ON THE RHETORICAL CONTRACT IN HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION

The social identity of a participant in any form of human communication is in many ways determined and maintained by the patterned use of symbols. Research has illuminated the variety of ways that this is done in the standard forms of communication, such as conversation and text; much less, however, is known about the determination and maintenance of social identity in human-computer interaction. This paper reports an exploration of the rhetorical contract, or the expectation for appropriate interaction, as it develops in human-computer interaction. Subjects used either a direct manipulation or a command interface that, at an unannounced point in the interaction, presented an error message that was either consistent or inconsistent with the interface's previous pattern of interaction. Results indicated that the direct manipulation interfaces were more likely to establish social expectations and that users of the direct manipulation interface that experienced an incosistent error message expressed large negative affective responses. These results suggest that the social nature of human-computer interactions can be examined with reference to the constructs applicable to other forms of communication. © 1991.