- The emails sent to subjects could have been a poor way to implement the social psychology design theories
- Manipulation of wording in the emails may have been too weak

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

The attempt to derive design innovations from social science theory proved successful in motivating online community contributions. Study 1 demonstrated that emails emphasizing the uniqueness of potential contributions increased movie ratings more effectively than messages emphasizing commonality or benefit. Study 2 results contradicted the collective effort model by revealing that participants exerted more effort when in groups rather than when individually identified. Ultimately, mining social science theory serves as a useful general strategy for the design of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) systems. When interventions fail to increase contributions, researchers identify three possible classes of explanations: failures of implementation, mismatches between engineering and scientific disciplines, and incomplete theories.

Conclusions on Using Social Psychology to Motivate Online Contributions

https://presnick.people.si.umich.edu/papers/cscw04/cscw2004preprint.pdf

Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions
to Online Communities (Gerard Beenen et al.)

Failures of Implementation

- HCI and CSCW focus mainly on problem-solving while social psychology focuses mainly on determining the causes of social phenomena
- Because the conductors of this study were thinking like designers, they gave the group in study 2 a name (Explorers) which may have induced a sense of group commitment that overpowered the social loafing effect, thus making it difficult to test the hypothesis involving the main effects predicted by social loafing theory

Mismatches Between Engineering and Scientific Disciplines

- Social psychology theories may be incomplete because they identify isolated main effects but not the effects of context.
- The lack of detail in social science theories forces the designer to improvise when attempting to apply social psychological knowledge to solve design problems.

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