Communication and Commitment in an Online Game Team
1
Laura Dabbish12, Robert Kraut1, and Jordan Patton1
Human-Computer Interaction Institute and 2H. John Heinz III College
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15213
{dabbish, robert.kraut}@cs.cmu.edu, [email protected]
ABSTRACT
Theories about commitment in online settings and empirical
evidence from offline environments suggest that greater
communication in online groups should lead members to
become more committed and participate longer. However,
experimental evidence is sparse, in part because of
difficulties inducing communication online. Moreover,
previous work has not identified the route by which
communication leads to increased commitment. In this
paper, we investigated whether task versus social
communication modeled by a leader versus a peer
influenced the amount that group members talked and their
willingness to continue participating in the group. We
conducted an experiment within ad hoc groups in the online
game World of Warcraft. Results suggest that
communication early in a group’s history causes members
to talk more later on and that the early communication
increases their commitment through its influence on group
atmosphere rather than through increased member
participation. Social communication by a peer is especially
valuable in increasing commitment.
Author Keywords
Virtual teams; commitment; conversation; communication;
status; online games.
ACM Classification Keywords
H5.3. Group and Organizational Interfaces.
General Terms
Human Factors
INTRODUCTION
An online group is more likely to be successful if it is
composed of members who are committed to it.
Commitment is “a force that binds an individual to an
organization and thereby reduces the likelihood of
turnover” (p. 993, [30]). By commitment, we mean
members’ affective connection to and caring for the group
in which they become involved [1]. Members who are
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committed to an online group are crucial to its success.
These are the members most likely to provide the content
that others value—answers to others’ questions in technical
and health support groups (e.g., [43]), or code in open
source projects (e.g., [32]). Committed members also help
enforce norms of appropriate behavior [47], police the
community and sanction deviant behaviors [8], and perform
behind the scenes work to help maintain the community [6].
Extensive research in social psychology and organizational
behavior suggests that there are two distinct routes to
commitment to a group. People can identify with the group
as an entity (common identity) or they can feel close to
individual members of the group (common bonds; [40]).
These processes also seem to apply in online groups [45].
CSCW researchers have proposed design interventions to
increase identity-based commitment to online groups by
emphasizing the group as an entity and bond-based
commitment by emphasizing individuals and supporting
communication among them [42]. Experimental research
shows that it is possible to substantially increase identitybased commitment by, for example, partitioning a larger
group into subgroups and exposing subgroup members to
its logo, slogan or accomplishments. However, it is much
more difficult to increase bond-based commitment [13, 41],
in large part because of the difficulty inducing a sufficient
number of group members to communicate with each other.
For example, only two percent of 12,000 unique members
who had visited a money recommender site in the year after
it launched discussion forums ever posted a message [18].
Failures in communication are more general, even when
communication is essential to the success of the online
group. For example, only approximately 14% of Wikipedia
editor discuss the articles they work on in the article’s talk
page [23]. A large percent of subscribers to email-based
discussion groups are lurkers, never participating in
discussions, with a majority of lists having no
communication over a three-month period [6]. One of the
goals of the current research is to investigate ways of
increasing communication in online groups where little
otherwise occurs.
Research Question 1: How can
communication in online groups?
we
increase
There is good reason to believe that conversation among
members is important to generating bond-based
commitment in an online group. Communication is the
basis for interpersonal relationships, on which bond-based
commitment depends. Interpersonal communication drives
the development of interpersonal attraction [14]. As
people’s interactions increase in frequency, their liking for
one another also increases [34]. In online communities,
especially, frequency of interpersonal communication is a
major determinant of the extent to which people can build
relationships with one another [28]. Interpersonal
relationships are especially likely to arise from exchanges
of personal information and self-disclosure [10, 38].
Meta-analyses of the research on commitment suggest that
communication among members of a group or organization
is strongly related to the level of commitment to that social
entity [26, 38]. However, much of this work simply
correlates self-reports about the frequency of various kinds
of communication with feelings of commitment. These
cross-sectional, correlational analyses do not demonstrate
that communication among group members actually
increases commitment.
