Why presence occurs

August 01 This Site. Google Scholar. Author and Article Information. Kwan Min Lee. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 13 4 : — Cite Icon Cite. You do not currently have access to this content. View full article. Sign in Don't already have an account? Client Account. You could not be signed in. We can experience a mediated event as it happens e.

The knowledge that a mediated event has been recorded or constructed may make it more difficult for users to perceive the experience as nonmediated. A final media formal feature that may encourage a sense of presence is the number of people the user can or must encounter while using the medium. A medium that allows, or requires in the case of the telephone, the user to interact with at least one other person may evoke presence more easily than others.

The ability to interact with larger numbers of people e. While the form or structure of a mediated presentation or experience plays a vital role in generating presence as invisible medium, the content — which includes objects, human and nonhuman characters and personae, tasks and activities, messages, stories, etc. Three characteristics of mediated content are identified here: social realism, use of media conventions, and nature of task or activity.

As anyone who watches movies or television knows, the storylines, characters, and acting in some media content is more realistic than in others. Although it has not been empirically tested, this suggests that such socially realistic experiences are also more likely to evoke a sense of presence.

While social realism is usually applied to traditional media content, a virtual world can also contain more or less social realism: a world with a green sky, flying trains, and misshapen animals that speak Chinese would surely seem more surreal than real, and therefore would be less likely to evoke presence.

Another way media users are reminded of the true nature of their experience is through the use in media content of conventions that users have come to associate specifically with mediated presentations and experience.

In film and television when the passage of time is represented by spinning hands on a clock, when the transition to a dream or flashback is represented with a distorted dissolve between images, when dramatic or emotional background music telegraphs the end of a segment, when credits and other text messages are superimposed over story action, when identification logos appear in the corner of the television screen, when an unseen narrator describes events, and when plots and dialogue follow predictable formulae, the media user is reminded that rather than having a nonmediated experience he or she is watching something created and artificial.

This realization is likely to interfere with a sense of presence. For interactive mediated experiences an important part of the content, and most likely a factor in the generation and effects of presence, is the nature of the task or activity in which the user participates.

It seems likely that tasks and activities which involve ambiguous verbal and nonverbal social cues and sensitive personal information take greater advantage of a medium's potential to offer presence than do simple nonpersonal tasks. Consistent with this idea, the intensity and valence of emotion that occurs during mediated activities e.

The identical media form and content might generate a sense of presence in one media user and not in another, or might generate presence in the same user on one occasion but not another one. Although almost no research has been conducted on the question, it seems clear that characteristics of media users are important determinants of presence.

A person participating in a videoconference, exploring a virtual environment, or watching an IMAX film or a television program has chosen to engage in the activity and knows that it is a mediated experience. She or he can encourage or discourage a sense of presence by strengthening or weakening this awareness. The willingness to suspend disbelief probably varies both across individuals e.

Of course, willingness to suspend disbelief is also influenced by many characteristics of media form and content.

It should be easier for users unfamiliar with the nature of a medium and how it functions to experience presence while using the medium. The situation is analogous to a magician who knows how a trick is performed and is therefore unimpressed with the illusion. Closely related to this is the effect of experience with a medium. The first time a person uses an advanced medium capable of generating a sense of presence, especially interactive media such as virtual reality, she or he is unfamiliar with the medium, how it is used, the nature of the experience.

A number of other characteristics of media users are likely to influence presence and deserve attention from researchers. As discussed above, presence is defined here as a perceptual illusion of nonmediation in which the medium appears to become either invisible, or transformed into a social entity.

We have discussed the research and speculation concerning the factors that encourage or discourage presence as invisible medium. We now turn to evidence and conjecture concerning the causes of presence as transformed medium. Some of the media and user characteristics that encourage these responses are the same as those discussed above while others are not. Key variables concerning media form, media content, and characteristics of media users that may encourage or discourage this type of presence are briefly mentioned in this section.

There are two aspects of interactivity that are especially important: the number of previous user inputs that are acknowledged in the current response of the technology [ Rafaeli, , ], and the speed or lag time of the response to user input.

A computer which appears to have no memory of recent events in an interaction, or one that is excessively slow in responding, should be less likely to evoke the illusion that the medium is a social entity. Computer-based technologies present information to users in text on a video screen and, increasingly, with voices either recorded human voices or computer-generated ones.

It seems likely that voices that sound more human with higher audio realism and fidelity enhance the illusion of interaction with a social entity. Computers and television sets typically are moderate-sized boxes that contain a viewing screen that compels the user's primary visual attention; one could argue that the size and shape of these technologies are somewhat similar to those of small people and that the viewing screen is somewhat akin to a human face.

