Revisiting the Relationship Between Social Distance and Communication Preferences: Replications and Reinterpretation of Amit et al. (2013, Experiment 2)

Amit et al. (2013) concluded that social distance can influence communication preferences: People prefer communicating with closer others using pictures (which are more concrete) and more distant others using words (which are more abstract). We conducted two high-powered preregistered experiments to assess this claim. First, we performed a close replication (N = 988) of Amit et al. (2013, Experiment 2) in which we also manipulated the presence of a potential confound we detected in the original instructions. The original effect successfully replicated using the original instructions but was reduced nearly to zero after the removal of the confound. Moreover, we demonstrate that the effect obtained with the original instructions likely relies on a different mechanism (comfort with sending personal pictures to close and distant contacts) than that posited in the original study (preference for concrete and abstract communication). Second, we performed a conceptual replication (N = 1,280) in which we attempted to address methodological limitations of the original study and our close replication. The results of this conceptual replication were inconsistent with those of the original study and suggested an overall effect size near zero. Our results suggest that social distance has little or no influence on communication medium preferences.