If interpersonal communication in online groups actually
increases commitment, the mechanisms involved remain
unclear. That is, there is still an open question about what
that communication should look like. Specifically, does
communication lead to commitment as a function of
production of communication (i.e., group members feel
involved when they talk to others) or receipt of
communication (i.e., they feel wanted when others talk to
them)? Does the content of the communication matter? For
example, if members exchange personal information
through task-oriented oriented talk or if they bond through
task-oriented talk? Finally, does the conversational partner
matter (i.e., is communication from peers versus leaders
equally as important to commitment)? A second aim of this
research is to better understand whether communication in
online groups increases commitment and the causal
pathways that might produce this effect.
Research Question 2: Does communication in online
groups influence commitment?
In order to investigate these research questions, we
conducted the research described here in the context of ad
hoc groups that form to accomplish difficult goals within
World of Warcraft, a popular multiplayer, online game.
These massively multiplayer games are important
businesses in their right. For example, over 11 million
players pay about $15 per month to subscribe to the game.
Moreover, the ad hoc groups in these game share many
features of virtual teams used both online (e.g., the editors
creating a Wikipedia article) or in the business world (e.g.,
a task force designing new product). They consistent of
multiple people, often strangers, coming together for a
defined time to perform a meaningful (at least to the
participants) interdependent task.
Virtual teams are increasingly present in the business world
as well. In 2002 Gartner Group suggested that more than 60
percent of professional employees work in teams with some
level of virtuality and this number has only increased since
then [16, 22]. Developing commitment is particularly a
challenge for a virtual team [39]. Members of these teams
have difficulty forming a shared identity [46], are more
likely to make negative attributions about their fellow
members’ behavior [11] and feel they are not committed to
the team [12], resulting in less willingness to help
teammates and higher turnover [19, 52].
We were interested in whether we could induce
communication in ad hoc virtual teams and whether this
communication would influence team members’ subsequent
commitment to the team. In an experiment, we manipulated
the presence and type of communication an experimental
confederate in a leadership or non-leadership role produced
early in the team’s history. We examined how this
influenced how much the other team members talked
amongst themselves and their subsequent commitment
(measured by whether they wanted to stay with the team or
not). Our results suggest that injecting communication early
in the team’s history significantly increased the amount of
talk overall and commitment to the team. Talk by nonleaders was especially effective when it was socially
oriented, not task oriented. In addition we find evidence
that being talked to leads to commitment irrespective of the
amount an individual talks, suggesting commitment is a
more a function of the social environment rather than direct
engagement with the group.
BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESES
Modeling and Communication
As discussed previously, communication within an online
team is not automatic. How can one foster conversation
within an online group? Research on communication
structure and conversation in online settings suggests a
series of factors that could influence the amount of talking
with a group, including the effort required to produce an
utterance [18], requests and other linguistic obligations [27,
44], and behavioral mimicry or modeling [37]. In this
research we focus on modeling, because it is under a
manager or group leader’s control to some degree. They can
serve as role models by performing the behavior they desire
from their team or by recruiting a subset of team members
with appropriate qualities (e.g., extraversion).
Previous work suggests that in both social and nonsocial
situations the behavior of others is a powerful cue for one’s
own behavior [9], and is effective in influencing both
private actions (e.g., towel recycling in hotel rooms, where
information about the behavior of previous occupants
seems to encourage individuals to conserve and reuse
towels; [17]) and communication. In the domain of
communication, response to models seems to occur
subconsciously, for example, when individuals seem to
automatically mimic a conversational partner’s nonverbal
gestures, body language or speech [2, 37].
Modeling done early in a group’s history may set norms for
appropriate behavior that have long lasting effects. In
groups and teams the appropriate or accepted ways of
behaving (or norms) serve as a model for how other
members should act. Theory about group development
suggests that these norms are set very early in a group’s
history together and established by observable patterns of
interaction [33]. These models of group development
suggest that communication in the early stage of a group’s
history should set the tone for the group and suggest the
nature of their behavior or interaction during later stages.
These considerations motivate our first hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: When a role model communicates early
in a group’s history, this will cause more
communication by other members later in its history.
