Is human-computer interaction fundamentally social (as in human-human interaction) or parasocial (as in human-television interaction)? This experiment, conducted in the attribution-research paradigm of social psychology, exposed all subjects to an identical interaction with computers. In one condition, subjects were simply told they were dealing with computers; in another, they were told they were interacting with programmers (in order to manipulate the feeling of mediated representation as in television). Individuals in the computer condition perceived the computer as more friendly, more effective, more playful, more similar to humans, and more like a computer than did individuals in the programmer condition, suggesting that human-computer interaction is social rather than parasocial.