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Psychology of the Internet: The Next Generation
From: Cambridge University Press
| By:
Patricia Wallace |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
The Internet is transforming much about society, about business and about entertainment. But is it changing who we are and how we relate to each other? In her book The Psychology of the Internet Patricia Wallace explores the psychology of behaviour online. She reviews from a psychological perspective the structures of expectation, attraction and interaction in discussion groups, chat rooms and online environments like MUDs. And she draws parallels with the factors that affect our behaviour in other settings. In the conclusion to her book Wallace reflects on the social and psychological implications of the Net's rapid development. |
 n this tour through the psychological spaces of the Internet I have focused mostly on today's technology and the way we are acting and interacting inside the existing niches. Email, the World Wide Web, the asynchronous discussion forums, and the synchronous chats, MUDs and metaworlds, are all available now. Internet-based interactive video and voice are not widely dispersed, and often people in those spaces spend more time adjusting configurations or cursing dropped connections than they do interacting with one another. Yet, they, too, are out there, and people are using them to reach out to one another. So, what's next? |
Another aspect of empowerment is our ability to influence what technological features are added to the online world, how the virtual living spaces we already have can be improved, and what new ones we might want. Based on what we know about human behavior online and how people are working and playing on the Internet, what new features would we ask for? What would we pay for? How will any new features change the psychology of the Internet as we understand it today? |
Lee Sproull of the Boston University School of Management and Samer Faraj of the Robert H. Smith School of Business at University at Maryland, College Park, point out that much of the net evolved as an information storehouse rather than a social technology, so the software tools developed for it stressed information storing, searching, and gathering. We now have unbelievably powerful database technology, browsers, search engines, and reporting tools, and the content to rummage through is expanding rapidly. But the software and services we need to use the net for human interaction are far less developed. |
Our online groups flourished despite this benign neglect, however, which says something about how important this aspect of the net is to us. We struggle with arcane commands, buggy shareware, and dozens of different user interfaces to participate, and we certainly need improvements here. For many, it is still a badge of technical prowess to even be on a mailing list, and nontechies who have leaped the hurdles to try out groupware or enter a MUD are rightfully proud. |
As these social software tools develop and become more standardized, we should see a shift away from the traditional social hierarchy on the Internet in which the technically savvy sit on top. We are also seeing a much wider range of people in the different psychological spaces, both in terms of demographic characteristics and interests. In chat rooms, for example, you can find people of all ages discussing religion in Russian and skiing in French. |
The dominance of the young-white-male-high-tech-American is fading rapidly in most corners of the net although our stereotypes about who we meet out there may not follow along as quickly. For instance, when the question of geographic location comes up, an American might say Cincinnati but a Korean would probably say Korea. Each is assuming something about the other based on lingering stereotypes of Internet demographics. The American assumes they are mostly Americans out there and they would know where Cincinnati is. The Korean guesses the conversational partner is not from Korea, so would not know where Pusan is, even though the city is the second largest in Korea, with far more people than Cincinnati. |
The impact of cameras
Widespread installation of the eyeball camera attached to your monitor with a suction cup is another advance that will significantly affect the Internet's environments. The net, as the all-purpose status equalizer and stereotype neutralizer, will change dramatically. For some people, the technology will add much improvement, but for others, it will mean an end to their ability to interact on a more level playing field, free from the heavy weight attached to physical appearance. Initially, the camera will be an option and you will be able to choose whether you want to transmit a live picture. However, as time goes on and most people have one, your choice to turn it on or off will be part of the impression you make. |
Consider, for example, a chat room for a distance education class in which all members appear as small talking heads on your screen. What will people think if you refuse their requests to turn on your camera? Are you so hideous that no one would talk to you if they saw your face? |
If and when interactive video becomes the norm on the Internet, all the stereotypes associated with physical appearance will rush back into the dynamics of social interaction. These are extremely powerful, and the Internet's ability to eliminate most of them is--at the moment--one of its most important psychological features. The technology to enable Internet-based interactive video is sloppy right now, but it will get better quickly. Even if people in some Internet niches prefer to live without that cue, their voices may be drowned in a wave of technological determinism. |