Participant roles may also influence the effectiveness of
communication made early in a group’s history on
subsequent communication within the group. Research on
conformity and influence in groups and teams suggests that
leaders, because of their high status, may have greater
influence on group norms [24]. Similarly, in teams, leaders
can often have more influence on a group’s conversation
and decisions [48]. Social identity theory suggests this is
because leaders serve as the prototypical member of the
group, in that they embody the values of the team, and
represent how an ‘ideal’ group member should behave [20].
Social identity theory, then, suggests that conversation by
leaders should more strongly influence the behavior of
other members than conversation by peers.
Hypothesis 2: Conversation delivered early in a
group’s history by an individual in a leadership role
should have a stronger influence on subsequent group
communication than conversation delivered by an
individual in a peer role.
Communication and Commitment
As discussed above, research on organizational
commitment suggests that more communication between
members should strengthen commitment to a group [26, 29,
38]. However, previous work on this relationship has been
predominantly correlational in nature showing, for example,
that long time members of an online community are more
talkative and vice versa [36]. This makes it difficult to
ascertain the route by which conversation increases
commitment to the community. We suggest that there are
two possible routes by which conversation increases
commitment to a group: (1) by creating a friendly
atmosphere or tone, or (2) through participants own
communication and investment in the group.
Conversational Environment
The mere presence of conversation may create an inviting
atmosphere, resulting in increased feelings of commitment
to a group. Theories of commitment suggest that
socialization and value congruence are important
antecedents of commitment to a group [30, 31]. A
communicative environment is inviting and could suggest a
norm of openness in a group. For groups that have recently
formed, this environment could lead to feelings of cohesion
and connection among members, even if they themselves
do not talk. If this were the case, the presence of higher
levels of communication among some members of a group
would be sufficient to increase commitment, regardless of
whether an individual themselves is talking. The large
number of repeat lurkers on many sites suggests that it is
possible to be committed to a site without directly
interacting with other members [35].
Hypothesis 3: Role model communication in the early
period of a group’s history should foster higher levels
of commitment to the group.
Talking Increases Commitment
Simply seeding a group with communication may not be
sufficient to foster commitment to that group. It may be that
one must actively participate in the conversation to feel a
higher level of commitment. Theories of commitment also
suggest that involvement with a team is an important
antecedent to commitment [30]. This corresponds with
research on communication in interpersonal relationship
development which suggests that sharing information with
someone can foster bonds and make you feel closer to that
person. For example, research on disclosure and liking
suggests that sharing personal information about yourself
with another person increases liking for that person [4]. In
groups, being highly engaged with the group and involved
may lead you to feel closer to the other members and
increase your desire to stay with the group. Parks & Floyd’s
research on membership in online text-based discussion
forums showed a relationship between the amount of posts
an individual had made in an online forum and their tenure
in the group [36]. If communication leads to commitment
through a feeling of involvement, then directly interacting
with other members should increase feelings of
commitment to that group. This perspective suggests that
the effectiveness of a communication intervention will be
dependent on the participant’s own amount of
communication in response to initial seeded comments:
Hypothesis 4: The influence of a role model’s
communication on member’s commitment to the group
will be mediated by the amount they communicate.
Member role and conversation type
The relationship between communication and commitment
may depend largely on who does the talking and what they
say. The previous work on communication and commitment
has suggested that leader communication is an important
influence on commitment [50]. Research on leader
communication has often focused on task-related
communication in the form of feedback. However, the
research on leader-member exchange has suggested that
fostering a close relationship with subordinates through
socio-emotional (socially-oriented) communication can
increase subordinate motivation, commitment and
satisfaction [15]. Other work on communication and
commitment has suggested that leaders should instead focus
on task-related communication, which leads to higher
organizational commitment. In a series of surveys within
two organizations, Postmes et al. [38] found that leader
communication about task-related topics was more strongly
associated with organizational commitment than peer
communication about socio-emotional topics. At the same
time, peer communication about socio-emotional topics was
an important determinant of commitment to the immediate
group (versus the larger organization).
Unfortunately, the previous work on communication and
commitment has largely conflated communicator role and
conversation topic. It is unclear whether socio-emotional
communication from leaders would be equally effective as
socio-emotional communication from peers in generating
commitment to the team. Similarly, we do not know
whether task-related communication from peers would
increase or decrease commitment relative to socioemotional communication. The relationship between
communication topic and role could further illuminate the
mechanism by which communication leads to commitment.
