The Mechanical Mind: The Interaction of Technology, Egocentric Behavior, and Memory

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The Mechanical Mind:

The Interaction of Technology, Egocentric Behavior, and Memory

Kari L. Koester, Samuel Armstrong, Jerry D. Pickard

Faculty Adviser: Dr. Jana Hackathorn

The use of video-conferencing programs, such as Skype, is becoming more common in many

organizational and educational settings. Although its use continues to grow, relatively little has

been studied about the use of video-conferencing and personality traits, such as egocentrism,

that may affect its usefulness. The current research investigated the relationship between

egocentric behaviors, memory, and video-conferencing (Skype) in comparison to face-to-face

interaction. Moderated regression showed a significant interaction between condition (Skype or

face-to-face) and number of egocentric behaviors displayed. Simple slopes analysis indicated

that participants who are engaged in more egocentric behaviors performed significantly better

on free-recall when using Skype and those who engaged in fewer egocentric behaviors

performed worse when using Skype, as compared to the face-to-face condition.

Keywords: Skype, technology, memory, egocentric movement, industrial organization, learning,

training

The use of video-conferencing programs, such as Skype, is becoming more common in

many organizational and educational settings. In the arena of education, it is being used in public

and private school classrooms (Macharaschwili & Coggin, 2013) by graduate level medical

students (George, Dumenco, Dollase, Taylor, Wald, & Reis, 2013, in press), mentoring programs

for new teachers (Suk Hwang, & Vrongistinos, 2012), and second language learning courses

(Yanguas, 2010, 2012; Durkee et al., 2009). It is being used in patient care by nurses (Armfield,

Gray, & Smith, 2012), and even psychologists in clinical care (Bayles, 2012). Skype is widely

TECHNOLOGY, EGOCENTRIC BEHAVIOR, AND MEMORY 2

used in enterprise environments to facilitate employee communication among offices in different

cities, states, and countries (Lou et al., 2012), as well as for training and continuing education

within the business environment.

Although its use continues to grow, little has been studied regarding the use of video-

conferencing and personality traits, such as egocentrism, that may affect its usefulness.

Individual differences are something of which everyone should be aware, but especially for those

who are owners of businesses and corporations as they are influential in almost all actions and

situations. One of the key concepts in running a business is maximizing the potential of each of

your employees (Barrick, Mount, & Li, 2013). Bakker and colleagues (2012) found that it is

equally important to understand employees’ personality differences when placing them in a

position to mobilize their provided job challenges and resources, indicating that a proactive

personality was positively related to job crafting, as well as work engagement. Employees with a

proactive personality should be given positions suitable to their personality as opposed to

someone who is weak on that particular personality construct.

One of the personality traits that employers need to be aware of is egocentrism and

egocentric behaviors. Egocentrism is one’s inclination to perceive, understand and interpret the

world in terms of the self and can be a type of cognitive bias (Windschitl, Rose, Stalkfleet, &

Smith, 2008). This bias is due to the natural restriction on one’s perception given that one can

only see the world from one’s own perspective. Egocentrism is a trait that is present in everyone

and has a direct impact on the workplace. An employee who works on his/her own terms can

damage team building and cause conflict between co-workers as well as superiors (Barrick,

Mount, & Li, 2013). Employers should be aware of egocentrism in order to limit distraction and

maximize employee production.

Sedikides and Green (2009) found that individuals are more likely to remember self-

referent positive statements than statements about others or negative self-referent statements

highlighting a relationship between egocentrism and memory. Egocentrism can be displayed

through egocentric behaviors, such as adjusting clothing, hair, or touching the face - in other

words, self-referent fidgeting (Holtzman & Strube, 2010). In some cases, these types of

movements may be beneficial as they may serve as mnemonics assisting with memory. Cook,

Yip, and Goldin-Meadow (2012) found that gesturing while speaking improves recall. Some of

the gestures they observed were egocentric, while some were allocentric, however, they did not


distinguish between them in the study. In the current study, only egocentric movements were

examined.

