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An Early Media Equation Experiment |
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Subjects were Stanford computer science students; some explicitly stated they would never be polite to a computer.
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Computers were plain black Next boxes, communicating with lines of text only.
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In a laboratory, a "teacher" computer provided tutoring. Then students took a test on the material. All students were given the same (bogus) score.
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In various ways, students were asked for their opinion of the computer "teacher".
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When they were in the same room with the "teacher", the students were extremely polite and rated their "teacher" highly. When they were in a different room they were much more critical of the "teacher".
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This effect only occurred when the students' minds were occupied with the bogus task, not thinking about the social interaction.
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Many variations checked the effect on effect of praise, gender, type of directions, whether or not the teacher and tester computers were combined, and so on. They replicated a number of well-documented social science findings, substituting a computer or TV for some of the social actors. |
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If you're interested in this I strongly urge you to read the research yourself. Or invite the principals to give a talk at your institution. |
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