An interactional perspective on group awareness: Alleviating the information-exchange dilemma (for everybody?)

In situations of computer-mediated communication and computer-supported cooperation, a central challenge lies in increasing the willingness of those involved to share their information with the other group members. In the experimental work presented here, a shared-database setting is selected as a prototypical situation of net-based information exchange and examined from a social-dilemma perspective: the individual who contributes information to a shared database must reckon with costs and no benefits. The most efficient strategy from the perspective of the individual is thus to withhold information. Previous research has shown that a group-awareness tool which provides information about the contribution behavior of group members influences people's information-exchange behavior. In order to examine the psychological processes underlying these effects of group awareness in more detail, the present study adopts an interactional approach, according to which person-situation interaction is investigated. Certain personality traits (interpersonal trust, sensation seeking, and self-monitoring) were measured and several hypotheses tested regarding the reactions of individuals with high and low trait values to different types of awareness information. Results demonstrate that awareness tools providing information about highly cooperative group members encourage participants to trust one another and minimize the risk of being exploited. When an awareness tool additionally provides feedback about the contribution behavior of single individuals, it becomes an opportunity for self-presentation. In conclusion, an interactional approach which considers personality traits and situational factors in a net-based information-exchange situation provides new insights into both the influence processes of group awareness and the connection of these processes to specific personality traits with respect to contribution behavior.