Lesson 10: Absence Of Gating In Virtual Relationships

Question 1

Absence of gating in virtual relationships

Answer 1

• In real life, our attraction to other people is greatly influenced by their appearance, mannerisms and factors such as age and ethnicity.
• 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. For example, a shy person can become more outgoing.

Question 2

Strengths of gating in virtual relationships

Answer 2

+ There are social benefits to the absence of gating in virtual relationships. For example, the absence of gating could reduce loneliness due by making it easier for some people to access to social interactions and to seek out company. Rosenfeld and Thomas (2012) showed the importance of online communication for developing romantic relationships. Out of 4,000 participants studied, 72% of those with internet access were married or had a romantic partner, compared to only 36% of those without internet access. These findings suggest that a virtual environment helps people to establish and maintain romantic relationships

+ Zahoa et al (2008) claim that the absence of gating has positive effects on people’s offline relationships. People create an online identity that is appreciated by others, and this enhances their overall self-image and increases the quality of their face-to-face relationships as well.

+ Baker and Oswald (2010) suggest that the absence of gating in virtual relationships may be particularly useful for shy people. They asked 207 male and female participants to complete a questionnaire, scoring their answers in terms of shyness, internet use and perception of quality of their friendships. They found that those people who scored highly on shyness and internet use, perceived the quality of their friendships as high; this correlation was absent for people with low shyness scores. The findings imply that as online communication helps people to overcome their shyness, so the quality of their face-to -face communication also improves.

Question 3

Weaknesses of gating in virtual relationships

Answer 3

• People are involved in both online and offline relationships everyday; it’s not an either/or situation. This means that there are fewer differences between virtual relationships and face to face relationships than research seems to suggest, and research examining virtual relationships often fails to take into account the effect of these relationships on a person’s offline interactions and 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.