Phone Calls Create Stronger Bonds

Phone calls produce the feeling of connectedness than email or text messages, revealed study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology. People chose to text their loved ones because they believed a phone call would be more awkward. But people love to hear each other's voices.

"People feel significantly more connected through voice-based media, but they have these fears about the awkwardness that are pushing them towards text-based media," said study researcher Amit Kumar from the University of Texas at Austin in the US.

Study Details

Study 1:

- 200 people were asked to reconnect with an old friend either via email or phone.

- Even though the study participants intuited that a phone call would make them feel more connected, they preferred to email because they expected phone calling would be too awkward.

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Study 2

- The study participants were randomly assigned strangers to connect either by texting during a live chat, talking over video chat, or talking using only audio.

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- The strangers asked participants a series of personal questions.

- The participants felt as connected to the stranger via text as by phone.

Study Results

- Voice seemed to be integral to bonding.

- The phone call took the same amount of time as reading and responding to email or text messages.

"The results both reveal and challenge people's assumptions about communication media at a time when managing relationships via technology is especially important," Kumar said.

Source-Medindia