Question

Possibly one of the most significant social topics of our time is how technology, and specifically social media, is influencing different aspects of social psychology. This is particularly relevant to our topic here in a few different ways. One that stands out is the idea that people experience deindividuation in social media and are therefore more likely to conform to a group norm or to say/write things that they would not normally do in their "real" lives. As one example of the research in this area, Halpern and Gibbs (2013) found that during a political discussion online people tended to become significantly more deindividuated in YouTube comments, where they were anonymous, than they were in Facebook comments, where they were not anonymous. The YouTube commenters were much more likely to be rude for instance while the Facebook commenters tended to be more polite on average. Now, we do know that behaviors a person exhibits when part of a group can influence their perception of themselves, e.g. “I really got into the basketball game and was cheering as loud as everyone else so I must be a bigger fan of the team than I realized!” Does the same thing happen with online behaviors? Could the disinhibited behaviors caused by online deindividuation influence how a person thinks of himself or herself? What do you think?

Answer 1

Absolutely. Online behaviors change according to the context. Though the individual has different character, his/her online behaviors change according to the group norms. Sometimes, they might not exhibit their identity in online comments such as You Tube comments. However, they want to portray themselves as being courteous and kind in comments in Facebook. This is to exhibit their false mask that they adhere to the group norms and thinking when there is a different perception about the scenario or issue being discussed. I have personally experienced such behavior in my Facebook posts.

Personally speaking, the disinhibited behaviors caused by online deindividuation influence how a person thinks of himself or herself. When a person loses his/her self-awareness in such online conversations, then it most likely influences how a person thinks of himself or herself. This is because the person’s identity with the group and its norms overrides his/her self identity and self awareness. For example, if a person thinks that he is an introvert, then his identity with the group norms overrides his thinking that he is an introvert and converses online with the group to socialize.