While research on memory is abundant, the authors could find no previous research

examining the relationship between video-conferencing and human memory, or video-

conferencing and personality traits. Due to this lack of inquiry, one could postulate that this

technology would have little influence on memory functions, regardless of personality traits. On

the other hand, because there is little evidence to the contrary, it could be expected that there

could be a significant influence on memory. The authors sought to investigate the relationship

between egocentrism, memory and video-conferencing (specifically Skype) in comparison to

face-to-face interaction. It was expected that egocentrism and the use of technology would

interact; however, it was unclear what this interaction would look like.

Method

Participants

Participants were 85 (Mage = 19.62, SD = 4.27) undergraduate introductory psychology

students acquired through the use of the SONA recruiting software, who volunteered to

participate and were given credit as part of a class requirement. Participants were predominantly

Caucasian (N = 69) females (N = 73).

Measures

Egocentrism Measure. Egocentrism was measured in two ways. The first was a

behavioral measure in which two, trained observers recorded the number of egocentric behaviors

(e.g., checking nails, playing with hair, addressing clothing, etc.) displayed by the participant

during their interaction with the interviewer. A checklist of grooming behaviors, such as

adjusting hair, makeup, touching the face, etc., was created. Each participant’s egocentric

behaviors were then tallied to create an overall grooming score. Each observer recorded his or

her tallies independently. Interrater reliability was adequate (r = .86, p < .001).

The second means of measuring egocentrism was via the Selfism Scale (Phares &

Erskine, 1984). The Selfism Scale measures narcissism via 40 items (females = .83, males =

.84) on a 5-point Likert scale. Items were summed to produce a total score ranging from 28 to

140 and included statements such as “Getting ahead in life depends mainly on thinking of


yourself first.” Higher scores indicate that the individual views situations in a selfish way, as

well as higher egocentrism, whereas, lower scores indicate lower egocentric tendencies and that

the individual’s satisfaction is more reliant upon others.

Memory Measure. A free recall memory task was utilized as the dependent variable.

The memory task included three word lists consisting of fifteen disyllabic nouns matched in

frequency and image ability (A.J. Johnson, personal communication, Jan. 17, 2011) and three

lists shown to produce false memory word insertions (Roediger & McDermott, 1995). A digital

recording was made of the six lists with a single speaker reading each word with a two-second

pause between words.

Procedures

Prior to arrival, participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions (Skype or

face-to-face). Upon arrival, participants in the face-to-face condition were greeted, given a brief

explanation of the procedures, and provided their consent to participate in the study. After giving

consent, participants sat across a table from the primary researcher (interviewer). During the

Skype condition, the participant interacted with the interviewer via a laptop computer, placed on

the table, with the video-conferencing program (Skype). Skype was brought up and logged into

prior to the arrival of participants to reduce possible confounds, and/or login difficulties. While

each participant interacted with the interviewer, both in the face-to-face condition and in the

Skype condition, the two observers sat at each end of a sofa approximately five feet from the

participant, in such a way that the participant’s view of the tally sheet was obstructed. To

maximize viewing of the interactions and reduce the likelihood of interaction between the

participant and the observers, the observers were at a 90-degree angle to the participant and

interviewer. While the participant and the interviewer interacted, the observers recorded the

participant’s egocentric (e.g. grooming) behaviors.

For the memory measure, participants completed a verbal free recall task. The

participants heard each word via an audio recording, and after a 30-second delay, participants

were asked to recall and verbalize as many words as possible from the list they just heard. Their

responses were noted on a check list. Words that were pluralized (i.e. boots instead of boot) were

counted as correct. Word insertions were noted but not included in the final tally of correctly

recalled words. The number of accurately recalled words on each list was combined for a total


score. After completion of the free recall task, participants completed a brief survey containing

the egocentrism measure and demographic questions.

Results

Moderated regression analysis indicated that although there was not a significant main

effect of egocentric behaviors (β = -.144, p = .366) or technology (β = -.133, p = .214), there was

a significant interaction between egocentric behaviors and Skype (R2 = .09) use on free recall (β

= .70 p = .04). Simple slopes for the association between recall and condition were tested for

high (+1 SD above the mean) and low (-1 SD below the mean) levels of egocentric behaviors.

