„Just the two of us”: Der Einfluss des Blickkontakts zwischen einem Pianisten und seinem Medienpublikum auf die soziale Präsenz und das Unterhaltungserleben einer audiovisuellen Klavierperformance “Just the Two of Us“: The Influence of Gaze Contact Between a Pianist and Their Media Audience on Social Presence and Enjoyment of an Audiovisual Piano Performance

Abstract

The enjoyment of audio-visual music performances can be enhanced by social presence, i.e. the feeling of being with another person. Several papers describe social presence as a multidimensional construct, with perceived mutual awareness (MA; i.e. feeling a mutually perceived co-presence with the mediated other) and perceived empathy (E; i.e. recipients feel a mutual influence on their mood) being two of the possible dimensions. Gaze contact as a non-verbal cue can lead to an increase in social presence. It can also be assumed that a higher level of E and MA has an effect on the perceived social richness (SR) of a music performance and, together with SR, positively influences the enjoyment of the music performance. The present study aims to investigate whether gaze contact can increase social presence (E and MA) as well as SR and thereby enhance the enjoyment of an audio-visual music performance. For this purpose, a 1 x 2 between-subjects online experiment (N = 114) was conducted. The independent variable gaze contact varied in whether the musician temporarily looked into the camera during the performance or kept their gaze on the piano keys the entire time. The results of a mediation analysis show that gaze contact can increase the level of enjoyment and that the effect is fully mediated by the three mediators (MA, E, and SR). The model explained 67 % of the variance in enjoyment. The positive influence of social psychological processes on the development of enjoyment of audio-visual music performances could be both substantiated and further differentiated.