Online disinhibition effect

The online disinhibition effect is the reduction or abandonment in remote electronic communications of those social restrictions and inhibitions that would arise in normal face-to-face communication. Many factors cause this disinhibition, including the appearance of dissociative anonymity, invisibility, asynchronicity, solipsistic introjection, dissociative imagination, and minimization of authority.[1]

General concept

Because of this loss of inhibition, some users may exhibit benign tendencies, including becoming more affectionate, more willing to open up to others, and less guarded about emotions, all in an attempt to achieve emotional catharsis. According to psychologist John Suler, this particular occurrence is called benign disinhibition.[1]

With respect to bad behavior, users on the Internet can frequently do or say as they wish without fear of any kind of meaningful reprisal. In most Internet forums, the worst kind of punishment one can receive for bad behavior is usually being banned from a particular site. In practice, however, this serves little use; the person involved can usually circumvent the ban by simply registering another username and continuing the same behavior as before. Suler calls this toxic disinhibition.[1]

CB radio during the 1970s saw similar bad behavior:[2]

Most of what you hear on CB radio is either tedious (truck drivers warning one another about speed traps) or banal (schoolgirls exchanging notes on homework), but at its occasional—and illegal—worst it sinks a pipeline to the depths of the American unconscious. Your ears are assaulted by the sound of racism at its most rampant, and by masturbation fantasies that are the aural equivalent of rape. The sleep of reason, to quote Goya's phrase, brings forth monsters, and the anonymity of CB encourages the monsters to emerge.

Suler names six primary factors behind why people sometimes act radically differently on the internet from the way they do in normal face-to-face situations:

"You don't know me"
The notion of "You Don't Know Me" comes down to simple anonymity: when the person remains anonymous, it provides a sense of protection; within the framework of the Internet, this allows the user to move about without any kind of indication of identity or even distinguishing characteristics other than potentially a username. This kind of protection provides a meaningful release for people. They may feel free to say things they might otherwise be embarrassed by. It also provides an outlet for behaviors that others might term antisocial or harmful.
"You can't see me"
The Internet provides a shield to its users; often all one receives when interacting with another person on the Internet is a username or pseudonym that may or may not have anything to do with the real person behind the keyboard. This allows for misrepresentation of a person's true self; online a male can pose as a female and vice versa, for example. Additionally, the invisibility of the Internet prohibits people from reading standard social cues; small changes in facial expression, tone of voice, aversion of eyes, etc., all have specific connotations in normal face-to-face interaction. This particular aspect overlaps heavily with anonymity, because the two often share attributes. However, even if one's identity is known and anonymity is removed from the equation, the inability to see and respond to physical cues by other individuals causes one's inhibitions to be lowered. One cannot be physically seen on the Internet, typically: therefore, the need to concern oneself with appearance and tone of voice is dramatically lowered and sometimes absent.
"See you later"
The asynchronous nature of the Internet can also affect a person's inhibitions. On Internet message boards, conversations do not happen in real time. A reply may be posted nearly instantly; however, it may take months or longer for someone to post. Because of this, it's easier for someone to "throw their opinions out" and then leave;[3] a person can make a single post that might be considered very personal, emotionally charged, or inflammatory and then "run away" by simply not logging in again. In this way, the person achieves catharsis by "voicing" their feelings, even if the audience is just as invisible. However, the asynchronous nature of the Internet also allows a person to more closely examine what they say and to more carefully choose their words; in this manner, someone who might otherwise have difficulty in face-to-face interactions can suddenly seem eloquent and well-mannered when reading message board posts or even in text-chat forums such as IRC or instant messaging.
"It's all in my head"
Lacking any kind of visual face-to-face cues, the human mind assigns characteristics and traits to a "person" during digital interactions. Reading another person's message may insert imagined characteristics of what a person looks like or sounds like into the mind and assigns an identity to these things. The mind also assigns traits to a user according to an individual's own desires, needs, and wishes: traits that the real person might not actually have. Additionally, this allows fantasies to play out in an individual's mind because the user may construct an elaborate system of emotions, memories, and images: inserting the user and the person they are interacting with into a role-play that helps reinforce the reality of the person on the other end within the mind of the user.
"It's just a game"
By combining solipsistic introjection with the imagination, a feeling of escapism is produced: a way to throw off mundane concerns to address a specific need without having to worry about consequences. According to Suler's[1] personal discussion with lawyer Emily Finch (a criminal lawyer studying identity theft in cyberspace), Finch's observation is that people may see cyberspace as a kind of game where the normal rules of everyday interaction don't apply to them. In this way, the user is able to dissociate their online persona from the offline reality, effectively enabling that person to don that persona or shed it whenever they wish simply by logging on or off.
"Your rules don't apply here"
Online, a person's real life status may not be known to others. If people cannot see the user, others have no way to know if the user is a head of state, a celebrity, or a regular private citizen. While real-world status may have a small effect on one's status on the Internet, it rarely has any true bearing. Instead, things such as communication skill, quality of ideas, persistence, and technical ability determine one's status in cyberspace.[1] Additionally, people can be reluctant to speak their minds in front of an authority figure. Fear of reprisal or disapproval quashes the desire to speak out, and on the Internet, levels of authority that might otherwise be present in real life are often completely absent; this turns what might otherwise be a superior-inferior relationship into a relationship of equals, and people are far more likely to speak their mind to an equal than a superior.