This size and shape therefore seem more likely to evoke a sense of presence, and social responses from users, than much larger and less self-contained media such as video conferencing systems, IMAX film screens, or virtual reality headsets. Designers often give computers and computer-based technologies a characteristic manner of providing information. When computers look, sound, and behave like computers they follow conventions that remind users that they are human-made tools rather than social entities.

We use computers to accomplish many tasks; some of these tasks have traditionally been performed only by computers or other technologies while others traditionally have been performed by humans.

For example, database management and word processing are tasks we associate only with computers, while making financial transactions and teaching are tasks associated with human bank tellers and teachers. We may therefore be more likely to feel that we are dealing with a social entity when we use interact with an automatic teller machine or an educational computer program than when we use a database or word processing program.

Most of the subjects in their studies are undergraduate college students who have grown up using computers. Nevertheless, extensive experience using a computer, knowing how it works, even understanding computer architecture and programming, may reduce a person's tendency to respond to it as a social entity.

Age may play a role in the degree to which people experience presence and perceive a medium as a social actor. Although a gender difference based on the male-dominated nature of computer design and use is apparently fading [ Turkle, ], gender may also influence presence.

A number of personality characteristics e. One of the most interesting aspects of the presence phenomenon concerns the physiological and psychological consequences of the perceptual illusion of nonmediation.

Here again much of what can be said must be based on conjecture, but even with only a small minority of claims concerning the effects of presence tested and confirmed by researchers, the importance of the concept for those who design and use media technologies is already clear. First the physiological and then the psychological effects of presence as invisible medium are examined. Following this the psychological effects of presence as transformed medium are briefly considered.

Effects of presence as invisible medium related to arousal, vection and motion sickness, and a number of other physiological changes are identified here. Films, video games, and virtual reality entertainment systems that evoke presence are often designed to be arousing, even exhilarating experiences. Evidence that the creators of these experiences succeed comes from the comments of media critics and creators.

Film critics often note the arousing effects of viewing an action film, e. C15 ]. We know that people use television viewing to increase or decrease their arousal levels [ Zillmann, ] and it seems likely that the range of this manipulation is expanded with media that evoke presence: A virtual environment can be filled with highly arousing violent or sexual content on the one hand or highly relaxing content e.

If an interactive experience inside one of these environments seems to be nonmediated, this should increase its potential to arouse or relax the user. When presence is evoked with rapid point-of-view movement in virtual reality, video games, film, and even television, media users can experience the illusion that they are actually moving through the mediated environment. This illusion of self-motion is called vection. While this type of motion effect is often enjoyable, there are a number of unpleasant motion effects that can result when presence is combined with the illusion of movement.

In some cases these symptoms occur because the media experience is very similar to a nonmediated experience in which participants typically have the same responses e.

In other cases they occur because of time lags between user inputs and computer responses or discrepancies between seeing images that suggest movement but experiencing no actual physical movement e. Automatic responses such as flinching, ducking, and tightly grasping one's chair are also potential effects of presence. The focus of much of the interest in presence as invisible medium concerns a wide range of psychological effects said to result from this perceptual illusion.

Despite interest in these effects, research concerning them has only just begun. Presence in general is thought to have an intensifying effect on media users, increasing or enhancing enjoyment, involvement, task performance and training, desensitization, persuasion, memory, and parasocial interaction. Each of these effects is discussed briefly below. Perhaps the most prominent psychological impact of presence is enjoyment and delight.

Technologies that provide a strong sense of presence, including simulation rides, IMAX theaters, and virtual reality entertainment, are increasingly popular with the public and financially lucrative for those who design and market them. The reasons for this popularity seem to go beyond novelty and fad — the experiences these media provide are highly entertaining and, simply put, fun.

There is remarkably little research available concerning the effect of presence on enjoyment, perhaps because we tend to take this effect for granted. Media experiences that evoke presence tend to be highly involving. While we might be interested in, and even cognitively and emotionally engaged by, mediated information that we perceive as mediated, such information is likely to seem more distant, abstract, dry.

Presence implies a direct and natural experience rather than just the processing of symbolic data and is therefore likely to be more compelling. Although part of the involvement effect is likely due to the interactive, and therefore active rather than passive, nature of high-presence media, there seems to be more at work.

Obviously involvement also depends on the media content and the interests and experiences of the user. Many presence-evoking media technologies, especially video conference systems and teleoperation systems, have been developed so that people can accomplish tasks with great efficiency.

While these technologies often make it possible to do something e. In one study, [ Pausch, Shackelford, and Proffitt ] demonstrated that greater immersion in a virtual environment causes subjects to perform search tasks more efficiently, but more research is needed to identify the characteristics of tasks and then the specific tasks for which presence enhances performance.