Postmes et al.’s [38] results suggest that when the leader is
talking, communication should lead to commitment when
that communication is related to the group’s task. This is
because the communication will serve to reinforce the
identity of the group as an entity [20].
Hypothesis
5a:
The
relationship
between
communication and commitment will be strongest when
that communication is focused on the group’s task
(rather than socio-emotional) and delivered by an
individual in a leadership role (rather than a peer).
However, if commitment is ultimately more a function of
interpersonal relationships among members of the team
[29], socially-oriented social communication delivered by
peers should result in the strongest connection to the group.
Hypothesis
5b:
The
relationship
between
communication and commitment will be strongest when
that communication is socio-emotional (rather than
focused on the group’s task) and delivered by a peer
(rather than an individual in a leadership role).
the content of their communication, and measure the
group’s response in terms of subsequent communication
and commitment.
METHOD
Setting and Task
We conducted our experiment in the World of
massively multiplayer online role-playing game,
accessed by players over the Internet using
computers. Over 11.1 million people have a
subscription to World of Warcraft [51].
Warcraft
which is
personal
monthly
We applied our experimental manipulations within groups
completing dungeon raids. “Raiding” is a common activity
in World of Warcraft, in which groups of players work
together to accomplish a common goal which none of them
could accomplish on their own. When players participate in
a raid, they form a group using in-game tools and journey
into an area of the game known as a “dungeon.” Players
almost never venture into dungeons on their own, as their
characters would quickly die without help. In a raid,
however, a very well coordinated group may successfully
defeat all of monsters in a dungeon. When these monsters
are defeated, they release special weapons, armor, and other
“loot” that players desire. To increase the generalizability
of the research, we selected three dungeons that span a
range of difficulties, time requirements, and participant
motivations: Pit of Saron, Forge of Souls, and the Culling
of Stratholme.
In organizing for a dungeon raid, players can select to work
with an existing team or can be randomly assigned to a
team using an in-game tool called the Dungeon Finder.
After each raid, they have the option to continue as a team
beyond the immediate task. During the raid players have
available text-based channels of communication seen by all
participants (called the party chat). Players can also chat
privately with selected other players. Any player can record
in game activity and all chat visible to them using game
tools and add-ons. Figure 1 shows a player’s screen during
a dungeon raid, with chat in the lower left corner.
Summary
In summary, based on the previous research on
commitment, communication, and group development, we
expected that injecting communication early in a team’s
history would lead to more communication among the rest
of the team in a subsequent time period and ultimately
higher commitment to the team. We also expected that the
communicator’s role would interact with the nature of the
communication. We evaluated our stated hypotheses in an
experiment within real groups in an online game. The
setting allowed us to manipulate the communicator’s role,
Figure 1. World of Warcraft Dungeon Image, players
cooperate to defeat a dungeon monster.
Participants
Participants in the study were World of Warcraft players
who used the Random Dungeon Finder tool to enter the
three dungeons of interest. This tool allows players to sign
up for random dungeons that require five participants. The
Random Dungeon Finder matches players into teams so that
all the necessary roles are filled. Additionally, it limits
access only to players with characters that have attained an
appropriate level, armor, and weapons to complete the
dungeon. We conducted trials with 108 different groups (5
person groups made up of 3-4 naïve participants per group
plus one confederate) for a total of 457 participants.
Experimental Manipulations
In order to examine our hypotheses of interest, we modified
the role and behavior of a confederate embedded in
dungeon raid groups. Our experiment had two main
manipulations: the type of chat the confederate used early
in the groups existence (silent, socially-oriented, and taskoriented), and the role of the confederate within the group
(leader vs. peer). These variables were manipulated across
dungeon raid groups, for a 3 (chat type) by 2 (role) between
subjects design. We examined the influence of these
interventions on the amount of communication by other
group members and their commitment to the team,
measured by their willingness to stay in the group following
the immediate task. We describe our independent and
dependent variables in more detail below.
