SOME CONSEQUENCES OF E-MAIL VS. FACE-TO-FACE COMMUNICATION IN EXPERIMENT

As more and more social science experiments are being run on computers , the question of whether these new laboratory instruments affect outc omes is increasingly important. We examine whether the mode of communi cation in experiments has any effect on the choices made by individual s. We find that the effects of 'e-mail' vs. face-to-face communication vary with the nature of the decisions and may depend upon the complex ity and content of what needs to be communicated. (C) 1998 Elsevier Sc ience B.V.