Mere Presence and PowerPoint: Examining Social Facilitation and Software By: Will Osnato and Matt Worley

Robinson-Stavely & Cooper, 1990 Examined the social context effects of computing Used the simplest meaning of public context, or the mere presence of others

(Robinson-Stavely & Cooper, 1990) Princeton University men and women participated in a study to play with “Zork”, an adventure game. They were instructed to make the most progress that they possibly could in 20 minutes They worked in a room completely alone or in the presence of another person Always of the same sex Who was not playing Zork (a “mere presence” condition)

Features of “Zork”, the adventure game Male-oriented metaphors, such as -finding treasure - slaying dragons - participants in public condition made aware that other person was neither competing nor aware of their performance

Effects of the social context Results showed that females were just as adept as the males at Zork in the private condition However, in the public condition the females performed significantly worse and reported more anxiety than the males It seems that the social context facilitated the gender difference in this study

Performance scores on Zork

What about aspects of computing other than computer games? Computer application classes in high schools often teach software instruction in large, mixed-gender groups. Students work in open computer labs with many other students working around them This creates a possible situation for social facilitation to cause gender differences

How can we test performance at using office software? We constructed a task that required participants to put together a simple 6- slide PowerPoint presentation Participants used data provided by the experiment. No data search or computation was involved, in order to strictly assess performance at the presentation organization task

Sample Data: Baseball statistics We used baseball statistics to comprise the sample data that participants would use for the presentation Assuming that males are more comfortable and accustomed to baseball, this would create a task with male-oriented features, similar to the male oriented “Zork” game (Robinson-Stavely & Cooper, 1990) In addition, participants completed the experiment in public or private conditions, allowing us to evaluate if the social context would facilitate the gender effects on performance

Hypothesis Females completing a male-oriented PowerPoint task would be just as adept at males if they were alone. However, in the presence of other people, females’ performance would suffer and they would experience more anxiety

Independent Variables Half of the participants completed the task in private conditions Half of the participants completed the task in a mixed-gender group

Dependent Measures Time We assumed that participants would need more time if they felt pressured by the social context Self-reported anxiety, confidence, etc. Pre- and post-test questionnaires evaluated how anxious, comfortable, confident, and overwhelmed participants felt before and during the task

Methods Participants were asked to imagine themselves as a statistician for a sports news company Their task would be to organize a PowerPoint presentation involving the home run statistics for 3 players on a major league baseball team over the past 4 years. Stats for 4 teams would be presented, requiring 1 slide per team. In addition, participants would include a title slide and a final slide with a general analysis. Participants knew they were being timed. They were asked to complete the task as quickly as they could, while fulfilling all aspects of the task

Methods (cont.) Pre-test questionnaire Instructions- Participants would make 6 slides (Title Slide, 4 Team Slides, Final Slide) Team Slides would include the team name, a bar graph displaying the home run statistics, and text summarizing the general trends of the graph Final Slide required participants to make some analytical statement or prediction based on the information from the team slides Post-test questionnaire

Sample stat chart from instructions Participants took information from 4 charts such as this and converted it to the bar graph format.

Some examples of presentation slides

Homerun Production, New York Yankees Boston Red Sox Anaheim Angels St. Louis Cardinals

New York Yankees Jason Giambi has been the Yankees most consistent homerun hitter, averaging just over 40 homers per season. Jorge Posada slumped in 2001 and 2002, while having his best season in 4 years in Bernie Williams has hit steadily fewer homeruns over the last 4 seasons.

2004 Predictions Based on the past 4 seasons, the New York Yankees should expect around 75 HRs from their top three hitters. The Red Sox can expect their three top hitters to produce at least 80 HRs in Anaheim’s top hitters will break 70 HRs in The Cardinals’ top hitters will surpass 75 HRs in 2004.

Results: Females in private condition seemed to expect worse performance going in

This coincides with previous data showing that females tend to be less comfortable and more anxious when using computers. Females in public condition also expected to perform worse than males

Results: Time measures revealed that females were just as able as males

Females did not report more anxiety or less confidence in public condition

Against hypothesis We expected females in the public condition to feel more anxiety, less confidence, less ability, and more tense at the task. In contrast, data for females and males was similar in this domain. Any explanation why?

Females in public condition expected to perform better than those in private

It is possible that females in the public condition felt more comfortable with the task based on their own ability, rather than the experimental conditions. Females in the public condition also responded with low ratings of belief that others were aware of their progress,

Comparison of pre-test and post-test responses in private condition

Comparison of pre-test and post-rest responses in public condition

Implications from comparisons In both private and public conditions, females rated themselves as less anxious, more confident, less overwhelmed, and having more ability in the post-test questionnaire. Likely that females realized that they were as able as males. When thinking about the experiment, they realized that it wasn’t actually all that bad, and felt less anxious.

Females less confident and more anxious when making analytical prediction

Why are females significantly worse at this task? Likely due to male-oriented subject of baseball Females, having less experience with baseball statistics, felt much less confident when making predictions. Making analytical prediction based much more on experience than the rest of the presentation task.

Implications and Error Analysis

Not all hypotheses supported Results were not significant in the predicted direction for all measures. Evidence showed that females did have more worries about the task before-hand, but any deficits in performance were not correlated with the presence of other people. Females in the public condition actually self-reported as being less anxious than those in private after the experiment. We expected females to need more time in the public condition. They did not.

Why? Low number of participants Leads to high standard deviations, need to run more experiments Subject of baseball Could confound the male/female difference in or against the predicted direction. Also, this makes the results inapplicable to PowerPoint tasks that do not use male-oriented metaphors.

Other confounds Typing speed of participant Computer processing speed Subjects using a mouse vs a touchpad on a laptop

Time as a dependent measure Cognizance of speed Some participants may have forgotten that speed was important. Participants in the public condition were likely to be aware of others’ progress and subsequently work faster Interest and Creativity We assumed that females, less familiar with baseball, would take longer in public. In contrast, those familiar with baseball (males) could have been more interested in the presentation, gotten more creative, and made a more elaborate presentation, thus taking more time.

Interest and Creativity Likely exerted strong effects in subjective part of experiment where participants were required to summarize each graph. Here, there existed great variability in the amount of information that subjects included. The following 2 slides were from identical parts of the experiment, from 2 different subjects.

St. Louis Cardinals Albert Pujols seems to be the Cardinals’ best bet for the future of their home run hitting.

St Louis Cardinals The St. Louis Cardinal hitters fluctuated in their performance. Each player peaked at different years during this four year period (Martinez peaked in 2001, Edmonds in 2000 and Pujols in Martinez appears to be on a general downward trend after 2001, overall Edmonds has also experienced a dip in performance over the years but he did achieve 39 hits in 2003 which was comparable to 2000, like Edmonds, Pujols appears to be doing significantly better than *Pujols did not play in 2000

Future Research More objective measures Tasks that can be scored on content, rather than being based on time alone Time If included, there should be less variability in the complexity of responses. Also, participants should always be aware of need to work fast Non-biased subject matter To evaluate if effects are due to content of information, or to actual software itself Obviously, more participants

Conclusion Due to the subjective nature of the experiment, it is difficult to validate our hypothesis. Generally, our experiment supports the idea that females are more anxious going into a PowerPoint task. Such anxiety can be decreased by a task that is completed successfully and relatively quickly. Further research into gender differences and software is warranted, requiring more subjects and more objective methods