Conversant role
We were interested in whether the relationship between
conversation and commitment would vary depending upon
whether the role model was a leader of the group or just a
peer member. We manipulated leadership by having the
same confederate play different functional roles in the fiveman dungeon raid groups as they battled monsters using
two different level 80 characters.
Three unique roles must be fulfilled in a five-man dungeon.
The first role, called “Tank,” is a character with great
defensive capabilities who will soak up damage from
attacks by dungeon monsters. The Tank is commonly
viewed as the natural leader of the group, as his actions
determine a course through the dungeon and when and
where fights will take place. The second role is called
“Healer.” A Healer keeps all group members alive (and
resurrects the dead) by repairing damage to the other group
members as it occurs. The third and final role is called
“Damage Dealer,” and may also be referred to as the “DPS”
or “Damage Per Second (DPS).” Damage Dealers attack
designated targets to quickly kill them in the order
prescribed by the Tank. A five-man dungeon group
includes one Tank, one Healer, and three Damage Dealers.
During the course of this study, the same research assistant
played either the Tank role for the “leader” condition or the
Damage Dealer role for the “peer” condition. Members of a
group can vary in status as a function of their
instrumentality to the group’s task, i.e. the skills and
resources they posses that directly impact successful task
performance [7]. Leadership in random dungeon groups in
WoW play out differently than in other small, task-oriented
groups because they are based on character’s in-game
functions rather than any special leadership ability. In the
dungeon raid task, the Tank role was highly instrumental
because participants with Tank characters are less common
in the game than Healer or Damage Dealer characters, and
so more difficult to replace. The Damage Dealer role, on
the other hand, was less instrumental because each team
contained three Damage Dealer players that were easy to
replace. Our hypotheses suggest that role modeling
performed by different characters (Tank vs. DPS) should
have different effects because the characters are
differentially important in the game.
Communication type
The five-man dungeon raids in this experiment took
between 15 and 30 minutes to complete. In order to
manipulate the presence and nature of conversation and
view its effects on the group’s own conversation, we
segmented the dungeon runs into three time periods. The
confederate administered the conversation intervention
during the first time period, which was approximately one
third of the dungeon run (e.g. the first 5 minutes during a 15
minute run) and observed with minimal communication
during the next two-thirds of the dungeon run (e.g. 10
minutes during a fifteen minute run).
The confederate manipulated the presence of conversation
in the first time period by initiating chat based on a script or
remaining silent unless spoken to. When conversation was
present, the confederate varied the type of the conversation
by selecting conversational turns from a task-oriented or
socially-oriented script. The scripts were created from
utterances observed in use by WoW players during pilot
dungeon raids. Thus we had three levels in our
manipulation of communication type: silent, task-oriented,
and socially-oriented.
During the silent condition, the confederate did not initiate
any conversation and did not respond to general questions
asked to the group as a whole, but offered short, polite
replies if asked a direct question. During the task-oriented
and socially-oriented conditions, the confederate made
utterances in the group text chat at three points during the
first five minutes of the dungeon raid: (a) at the very
beginning of the dungeon run, (b) after the second monster
in the dungeon was killed, (c) after the fourth group of
monsters were defeated. These points were selected because
they are effectively subtask breakpoints within the dungeon
raid task and group members would be more likely to attend
to and have time to respond to the communication.
At each of these time points, the confederate selected
randomly among conversational prompts. In the taskoriented condition, conversational prompts were questions
directly related to the current dungeon raid task. Questions
were utilized because the prior literature shows that
questions are more effective at initiating conversation than
statements [44]. In the socially-oriented condition, the
conversational prompts were questions related to aspects of
the game outside of the immediate task or related to the
players’ real lives outside of the game. Table 1 shows
examples of task and socially-oriented prompts.
Conversational
prompt
Task-oriented
Socially-oriented
(a)
At the
beginning of
the dungeon
“Is everybody
ready?”
“What did you do
today?”
(b)
After second
monster
“What rotation
do you use?”
“I’m thinking of creating
a new alt, any
recommendations?”
(c)
After fourth
monster
“Does anyone
need specific
loot from here?”
“Any of you working on
hard modes in icc?”
Table 1. Examples of task and socially-oriented prompts
After the confederate manipulated his communication, in
the remaining two-thirds of the dungeon run, he was silent,
responding only to direct questions.
