Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate what kind of personal relationships would be created through CMC, to explore to what extent cognitive uncertainty of the relational partner occured in those personal relationships, and to measure the effect of cognitive uncertainty on their relationships. In this study, the subjects were divided into two categories. One was the group of 'face-to-face relationships' which extended to face-to-face relationships in real life, another was the group of 'non face-to-face relationships' which remained in cyberspace. The former group developed in intimate ways common to personal relationships. That is, people tell something personal and expect their relationships to endure over time. The latter group mainly developed in instrumental and emotional ways. In the analysis of the degree of cognitive uncertainty, we can see that all subjects did not know the partner's age and level of education even though they eventually contacted each other directly in real life. In the analysis of the effect of cognitive uncertainty, subjects in the non face-to-face group were more likely to maintain their relationships despite the existence of high cognitive uncertainty.