One of the most important groups of tasks for which presence-evoking media have been designed and used involves skills training. Virtual reality systems have been used to train aircraft pilots, air-traffic controllers, military ground troops, and surgeons, and while questions about the advantages of this training over more conventional methods can and should be asked, there are obvious benefits of this approach.

The skills that could be taught in high-presence media are nearly unlimited. A medium that can mimic nonmediated experience may be particularly effective in desensitizing users to various stimuli, with positive or negative consequences.

Much of the content media users encounter, especially in more traditional media, is intended to persuade them usually to purchase a product or service.

More research is needed of course, but the possibility that under some circumstances presence can enhance the persuasiveness of media content is provocative. These mediated experiences may be encoded into memory in a manner so similar to nonmediated experiences that when they are later retrieved errors in attributing the source of the memory source-monitoring errors occur.

Subjects viewed 13 short scenes from films that portrayed a wide variety of events e. Source-monitoring errors were indicated by changes in subjects' agreement with a series of statements about these events e.

And significant and sustained social judgment change was found, even for subjects who reported they were not aware that they used the information portrayed in the fictional scenes to make the social judgments.

Errors in attributing source appeared to lead subjects to unknowingly apply knowledge gained from the fictional scenes to judgments about the real world akin to effects discussed in Gerbner's Cultivation Analysis. A large literature in communication studies [ e. Other, less empirical evidence see above suggests that the same phenomenon extends to our responses to computer characters and agents. For example, it might be quite difficult to remember that a character with whom one interacts in a sophisticated virtual reality system is actually just a sophisticated set of computer-generated images and sounds.

When presence leads users to perceive a medium e. The psychological effects of this kind of presence are therefore potentially as diverse as those generated by nonmediated social interaction.

This review of research, theory, and conjecture concerning the intriguing and important phenomenon of presence demonstrates that research on presence is in its infancy. We know relatively little about the characteristics of a medium's form and content and the characteristics of medium users that encourage a sense of presence, and we know relatively little about the effects of presence once it is evoked.

Given the practical and theoretical importance of the concept, what is needed is a systematic program of research to investigate the many aspects of presence. Systematic research on presence requires first standardized conceptual and operational definitions of the term. We have provided a conceptual definition here which we hope will at least serve as a starting point. Research is needed to determine whether the complex variety of characteristics of medium and user suggested here and elsewhere contribute to one identifiable type of perceptual illusion or experience, which then leads to a complex variety of influences, again depending on characteristics of medium, user, and context.

In any case thorough understanding of the phenomena and research findings discussed here can only come with a thorough and systematic conceptualization of presence. Following [ Sheridan ] and [Held and Durlach ] we suggest that the instrument developed contain both subjective measures that could be administered via a questionnaire and objective measures that would assess media users' physiological and behavioral responses during media use.

Many examples of subjective questionnaire items have been mentioned here; others should be created and all of them carefully tested to determine their validity and reliability as measures of presence. Physiological and behavioral measures e. We also need to standardize our manipulations of the variables thought to encourage presence, including the specific stimuli used in experimental research, as well as our measures of the consequences of presence.

And the subjects in these studies all were shown different types and amounts of media content. All of this makes comparisons across studies difficult and has slowed our exploration of this key variable. There are many important and interesting questions that systematic research on presence should address: what and how great a role does each variable identified as a potential contributor to presence play in the phenomenon?

Which are most important? How do they interact? Can they be manipulated together to control the extent and nature of presence? How many distinct dimensions of presence are there? Which are the most important causes and consequences of each of these? Which are the most reliable effects of presence? How can they be modified to maximize enjoyment, learning, and performance? Finally, research on presence may also help us answer some of the most provocative and philosophical questions raised by traditional and especially new technologies that offer us mediated experiences that seem increasingly like nonmediated ones.

Is presence necessarily a good thing? Are there situations in which presence is too intense for users should technologies be designed with a user control of presence? Can presence contribute to psychoses and other psychological problems see [ Cartwright, ]? Why do we get a sense of presence from relatively primitive cues?

Is it, as [ Reeves and Nass ] have suggested, a result of our long evolution that has prepared us to initially treat all objects and people in our environment as potential threats rather than symbolic reproductions? And why do we so strongly desire a sense of presence? Is it to experience dangerous or socially unacceptable events without danger or social sanction?

Is it to experience events that we otherwise could not experience, such as those in our past and our many possible futures? Is it part of humankind's well-known desire to control our environment? Or is it just for convenience and efficiency — the best way to get things done?

And how will our essentially social human nature lead us to use technologies that allow us to have seemingly nonmediated experiences — will we interact with created characters or real people in these media? If we choose the latter, will presence help break down stereotypes and misunderstandings in what will seem like a neighborhood rather than a global village? Regardless of the answers to these and many other questions, a fascinating and rewarding exploration awaits us. Abkarian , G.

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