Outcome Measures
We collected two dependent variables: the amount of talk
by team members following the conversation intervention
and commitment to the team.
Conversation generated
In order to measure the effectiveness of conversational
modeling on subsequent conversation among group
members, we measured the amount of talk in the second
period of the dungeon run. We did this by logging the chat
from all group members using an in-game feature that
captured all text communication and recorded it to a file on
the confederate’s computer. Chat logging appended
timestamps to all text messages. We calculated the amount
of talk generated by each member of the group during the
second time period of play in terms of lines of
communication, with each line representing an utterance,
after eliminating the confederate’s communication. It is
important to note that this measure includes only chat
messages sent using the party chat (hence visible to all
members of the group) while private messages between
pairs of players were not captured in the logs.
Commitment
We were interested in whether the initial conversation
directly or indirectly influenced commitment to the team.
Here we defined commitment as a desire to stay with team
beyond the original team goal of completing the dungeon
raid for which they formed [5]. In order to measure this,
near the end of the dungeon raid but before participants left
the dungeon, our confederate queried the group to ask
whether they wanted to continue together on an additional
dungeon raid. Before the final monster (the boss) in the
dungeon was killed, the confederate posted a message to the
group chat asking if they want to queue for another
dungeon. After the boss was killed, he/she immediately
activated the Random Dungeon Finder and recorded which
(if any) team members queued for another dungeon. Thus
our measure of individual commitment was behavioral -- a
binary variable set to one if a team member re-queued for
the next dungeon, and zero if not.
Control variables
In addition to our outcome measures of interest
(communication volume and behavioral commitment), we
also identified control variables measured to account for
other factors that may influence the dependent variables.
These included the specific dungeon name, the participant’s
potential performance (character level, armor quality) based
on data retrieved from a public database that publishes
information on characters from World of Warcraft, the
participant’s actual performance during the dungeon raid
task (damage or heals per second), and their role (Tank,
Healer, or Damage Dealer).
RESULTS
We conducted 108 trials within the dungeons in World of
Warcraft, with approximately 4 participants per trial for a
total of 457 participants. Data from participants across all
three roles are included in our analysis. Twenty-two team
members dropped out of the raid before completion and
were replaced by the Random Dungeon Finder. The results
reported below do not change whether or not the 22
replacements were included in the analysis.
We were interested in whether our communication
manipulation generated communication by the other
members of the team (Hypothesis 1), whether
communication role modeling was more effective when
done by a group leader or peer (Hypothesis 2) whether the
presence of communication increased team member
commitment directly (Hypothesis 3) or in a mediated
fashion (Hypothesis 4) and whether these possible effects
varied by member role (Hypothesis 5a and 5b).
We first examined the influence of our communication
manipulation in the first period of play on the amount of
talk generated by members of the group in the second
period. We conducted a negative binomial regression of the
number of lines of talk generated by each member in the
second time period of the session to account for the skewed
distribution of the count data, with individual nested within
group to account for the non-independence of observations
across members of the same group. We included member
role, conversation type, and their interaction as independent
variables in our model, along with the dungeon and player
s performance potential as control variables. Statistical tests
are reported as Incident Report Ratios (IRR), the ratio of
the amount of lines of talk as an independent variable
changed from a baseline condition (e.g., the peer role
model) to another (e.g., the leader role model). Figure 2
shows the pattern of results for amount of communication.
in odds ratios (OR), the ratio of the odds of staying in the
group when an independent variable increases by a unit
compared to a baseline condition. Because decisions within
a single group are not independent of each other, the
analysis nested members within groups with participant id
included as a random effect in the model, to account for this
non-independence of observations. Players were
substantially more likely to want to continue playing in
groups where the confederate was a leader than when it was
a peer (OR=4.94; p=.001).
Figure 2: Effects of confederate role and communication type
on players’ communication
H1 predicts that group members would talk more when a
role model talked early in the groups history than when the
role model was silent. This hypothesis was confirmed. We
created a nominal variable to contrast talk versus silent
conditions (effectively collapsing the task-oriented and
socially-oriented talk manipulations). When the role model
talked in the first third of a group’s life, the other members
talked more in the remaining two-thirds (IRR=1.61; p=.05).