Analysis revealed that participants who engaged in high levels of egocentric behaviors

performed significantly better on free-recall when using Skype; those who engaged in less

egocentric behaviors performed worse when using Skype. Figure 1 plots the simple slopes for

the interaction. The self-report measure of egocentrism was not a significant predictor of recall.

Figure 1 – Total number of words recalled as a function of condition and egocentric movement

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Low Egocentrism High Egocentrism

Tota

l F

ree

Rec

all

Face to

Face

Skype


Discussion

Findings indicate that those who showed more egocentric behaviors recalled more when

using Skype than those who were interviewed face-to-face or those who exhibited fewer

egocentric behaviors. The self-report measure of egocentrism was not a significant predictor of

memory retention and recall, however, egocentric movements were. This suggests the use of

video-conferencing programs when training individuals who display higher instances of

egocentric behaviors may be more beneficial than in-person interaction. Conversely, training

individuals who display fewer egocentric behaviors via video-conferencing may be less effective

than in-person.

The concept that those who displayed more egocentric behaviors performed better in the

Skype condition than in a face-to-face interaction may be explained by the spotlight theory

which suggests that when attention is directed toward a point of interest, cognitive processing is

more efficient and effective (LaBerge et al., 1997; Sperling and Weichselgartner, 1995). Over

time, individuals have adapted or habituated to face-to-face conversations. However, individuals

are much less likely to interact with others via video-conferencing programs. In this way, using

the Skype program to interact with the interviewer was a novel experience. Due to the novelty,

the participant’s attention may have been more focused on the video-conferencing program,

thereby increasing their likelihood of recalling more information during the Skype condition.

However, only those who displayed greater amounts of egocentric behavior performed better

when using Skype. Therefore, the spotlight theory may account for some of the better

performance but does not fully explain why only those who displayed more egocentric behaviors

performed better in the Skype condition.

Similarly, another possible explanation is the arousal from using the video-conferencing

(Skype) program influenced participant performance on the memory tasks. Eto and colleagues

(2011) state that the presence of external arousal (pressure, social facilitation, etc.) improves

performance in certain individuals, but can reduce performance for others. This indicates that

the differences in performance on memory tasks between groups could be a result of the

presence of arousal. The arousal experienced while interacting with the experimenter through

Skype heightened the performance of those with greater egocentric behaviors and caused a


decrease in the participants with low levels. Therefore, using video-conferencing when training

less egocentric individuals may prove to be less effective than in-person. Additionally, for

individuals who display higher levels of egocentrism, using video-conferencing as a training tool

may be more beneficial than providing training in-person.

Finally, it is possible the egocentric movements themselves are acting as memory cues, a

type of physical mnemonic. Middelton and Strick (1998) found that the cerebellum is directly

involved in aspects of behavior in cognitive and motor functions related to memory. It may be

that the participants were either consciously, or unconsciously, using the grooming behaviors to

help them encode and retrieve the word lists. This would explain why those who displayed

higher levels of egocentric behaviors recalled more than those who displayed fewer egocentric

behaviors. This does not, however, account for the increased performance only in the Skype

condition, but not in the face-to-face condition. The most likely explanation is that the

combination of heightened attention and focus, coupled with the greater egocentric behaviors

worked together to produce greater recall. Further research is necessary to expand upon these

findings.

The application of these findings could assist in a range of areas from online testing,

online educational courses, and business related Skype meetings and training. Addressing issues

of egocentric behaviors could also improve and promote positive learning situations in web

based classroom environments. These findings are just the beginning in not only identifying how

individual differences can affect the interactions of memory and technology in the workplace,

but also how to play to each employee’s strengths and maximize his or her potential. The use of

technology can influence performance, which provides evidence that there are other ways in

which performance can be impacted. In theory, if employers can understand that there are

different ways of improving each employee individually, then the production of businesses as a

unit can be maximized. The study’s results show one way in which personality traits are related

to learning; however, the concept is much deeper. If these differences can be displayed in

learning, one could conclude that they exist in all facets within the workplace and educational

environments.


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The Mechanical Mind: The Interaction of Technology, Egocentric Behavior, and Memory

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