Robert E. Kraut (born August 30, 1946) is an American social psychologist who studies human-computer interaction, online communities, internet use, group coordination, computers in organizations, and the role of visual elements in interpersonal communication. He is a Herbert Simon Professor of Human-computer Interaction at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
Background
Robert Kraut graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Lehigh University in 1968 and received his Ph.D. in social psychology from Yale University in 1973. He joined the sociology faculty at the University of Pennsylvania in 1972 and moved to Cornell University in 1974.
In 1980, Kraut joined Bell Labs as a visiting scientist and departed Cornell in 1981 to become a full-time scientist working in Bell's Interface Planning group. Following the 1984 Bell System divestiture, he worked in the Behavioral Science research group at Bell Communications Research (Bellcore) and later became the director of the Interpersonal Communication research. During his tenure at Bell, Kraut was also a visiting lecturer and fellow at Princeton University. In 1993, Kraut left Bellcore and accepted a full-time faculty appointment at Carnegie Mellon University as a professor of social psychology and human computer interaction. Kraut was named the Herbert A. Simon Professor of Human-computer Interaction in 2000.
He was elected to the CHI Academy in 2003. He is board member of the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the US National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Psychological Society and of the Association for Computing Machinery (2011).
Research
Kraut's research focuses on five areas: online communities, everyday use of the Internet, technology and conversation, collaboration in small work groups, and computers in organizations. He has published more than 100 articles, papers and books. He first examines the challenges that individuals, groups, and organizations face when performing social tasks. Working with computer scientists and engineers to create and determine the usefulness of the new technology, he believes his findings can lead to the design of new technology to meet some of these challenges.
Online Communities
His most recent work examines factors influencing the success of online communities and ways to apply psychology theory to their design. This includes academic studies about Wikipedia, for example, research with Aniket Kittur on the condition that lead to better quality in Wikipedia articles and with Moira Burke in predicting successful candidates for Wikipedia administrators.
Kraut focuses on determining what motivates people to commit and contribute to online communities and designing these communities to be more successful. He also works with Aniket Kittur to understand coordination in online communities, with John Levine to understand socialization between newcomers and these communities, and with Laura Dabbish and Tom Postmes to design for commitment purposes. The results of much of this research are summarized in the book, Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design.
Everyday use of the Internet
Kraut investigates how people use the Internet daily and the effects it is having on them and their social relationships. In 1995, Kraut and Sara Kiesler documented individuals and families’ usage with electronic communication and information services and the integration of and the impact these services are having on their social and psychological well-being.
Recently with Jonathon Cummings and Irina Shklovski, Kraut has looked into how people who are moving around to different locations use the Internet to build and maintain social connections. He also worked with Moira Burke and examined how various uses of Facebook influence users’ social capital, health, and psychological well-being.
Technology and conversation
Since 1979, Kraut has been examining how pairs coordinate their conversation because it has been shown that working in the same location enhances collaboration, which improves communication efficiency.
Recently, he, Susan R. Fussell, Susan Brennan, and Darren Gergle are looking into how a shared visual space influences collaboration, how the usefulness of visual information interacts with tasks, and identify ways to build communication systems for remote collaborative work.
