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Updated: Jun 9, 2026

Assessment of Social Interaction Behaviors
Published on: February 25, 2011
Day-to-day Social Interactions Online and Offline: The Interplay Between Interaction Mode, Interaction Quality, and
Timon Elmer1, Aurelio Fernández2,3,4, Jeffrey A Hall5
1Department of Psychology, Applied Social and Health Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
None:
Digital social interactions differ in many ways from face-to-face interactions. This study examines four preregistered hypotheses on the within-person interplay between interaction mode (i.e., digital vs. face-to-face interactions), interaction quality, and momentary well-being. Young adults from Spain (N 1 = 216) and the Netherlands (N 2 = 22)-provided 5,116 and 1,386 Ecological Momentary Assessments (EMA), respectively. In the Spanish sample, there were no differences in interaction quality between digital and face-to-face interactions, whereas in the Dutch sample, digital interactions were of higher quality. Interaction quality was positively associated with momentary well-being in both samples. Momentary well-being was higher after face-to-face interactions in the Spanish but not in the Dutch sample. Interaction quality did not mediate the relationship between interaction mode and well-being; instead, it moderated it in the Spanish sample. Although interaction quality was consistently associated with momentary well-being, it only partially explains why face-to-face interactions differ from digital ones.
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