Behavioral Sciences and Computing

This article presents an overview of behavioral science research on human-computer interactions. The use of high-speed digital computers in homes, schools, and the workplace has been the impetus for thousands of research studies in the behavioral sciences since the 1950s. As computers have become an increasingly important part of daily life, more studies in the behavioral sciences have been directed at human-computer use.

Research continues to proliferate, in part, because rapid technological advances continue to lead to the development of new products and applications from which emerge new forms of human-computer interactions.

Examples include engaging in social interactions through electronic mail, chat, and discussion groups; using commercial websites for shopping and banking; using Internet resources and multimedia curriculum packages to learn in schools and at home; using handheld computers for work and personal life; collaborating in computer-supported shared workspaces; telecommuting via the Internet; engaging in one-many or many-many synchronous and asynchronous communications; and performing in ‘‘virtual’’ environments. Given the sheer quantity of empirical investigations in behavioral sciences computing research, the reader should appreciate the highly selective nature of this article. Even the reading list of current journals and books included at the end of this article is highly selective.

We present behavioral science computing research according to the following three categories: (1) antecedent-consequence effects, (2) model building, and (3) individual-social perspectives. The first category, antecedent-consequent effects, asks questions such as follows: How does variability in human abilities, traits, and prior performance affect computer use? How does use of computers affect variability in human abilities, traits, and subsequent performance?

The second category, model building, consists of research on the nature of human abilities and performance using metaphors from computer science and related fields. Here, the behavioral scientist is primarily interested in understanding the nature of human beings but uses computer metaphors as a basis for describing and explaining human behavior. Model building can also start with assumptions about the nature of human beings, for example, limitations on human attention or types of motivation that serve as the basis for the development of new products and applications for human use.

In this case, the behavioral scientist is mainly interested in product development but may investigate actual use. Such data may serve to modify the original assumptions about human performance, which in turn lead to refinements in the product.

The third category, individual-social perspective, investigates the effects of increased access to and acceptance of computers in everyday life on human social relations. Questions addressed here are those such as follows: Do computers serve to isolate or connect persons to one another? What are the implications of lack of either access or acceptance of computers in modern cultures? These three categories of work in behavioral science computing are not mutually exclusive as the boundaries between any two of them are not fixed and firm.