Marc,
I had an honors student who tested a similar hypothesis a couple of years
ago. Her hypothesis was focused on the anonymity of the communication. That
is, she thought that chat rooms and e-mail produced more aggressive comments
because the posters were essentially anonymous. She manipulated that
variable by using real names or screen names and had students engage in a
debate that she thought would elicit angry comments. The results did not
support her hypothesis. We suspected that the reason for the failure was
essentially a floor effect, the women who participated in her study were all
drawn from our very small college with a strong culture of respecting the
views of others. She chose this explanation because a similar result was
found with an all male sample drawn from a single business setting. I can
find the reference for that study if you are interested.
I was amazed at the paucity of good research in this area. It seems that we
are always talking about the aggression that is found in online
communication but there is very little research that we could find that
either documented the aggression or described its potential causes.
Dennis
Dept. of Psychology
Randolph-Macon Woman's College
Lynchburg VA
-----Original Message-----
From: G. Marc Turner
To: TIPS
Sent: 9/7/99 5:34 PM
Subject: Aggression research
I'm currently tossing around an idea for a study of aggression in
computer
mediated environments (mainly listservs, but also realtime chat
environments, newsgroups, etc.), but have no training in this issue.
There seems to be a tendency for those on listservs to take comments as
more personal attacks on-line than if the same comment was made in a
conversion or discussion (for example: an email sent to 10 people will
generate more extreme responses than if the same content had been said
to a
group of 10 people face-to-face.) One of my hunches is that since the
email
appears to only one person at a time, it becomes more personal. As such,
it
carries with it a greater threat since it seems to attack the individual
personally rather than being presented as a topic for discussion. This
also
holds for responses that are sent back to the group on the topic. As a
consequence, what begins as a mild discussion can quickly escalate into
personal attacks between members of the list community. A side line to
this
is that those not directly involved in the exchange, but exposed to it
by
being members of the community, will also view the messages as more
direct
attacks than they are intended. Also, I'm not sure if this is really
more
common in an on-line environment than it is in face-to-face exchanges,
but
I'm guessing that it is.
I delved into this type of thing a few years ago, but haven't kept up
with
the CMC literature for some time now. As a result, the ideas are still
fuzzy in my head at the moment, but I would welcome any suggestions on
readings in this area or comments on the issue.
Thanks in advance,
- Marc
G. Marc Turner, MEd
Lecturer & Head of Computer Operations
Department of Psychology
Southwest Texas State University
San Marcos, TX 78666
phone: (512)245-2526
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] or ...
