Absence Of Gating In Virtual Relationships Flashcards
What happens in real life
Our attraction to other people is greatly influences by their appearance, mannerisms and factors like age and ethnicity
What does being online remove
Being online removes factors that normally act as a barrier (gate) to interaction. This creates more opportunities for shy or less attractive people to develop romantic relationships.
The absence of gating online also means that people can establish virtual identities they could never create face to face. E.g. a shy person can be more outgoing
Strengths absence of gating
Social benefits to absence of gating in virtual relationships. E.g. absence of dating can reduce loneliness due to making it easier for social interaction and seek company, Rosenfeld and Thomas showed the importance of online communication for developing romantic relationships. Out of 4000 participants studied, 72% of those with internet access were married or had a romantic partner compared to 36% without internet access, suggesting that a virtual environments helps establish romantic relationships
Baker and Oswald found that absence of gating in virtual relationships may be particularly for useful for shy people. They asked 207 male and female participants to complete a questionnaire, scoring answers in terms of shyness, internet use and perception of quality of their friendships. They found that people who scored highly on shyness and internet use, perceived the quality of their relationships to be high; this correlation was absent for people with low shyness scores. These findings imply that as online communication helps with overcoming shyness, so the quality of their face to face communication also improves,.
Weakness gating in virtual relationships
People are involved in both online and offline relationships everyday. It’s not an either/or situation. Meaning that there are fewer differences between virtual relationships and face to face ones than research seems to suggest. And research examining virtual relationships often fails to take into account the effects of these relationships on a persons offline interactions or vice versa
Most of the research examining gating was conducted in the late 1990s and early 2000s. As technology is changing rapidly, so is the nature of online relationships; therefore, psychological research in this area risks becoming outdated by the time it is published. This lowers the temporal validity of research into virtual relationships. We now got FaceTime so virtual hella similar
