Skarbez et al., 2017), and the physicality of the virtual human (Chuah et al., 2013) on plausibility illusion.”

“…(e.g., shy, high communication apprehension, weaker need to belong, etc.) feel less social presence than their more social counterparts (Giannopoulos et al., 2008; Jin, 2010; Cortese and Seo, 2012; Kim et al., 2013a) offers some empirical evidence that socially withdrawn individuals may…”

“The present paper also identified five studies that explored the impact of absolute physical distance between interactants on feelings of social presence (e.g., Gajadhar et al., 2008; Croes et al., 2016; Järvelä et al., 2016).”

“As such, these individuals prefer to withdraw from social situations and stay in the background, rather than engaging in the conversation (Allmendinger, 2010; Cortese and Seo, 2012).”

“Although it is less common, a small number of studies also compare different types of virtual environments (e.g., Heldal et al., 2005; Johnsen and Lok, 2008).”

“Finally, while we are aware of the strengths of behavioral and physiological measures and limitations of self-report measures (Slater, 2004; Friedman et al., 2006), we did not include studies that exclusively used behavioral and/or physiological measures of social presence to reduce variance and…”

“…explored the provision of identity cues (e.g., name, portrait picture) as a contextual factor that influences social presence, and found that increasing the number of identity cues enhances feelings of social presence (Li et al., 2015; Feng et al., 2016; Choi and Kwak, 2017; Schumann et al., 2017).”

“In another study, participants felt lower levels of social presence when they were asked to observe their partner play a multiplayer game compared to when their partner observed them or when they played the game together with their partner (Herrewijn and Poels, 2015).”

“These results are in line with the findings of Kim (2016) and Lee and Nass (2004), who also found that multiple virtual communicators increase feelings of social presence.”

“For example, Daher et al. (2016) found that being exposed to a conversation between a virtual human and a real person prior to the study increased feelings of social presence for the participant after interacting with the same virtual human.”

“…interpersonal evaluations (e.g., similarity attraction, social penetration theory, social identity theory, preference for consistency, etc.) to technology-mediated contexts to explore their relevance in interpersonal perceptions (e.g., Reeves and Nass, 1996; Jin, 2012; Verhagen et al., 2014).”

“In perhaps one of the earliest studies of social presence, Christie (1974) conducted a study wherein 36 businessmen discussed an important business topic in groups of six, and found that participants reported higher levels of social presence for the multi-speaker phone system than for the standard…”

“While two studies (Bracken, 2005; Ahn et al., 2014) found that more immersive displays (i.e., higher definition, larger screen size) led to higher social presence, two others (Skalski and Whitbred, 2010; James et al., 2011) were unable to find a significant effect of display on social presence.”

“Social presence refers to “the salience of the interact-ants and their interpersonal relationship during a mediated conversation” (Oh et al. 2018, p.2).”

“For developing our theoretical framework, we combine fundamental insights of research on virtual reality (e.g., Oh et al., 2018) and RMSIs on the 2D internet (e.g., Brucks & Levav, 2022).”