Her work has appeared in Trends in Organizational Behavior, and Research in Groups and Teams. It tests three competing theories about the development of interpersonal relations in computer mediated groups by extending their predictions to the development of trust in these groups. These predictions were tested by examining 54 3-person groups who had the task of building a stock portfolio over the course of three meetings. The behavioral measures of trust included whether the group members cooperated or defected in their stock purchase decisions and whether each group structured their task for high or low reliance on other group members.
Results strongly support the social information processing predictions.
The pattern of results directly contradicts two theories about computer-mediated group development, and has practical implications for the formation of distributed groups.