Management Science and Engineering

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/handle/10012/9910

This is the collection for the University of Waterloo's Department of Management Science and Engineering.

Research outputs are organized by type (eg. Master Thesis, Article, Conference Paper).

Waterloo faculty, students, and staff can contact us or visit the UWSpace guide to learn more about depositing their research.

Browse

Browsing Management Science and Engineering by Author "Bohns, Vanessa"

Filter results by typing the first few letters
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Help-Seeking Behaviour in Computer-Mediated Communication
    (University of Waterloo, 2016-09-19) Roghanizad, Mohammad-Mahdi; Bohns, Vanessa; Hancock, Mark
    Often when an individual decides to seek help, several communication media are available to him or her (e.g., email, phone, in-person), which means the help-seeker faces a media selection decision. To make this decision, a help-seeker may consider factors such as the convenience of, and his or her degree of comfort with, a given medium. He or she may also consider the effectiveness of each medium. In a series of five studies, I examine whether help-seekers are able to accurately assess the effectiveness of various communication media—specifically, requests made over email versus in-person. I find that egocentric biases distort the ability of help-seekers to accurately assess the effectiveness of email, which may lead them to choose less effective means of seeking help. In Study 1, I find that a substantial percentage of help-seekers prefer email to face-to-face (FtF) communication when seeking help, due to the convenience email offers. In Studies 2 and 3, I find that helpers are far more willing to help when they are asked FtF than when they are asked via email; however, help-seekers predict the same level of compliance for the two media. Together, these two findings—greater convenience combined with inaccurate estimates of media effectiveness—may lead help-seekers to choose suboptimal media for making requests. My findings for email requests are in contrast to numerous studies that have shown that people tend to underestimate the likelihood that others will comply with their direct requests. In Study 4, I explore the mechanism by which this highly robust FtF phenomenon is reversed in email communication. I find that help-seekers fail to recognize the extent to which feelings of trust and empathy, which drive helpers to help in face-to-face interactions, are lost through the use of email as the medium of communication. Help-seekers in this study mistakenly predict that helpers will experience the same levels of trust and empathy for email and FtF requests. In Study 5, I examine the effect of ongoing relationships on predictions of media effectiveness. Surprisingly, a similar pattern was observed for friends and strangers; FtF requests are more effective than email requests for seeking help, even among friends, and requesters often fail to acknowledge this difference. I conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of these findings. A key takeaway is that people may easily be tempted to choose suboptimal media to seek help, leading to less help being granted overall.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The Impacts of Gameful and Interactive Technologies on Hindering or Promoting Self-regulation
    (University of Waterloo, 2021-04-14) Soroush, Milad; Hancock, Mark; Bohns, Vanessa
    Self-regulation is the essential component of goal pursuit that allows us to make better decisions and resist temptation of unwanted desires, which ultimately impacts our well-being. It is essential to identify and understand factors that hinder or facilitate our successful self-regulation that have the potential to improve people’s competency to effectively self-regulate their thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. Interactive media technologies, specifically games, present environments that could greatly affect self-control and self-regulation processes for better or for worse. Despite the considerable impact of rapidly changing technologies on self-regulation, the relationship between design aspects of technologies and self-regulation or self-regulation improvement are not well studied. The downside of the rapid pace of modern technological advancement is constantly encountering new phenomena that could hinder self-regulation mechanisms, without these phenomena being properly studied. On the other hand, such advancements provide a compelling opportunity to design interactive technologies to help people improve their self-control and self-regulation. Specifically, there is great potential of media technologies to shape our motivations and the ways we experience the world (e.g., our visual experience), which increases the appeal and importance of exploring the connection between interactive technologies and self-regulation, especially with respect to self-regulation improvement, which is the primary focus of this thesis. I first investigate how design elements can impact self-regulation success or failure in a widely used yet underexplored phenomenon of free-to-play games. In chapter 3, I present a correlational survey study (Study 1) that explores the connection between free-to-play games and their impact on self-regulation. The findings of the study indicate a relationship between trait self-control and players’ in-app purchasing decisions. It also identifies players’ self-regulation struggles and failures when playing such games. I then explore improving a person’s self-regulation through increasing their capacity for self-control. In chapter 4, I present the design and implementation of a self-control game to investigate how we can use gameful interactive technologies to improve cognitive control. I also present an empirical study (Study 2), which shows the potential of using self-control games to engage players without creating a negative player experience or undermining intrinsic motivation. In chapter 5, I provide a commentary on the resource model of self-control (i.e., ego-depletion research) and controversies surrounding the topic. The commentary provides a critical review of current state of research and a possible approach to tackle the issue. I next demonstrate and evaluate the need for a broader approach to improving self-regulation of desires and behaviours in a series of three experimental studies. I first discuss the importance of adopting broader approaches that can directly target and improve self-regulation mechanisms. In chapter 6, I provide a critical review regarding the role of psychological distance in understanding self-regulation and self-regulation mechanisms and its potential for new insight to create novel interactive technologies that is explored in the next experimental studies (Studies 3-5). In the following chapters 7-9, I therefore highlight a need for broader approaches for improving self-regulation of desires and behaviours, which encompasses a series of experimental studies to implement and test simple interaction techniques to boost and improve self-regulation. In chapter 7, I present a pre-registered online experiment (Study 3) that explores the possibility of impacting perception of temporal distance and abstraction through simple design considerations such as using a framing effect, the results of which did not reveal a considerable impact of the framing effect on temporal distance and on abstraction. Notably, I found contradictory evidence to what is presented by construal-level theory on the relationship between abstraction and psychological distance. In chapter 8, I present a lab experiment (Study 4) to study another simple interaction technique to distance tempting foods through saturation and framing effects using tablet technologies, the results of which show the effectiveness of using saturation to reduce temptation and unwanted desires by visually mediating the experience of tempting palatable food items. In chapter 9, I present the design of a mobile application for testing the use of the saturation effect and increasing the perception of distance directly in a mobile application. I then present a pre-registered longitudinal experiment (Study 5) that explores the effectiveness of this technology and the interaction techniques in a more realistic environment. The findings revealed preliminary evidence of the effectiveness of design features and interaction techniques such as changing saturation and perceived distance of tempting food items. Overall, the focus of the research presented in this thesis has been on the connection between design and self-regulation and self-regulation improvement, and particularly, in using interactive technologies and simple interaction techniques to help people improve their self-control and self-regulation, and ultimately achieve their goals.