We conducted exploratory analyses to determine whether
the type of talk mattered, including a nominal variable
representing the three levels of talk in our experiment
(silent, task- and socially-oriented). Both types of talk had
an influence on the amount of participant talk, with early
socially-oriented talk by our confederate having the
strongest influence on the lines of talk (IRR=1.75; p=.04)
and task-oriented talk only marginally increasing the
amount of talk among the other members of the group
(IRR=1.49; p=.15).
H2 predicted that the effects of role model talk would
increase when the role model was a group leader.
However, this hypothesis was not confirmed. The effects of
role modeling were not different when the model was a
leader or peer (for the Role by Talk interaction, IRR=0.79;
p=.47). In addition, the leadership role did not influence the
power of role modeling when we separately examine their
task-oriented communication (for the Role by task-oriented
communication interaction, IRR=0.82; p=.61) and their
socially-oriented communication (for the Role by Sociallyoriented communication interaction, IRR= 0.76; p=.48).
Conversant role, communication type, and commitment
Because the outcome measure of commitment is binary
(whether a group member signed up to play with the group
again or nor), we conducted a random-effects logistic
regression on the decision to continue. Results are reported
Figure 3: Effects of confederate role and communication type
on players’ commitment
H3, which predicted that more communication early in a
group’s life cycle would increase group members’
commitment, was confirmed. Figure 3 shows the pattern of
results for commitment across conditions.
The presence of conversation doubled the odds of staying
with the group (OR=2.10; p=.01). The effect of the
leadership role was large. However, the communication had
different effects when the confederate performed different
roles in the group (for the role by communication
interaction, OR=.28, p=.04). In particular, communication
increased players’ commitment when the role model was a
peer (OR=2.75, p=.12), but depressed it when they were
leaders (OR=.61, p=.10).
Distinguishing among the types of communication shows
that socially-oriented chat tripled the odds of staying with
the group (IRR=3.10; p=.02), while task-oriented
communication did not reliably increase the odds of staying
(OR=1.35, p=.54). However, as Figure 2 shows, the effects
of different types of communication varied with the
confederate’s role. Socially oriented communication
increased the probability of players’ staying when the
confederate was a peer (OR=4.65, p=.04), but had no effect
when the confederate was a leader (OR=.79, p=.50; for role
by socially-oriented communication interaction, p=.03). In
contrast, task-oriented communication depressed a player’s
probability of staying when the confederate was a leader
(OR=.48, p=.03), but had no effect when the confederate
was a peer (OR=1.64, p=.49; for the role by task-oriented
communication interaction, p=.08).
These results suggest that players wanted to continue in
groups when the confederate was a leader. He made the
group attractive by dint of his status and irreplaceability.
Communication didn’t enhance his position in the group,
and even hurt it when he engaged in task-based
communication. In contrast, players were less likely to want
to continue playing in groups when the confederate was
their peer. His position, gameplay and replaceability made
the group less attractive than if he had been a leader.
However, he could compensate for these problems of status
and performance through social communication. We
suspect that other players grew to like the group more
because of his social rather than task competence.
Finally we examined whether the influence of early
communication on commitment occurred as a function of
communication environment, or was mediated by member
communication, suggesting involvement as a pathway.
Having established the direct influence of chat presence and
type on the amount of member communication, and the
influence of communication type on commitment, we next
added member communication to our model of
commitment (as lines of talk). We found that the presence
of chat continued to have a positive influence on
commitment (likelihood of staying with the group), even
with the amount of member communication included in the
model (OR=2.05; p=.11), particularly for the peer
conversant’s (role by talk interaction: OR=1.75; p=.03).
This result suggests that member talk does not mediate the
influence of leader or peer communication on member
commitment to the group. We examined this pathway using
a binomial regression in order to compare the coefficients
for the direct effect of commitment with and without
member communication in the model using mediation tests.
We found the mediation was not significant according to
this test [3]. Thus, we find support for Hypothesis 3, that
conversation influences commitment by creating a positive
climate in the group. Support for our hypotheses is
summarized in table 2.
