Virtual Relationships In Social Media Flashcards
AO1 of virtual relationships
During the last decade, social media has increasingly become an important part of everyday life. Websites such as Facebook and Twitter have millions of people logging in every day; many of them communicate daily with people with whom they have never met face-to-face (FtF).
The prominence of virtual relationships in people’s life has made it a fascinating topic for psychologists to study; even more so as initial research suggests that the nature of online communication is distinctly different from our social interactions in real life.
One prominent difference between FtF and virtual relationships is the fact that self-disclosure tends to occur much faster. One reason for this is the anonymity associated with online relationships; people tend to hold off disclosing personal information in real life for fear of ridicule or rejection, unless they are confident that they can trust the person and that information won’t be leaked to mutual friends. However, there is much less risk of this in virtual relationships, so people can share personal experiences and thoughts without much risk of the intimate information getting to the people they know.
Self-disclosure in Virtual relationships are often compared to the analogy ‘Strangers on a train’ – internet interactions with others might be considered analogous to the encounters one sometimes has with complete strangers when travelling. Rubin (1975) carried out a series of studies where confederates disclosed personal information about themselves (varying in level of intimacy) to a complete stranger on trains, in airport lounges, or when standing at bus stops. He discovered that when confederates disclosed intimate details of their life to a stranger in the next seat or next to them in a queue, this was often met with a reciprocal self-disclosure from the stranger.
Two major and contrasting theories explaining virtual relationships
Reduced cues theory and the hyper personal model
The Hyperpersonal Model
Walther (1996, 2011) proposed the hyperpersonal model of virtual relationships, can be more personal and involve greater self-disclosure than FtF ones. This is because virtual relationships can develop very quickly as self-disclosure happens earlier and once established these relationships tend to be more intense and intimate. There are two key features of hyperpersonal self-disclosure in virtual relationships:
1) The sender of the message has greater control over what to disclose and the cues they send than FtF ones – this is selective self-presentation – the sender manipulates their self-image and present themselves in an idealised way. To achieve this, self-disclosures can be intensely truthful (hyperhonest) and/or intensely false (hyperdishonest)
2) The receiver gains a positive impression of the sender and may even send positive feedback such as ‘wow, you sound like a really happy person’ which will reinforce the sender’s selective self-presentation.
Furthermore, the fact that one is anonymous online can lead to more self-disclosure than being FtF. Bargh et al (2002) point out that the outcome of this is like the ‘strangers on the train effect’ in FtF relationships. When you’re aware that other people do not know your identity (you are anonymous) you feel less accountable for your behaviur so you may well self-disclose more about yourself to a stranger than to your most intimate partner
Reduced Cues Theory
According to Sproull and Kiesler (1986) virtual relationships are less effective than FtF ones
because they lack many of the cues that we normally depend on in FtF interactions. These include non-verbal cues such as our physical appearance and cues to our emotional state such as facial expressions and tone of voice. This then reduces a person’s sense of individual identity in virtual relationships – de-individuation, which in turn leads to disinihibition. Many people then feel freer to communicate in blunt and even aggressive ways. People are less likely to want to express their real thoughts and feelings to someone who is so impersonal
Effects of absence of gating in virtual relationships
What is a gate?
According to McKenna and Bargh (1999) a gate is any obstacle to forming a relationship- Face to face (FtF) interaction is gated, in that it involves many features that can interfere with the early development of a relationship (or guide it in one direction and away from others). Examples of gates include physical unattractiveness, facia disfigurement, a stammer and social anxiety such as shyness and blushing.
One difference between online and FtF interactions is absence of gating. In real life, our attraction to other people is greatly influenced by their appearance, mannerisms and factors such as age and ethnicity, limiting our choice of potential partners. In virtual interactions, however, these barriers (‘gates’) are absent; this creates more opportunities for shy and less attractive people to develop romantic relationships. Even when these factors are discovered later, when relationships move from virtual to the FtF phase, they rarely decrease an already-developed attraction, as a result of the feeling of intimacy brought by more open self-
disclosure.
The absence of gating also means that people can establish virtual identities they could never create face-to-face. A shy person can become outgoing and extraverted, for example.
Advantages of virtual relationships in social media
There is some evidence that FtF and virtual relationships do differ in the type of self-disclosures used. For example, Whitty and Joinson (2009) summarise evidence showing how self-presentation is manipulated in virtual relationships where for example, questions asked in online discussions tend to be very direct, probing and intimate (Hyperhonest) – this finding does therefore support the hyperpersonal model in the sense that there is indeed more self-disclosure online. Whereas FtF conversations tend to feature more small-talk which is quite different to online. Furthermore self-presentation online can also be hyperdishonest – for
example when people invent attractive personal qualities for their online dating profiles such as pretending to be more sociable than they actually are.
There is research support for the absence of gating in virtual relationships in that shy lonely and socially anxious people find these relationships valuable. For example, McKenna and Bargh (2000) looked at online communication by shy, lonely and socially anxious people and found that these people were able to express their ‘true selves’ more than in FtF situations. Of the romantic relationships that initially formed online by shy people, 71% survived at least two years in comparison to shy people who met FtF. In fact, in the real world, 49% of shy people survived their relationship (this findind was shown by Kirdpatrick and Davis (1994). This suggests that shy people do benefit online in relationships due to the absence of gating.
Disadvantages of virtual relationships in social media
Furthermore, research into virtual relationships is based on the experiences of mainly Western, technologically developed cultures. Internet technology is not readily available in some countries, so the conclusions about the development and effects of virtual communication on romantic relationships cannot be applied to them. In addition, attitudes to self-disclosure are different in different cultures. For example, Nakanishi (1986) found that, in contrast to American culture, women in Japan preferred lower levels of self-disclosure in close relationships. This demonstrates that the level of self-disclosure depends on cultural norms, and may affect the communication styles online. This lowers the validity of research into virtual
relationships, limiting the range of relationships it explains.
There are also important gender differences in virtual relationships. McKenna et al. (2002) found that women tended to rate their relationships formed online as more intimate, and valued self-disclosure, especially in regards to emotion, more highly than men. Men, on the other hand, preferred activities-based (such as common interests in motorsports) disclosure, and rated their online relationships as less close than face-to-face ones. This suggests that research into online relationships may show alpha-bias, as it assumes that males’ and females’ experiences on virtual relationships are different. However, it could be that male and female experiences of virtual relationships are similar and there are methodological issues with the research in this area that exaggerate the differences (e.g. the choice of interview/questionnaires as a research tool).
There is also a lack of support for the hyperpersonal model. Infact this model has been challenged by a meta-analysis. Rupel et al. (2017) carried out a meta-analysis of 25 studies that compared self-disclosures in FtF and virtual interactions. They found that self-report studies showed that the frequency, breadth and depth of self-disclosures were all greater in FtF relationships. However experimental research in self-disclosure showed no significant differences in FtF and virtual relationships. These findings therefore contradict the hyperpersonal model in that more intimacy in virtual relationships should lead to more self-disclosures than FtF relationships. Clearly this is not the case at all.
