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Seeing Is Believing: Effects of Gendered Character Representation on Informational Social
Influence in Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC)
ABSTRACT
Two experiments examined if and how the gender of randomly assigned characters would affect
individuals’ inferences about and behavioral reactions to informational social influence by an
anonymous CMC partner. In Experiment 1, participants derived gender of the partner from the
character representation, attributing masculinity/femininity accordingly. Furthermore, while
women appeared to use “expertise heuristics”, exhibiting greater conformity to the male-
charactered than female-charactered partner on a masculine topic, men displayed greater
conformity to the male-charactered than female-charactered partner on a feminine topic,
manifesting resistance to female influence. Employing a gender-neutral task, Experiment 2
demonstrated that while the gender of the character did not influence women’s conformity
behavior, male advantage in exerting social influence persisted among men. These findings are
discussed in terms of mindless responses to the salient visual cues in CMC and differences in the
ways men and women respond to social influence by gendered agents.