DISCUSSION
The results from our study indicate that it is possible to
induce communication in a temporary online team through
the use of a role model. We found that communication early
in a group’s history led to increased levels of
communication by group members. In addition, the role
model’s communication was effective in increasing
commitment to the group in the form of member retention.
Our results also illuminate the causal pathway between
communication and commitment to a group. We found that
communication influences commitment to a group by
creating a supportive environment within which members
choose to remain. This is evidenced by the fact that early
communication by either a peer or a leader led to higher
levels of member communication (which could be
construed as evidence of affective or behavioral
commitment), but this member communication did not
explain the increase in likelihood to stay with a group
(continuance commitment). Thus it is through an
environmental effect, rather than direct involvement, that
communication can increase commitment to a group.
Additionally, our results showed this occurred regardless of
the type of communication (task or socially-oriented talk).
Hypothesis
Supported?
1: When a role model
communicates early in a
group’s history, this will cause
more communication by other
members later in its history.
Yes. Presence of chat increased
the amount of member chat
across all role conditions.
2: Conversation delivered early
in a group’s history by an
individual in a leadership role
should have a stronger
influence on subsequent group
communication than
conversation delivered by an
individual in a peer role.
No. Early conversation by both
peers and leaders increased
member conversation volume.
3: Role model communication in
the early period of a group’s
history should foster higher
levels of commitment to the
group.
Yes. Chat manipulation
significantly increased likelihood
of staying in the group.
4: The influence of a role
model’s communication on
member’s commitment to the
group will be mediated by the
amount they communicate.
No. Early conversation had a
direct influence on the likelihood
of staying with a group. In
particular, socially-oriented
communication had the
strongest influence on retention.
5a: The relationship between
communication and
commitment will be strongest
when that communication is
delivered by an individual in a
leadership role (rather than a
peer) focused on the group’s
task (rather than socioemotional).
No. Communication type did not
influence commitment when
delivered by an individual in a
leadership role.
5b: The relationship between
communication and
commitment will be strongest
when that communication is
socio-emotional and delivered
by a peer.
Yes. Significant interaction
between role and conversation
type, with talk type having the
strongest influence on
commitment to peer conversant
(and no influence of talk type for
leaders).
Table 2 – Summary of Hypotheses and Experimental Support
This suggests that the nature of the communicative
environment may matter less than the fact that members are
interacting with one another.
Future work is needed to ascertain exactly how and why the
communicative environment leads to commitment to a
group. Previous work has suggested that social support is
particularly important antecedent to commitment to a social
group, and it may be that presence of communication
induces a feeling of this type of support. It may also be that
communication changes member perceptions of the group
as an entity. For example, communication may increase the
general attractiveness of a group, by suggesting members
are more involved or committed to the task. Particularly in
a distributed environment, this evidence of commitment
may reduce uncertainty about whether or not members are
engaged and committed to the group.
We also found that the communicator role had a significant
influence on the effect of communication content, with
socially-oriented communication substantially increasing
commitment only when the communicator was a peer
(rather than the leader of the group). This relates to work on
liking and relationship formation in work groups, where
personality can increase attractiveness of less skilled
members but may not influence the perceived utility of
clearly instrumental members [7]. It may be that
communication is attended to more when it is delivered by
members whose utility is uncertain to the group.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Limitations
It is important to note the potential limitations of our study,
which was conducted in a virtual environment primarily
used for entertainment by its players, with small groups. It
is unclear to what extent these results would generalize to a
traditional organizational setting where members are being
paid for task completion, and rewards depend on successful
task completion. World of Warcraft is a setting where
individuals engaged in game tasks like dungeon raids
typically converse only when needed to support task
performance. The way communication is viewed and used
in this environment, and the level of communication
typically experienced in these types of groups, may have
influenced our results. In addition, groups used in this study
were small in size. Thus it will be important to examine
whether these results hold in other settings with different
communication norms and with larger group sizes.
CONCLUSION
Overall our results suggest that online community and
virtual team managers and social media system designers
may have the ability to influence member commitment by
introducing communication early in a group’s history. This
communication seems to influence commitment by creating
a supportive or friendly environment within a group (versus
by inducing member involvement).
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
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