Volume 5, Issue 4, https://doi.org/10.1037/tmb0000144
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a sudden and substantial shift in the use of myriad different forms of technology. Perhaps not surprisingly, researchers around the globe immediately recognized this as the type of exogenous “shock” that would allow for testing many key hypotheses related to human–technology interactions. The purpose of this special collection was not only to provide an outlet for such work, but because all the research in the collection consisted of registered reports, it ensured that research conducted over this period would be disseminated regardless of whether the data supported the original hypotheses.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to C. Shawn Green, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1202 West Johnson Street, Madison, WI 53706, United States. Email: [email protected]
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in massive disruptions to normal life, including the widespread implementation of social distancing measures and an associated dramatic reduction of in-person interactions. While a slow shift toward increasing numbers of virtual interactions was already occurring prior to the pandemic, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic caused technology to suddenly play an outsized role in the day-to-day lives of individuals across the globe. This was true in virtually every facet of life—from education, to business, to health care, to socialization, and beyond.
Researchers around the globe immediately understood this to represent the type of substantial exogenous “shock” that would open up a host of possible opportunities for “natural experiments” (i.e., quasi-experimental designs) of a scope and scale that would have frankly been otherwise impossible. The core goal of the special collection was not only to provide an outlet for research focused on technology-mediated interactions in this time of social distancing, but more specifically to promote best scientific practices by creating a special collection of preregistered work, thereby ensuring that scientifically valid work is disseminated, regardless of whether hypotheses were supported or not. Indeed, one could easily imagine that research tagged specifically to exogenous shocks might be particularly susceptible to the file drawer problem, as if the results did not come out as anticipated, there might be less interest in continuing to push the research forward to dissemination as the shock progressed into a new normal.
The final collection is thus noteworthy as it consists of all registered reports (or at a minimum, all articles have majority of preregistered components). This meant that author teams had to put in an enormous amount of front-end effort (e.g., fully designing methods and analytic plans, writing up full initial registered reports, responding to reviewer feedback) during what was frankly an incredibly challenging time for the entire world. The end result is, in our view, something very exceptional.
The research published in this special collection is consistent with the broad scope of Technology, Mind, and Behavior, touching upon many key issues related to social media, virtual environments, interactions with artificial intelligence agents, and videoconferencing, among others. Critically, while clearly situated within the COVID-19 pandemic, all of the work focused on topics that continue to be of current significant scientific interest (and will continue to be of interest into the future). This includes, for instance, how health advice delivered via media channels can be most effective, how certain types of nonverbal information impact impression formation in the context of videoconferencing, how certain types of information and communication technologies impact feelings of technology overload, and exploration of the relationship between various types of social technology use and well-being outcomes, among others.
All told then, the special collection on “Technology-Mediated Interactions and Their Impact on the Human Mind and Behavior in a Time of Social Distancing” represents a clear gain in scientific knowledge as well as provides a model for encouraging best-practice scientific research in the context of exogenous shocks.
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