A simple feature in that interactive video software is the ability to flash your own image up on the screen, along with the moving pictures of your virtual groupmates. Technically, this is a no-brainer and will probably be the default in most software. Psychologically, however, it is dynamite. |
You will constantly glance back to your own image, checking your posture, adjusting your self-presentation, worried about how you appear to others. In a face-to-face conversation, you don't usually have a mirror handy to check out your appearance, and even if one were nearby you would seem exceedingly vain if you kept looking at it. Now, however, you will be able to watch yourself constantly without anyone knowing it. |
Psychologists often use a mirror to increase people's self-awareness in experiments, and we know the simple act of watching yourself creates a wave of self-consciousness, turning a person's thoughts inward. I expect this barely noticed feature of interactive video software will drastically increase self-awareness and lead to significant changes in group dynamics on the net. The most confident among us will eventually decide to turn it off so we can participate more naturally and spontaneously in group discussions. |
Virtual reality
Virtual reality is another technology destined to tweak the psychological impact of many spaces in the net. The term means many things at the moment, from a simple screen display you can rotate or explore with your mouse, to elaborate headsets, gloves, computer-controlled chairs and body suits that stimulate many more sensory systems than just vision. Some of them cause motion sickness now, but they will improve. |
Down the road, these "virtual" experiences will simulate "real" experiences more and more closely. From a psychophysiological perspective, we don't experience the world directly anyway; we just use our sensory receptors to translate environmental energy into information our brains can process and interpret--neural impulses. Electromagnetic radiation strikes our retinas and the chemical reactions cause our rods and cones to generate neural signals that travel to the brain. Sound waves set our eardrums in motion and sensory cells in the cochlea convert the fluid vibrations into neural signals, headed for the auditory cortex. |
It will be safer for our children to learn to drive in virtual reality simulators, and lots of fun to try virtual skydiving in our eighties. Therapists look forward to using virtual reality in desensitization programs, especially for people with phobias. Virtual reality experiences with spiders can be controlled with fine precision so the arachnophobe can become desensitized in tiny, progressive steps. |
But what would it be like to hold a family reunion in a virtual reality space? Or walk into a virtual party and actually smell the popcorn, or feel the sofa's cushion move when someone--outfitted in a holographic custom-designed avatar--sits next to you? |
I mentioned that the graphical metaworlds are a different environment compared to the MUDs, even though the themes are often similar. Many think the text-based MUDs are actually better for the imagination and social interaction because the graphical worlds are so clumsy and the multimedia elements so primitive and distracting. Click on "laugh," for example, and everyone hears the same guffaw, regardless of who did the clicking. Advances in virtual reality may make these spaces more appealing or just kill them off with an overdose of reality. |
The choices ahead
What will we choose for the Internet and what will we reject? Or will we just let Microsoft decide? Despite their vast power in the software, they have had many early headaches and missteps with the Internet, and at first ignored it altogether. They figured out it was important, but then they initially failed to grasp its force as a social technology that turns power over to the people. |
Microsoft released NetMeeting, a business-oriented groupware product that allows people around the world to chat, exchange files, and work on one another's documents over the Internet. Soon after its debut, Microsoft's directory of NetMeeting users filled up with people eager to engage in casual flirtations and sexual exchanges with these innovative collaborative tools, bringing a new meaning to the term "groupware." Business users doing a software test drive were not impressed that Microsoft inadvertently moved the Internet a bit closer to Howard Rheingold's virtual reality version of intimacy. |
We have many questions about the psychology of the Internet and few solid answers, but we do have much research on human behavior to guide us. Even though the Internet as a technology is a moving target, we humans behave predictably when dropped into certain kinds of environments, and social science research about the effects of the Internet's environments is mounting. |
Some aspects of our virtual world bring out our best, others our worst, but if we understand why that happens we can do something about it--in ourselves and in the people we interact with online. And we have both the power and the responsibility to influence what happens on our global commons. Those vital virtual communities about which we have heard so much are built one brick at a time from a psychological perspective, and we can all contribute to them by remembering that they are made up of people with all the usual human frailties. |
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