Possible consequences

Perhaps one of the most serious consequences of the online disinhibition effect is the advent of cyberbullying in recent years. The website overcomebullying.org states that "[with] the advent of modern communications such as email, chat, text messaging and cell phones as well as the ability to publish online on websites, blogs and social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace making their message instantly available to millions, the bully's reach and powers of social manipulation have been increased exponentially".[4] The site goes on to suggest that "[perhaps] the internet lends itself to this indifference. Bullies don't have to see their victims or answer for their actions",[4] which seems to fit with the You Don't Know Me and You Can't See Me concepts. Cyberbullying may also include other offensive behaviors such as cyberstalking, revenge porn, and creating copycat accounts of others.

Likewise, the online disinhibition effect might also be attributable to the controversial state of the comment sections on many online blogs, and on sites like YouTube. Blogs like Stop Anonymous Online Comments claim that the anonymity granted to Internet users leads to comments "[often] filled with exaggerations, outright lies, threats of violence, and blatant racism",[5] and that "the vast majority of these reader comments are published in complete anonymity [...]".[5] "This anonymity", the author goes on to opine, "fosters an environment that tolerates, even encourages, comments and statements that tear at the fabric that holds our society together".[5] The general feeling is that the average internet user would not make such comments or behave in such ways if not for the invisible smokescreen that online usernames and anonymity provide.[5] According to Norman H. Holland, "people regress" when communicating online because, among other reasons, the physical distance from other users and the inability to interpret body language and physical reactions results in a lack of direct feedback.[6]

The online disinhibition effect can also have potentially deleterious effects on one's job security and future employment opportunities. Sixteen-year-old Kimberley Swann was fired from her job due to negative comments she made about her occupation on her Facebook page,[7] while another infamous case involved a woman, Heather Armstrong, being terminated after "lampooning" her colleagues on the Internet.[8] These are consequences of certain Internet users believing themselves to be unchained from typical social strictures. The author of Six Causes of Online Disinhibition states that "[c]ompared with face-to-face interactions, online we feel freer to do and say what we want and, as a result, often do and say things we shouldn't".[8]

Another possible consequence is that people will learn to distance themselves from interactions on the Internet so that they are not traumatized by those behaviors which would be unacceptable in face-to-face interactions but which usually go essentially unpunished in interactions over the Internet.

Popular online comic Penny Arcade describes "John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory", which posits that an otherwise well-adjusted person, given anonymity and a captive audience, will immediately turn into a "total fuckwad", exhibiting antisocial and psychopathic behaviors online.[9]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Suler, John (2004). "The Online Disinhibition Effect". CyberPsychology & Behavior. 7 (3): 321–326. doi:10.1089/1094931041291295. Retrieved 10 March 2013.
  2. ↑ Tynan, Kenneth (1978-02-20). "Fifteen Years of the Salto Mortale". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2011-03-16.
  3. ↑ For an example, see the "Pasquale case" in the chapter E-mail, l'inconscio e il SuperEgo, in Umberto Eco, La bustina di Minerva, Bompiani, 1998 ISBN 8858703693.
  4. 1 2 "Cyber Bullying". Overcomebullying.org. 2015-01-21. Retrieved 2015-03-10.
  5. 1 2 3 4 https://web.archive.org/web/20110806232845/http://www.stopanonymouscomments.com/p/about-this-site.html. Archived from the original on 6 August 2011. Retrieved 2 November 2011. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  6. ↑ "Psychology of Cyberspace - The Internet Regression". Usr.rider.edu. Retrieved 2015-03-10.
  7. ↑ "UK | England | Essex | Facebook remark teenager is fired". BBC News. 2009-02-27. Retrieved 2015-03-10.
  8. 1 2 "The Online Disinhibition Effect". Spring.org.uk. 2015-03-05. Retrieved 2015-03-10.
  9. ↑ Holkins, Jerry; Krahulik, Mike (2004-03-19). "Green Blackboards (And Other Anomalies)". Penny-arcade.com. Retrieved 2015-03-10.

Further reading

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