Jim wrote:
> Nothing that has been said so far (here, or elsewhere that I have
> seen [without looking very hard]) indicates that there is
> anything special about what happens on the net. With respect to
> Mr. X, for example, how do we know that he does not act in
> exactly the same way in his private dealings with people? And
> how do we know that people who raised in public speculative
> hypotheses about the origins of the behaviour (i.e., psychiatric
> or neural disorder, being a jerk) don't do exactly the same thing
> in their everyday lives. It would be interesting to know whether
> there is solid evidence for differences in behaviour across
> different media. The same thing is true for "road rage" of
> course. Is there solid evidence that such acts of rage occur
> with higher-than-expected frequency and to people who are
> otherwise non-aggressive?
Actually, some evidence _does_ exist that individuals who demonstrate "road
rage" do not manifest the same behaviors in other areas of their lives. I
_think_ the basic research was being done at either USC or UCLA, but since I
don't have the material here at home, I can't say for sure if that's
accurate.
In my own research, there appear to be some fairly significant indicators
that online behavior does _not_ parallel offline behavior. Since my work is
largely cultural, versus strictly psychological, most of the material is
observational and survey based instead of experimental (and thus much more
subject to error), but the consistency of the observations _do_ tend to lend
some support to the hypothesis that it is the interaction with the
technology (particularly the anonymous nature of the medium) that encourages
the behaviors.
A _far_ more fascinating area that I've been studying is sexual behavior.
Some pretty significant differences in behavior are demonstrated by a
considerable number of Internet participants as compared to their offline
(and pre-Internet) behaviors. Apparently both the anonymity and the
public-yet-private nature of the Internet encourages many people to act out
sexual behaviors they wouldn't consider performing in the "real world."
Rick
--
Rick Adams
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of Social Sciences
Jackson Community College, Jackson, MI
"... and the only measure of your worth and your deeds
will be the love you leave behind when you're gone."
Fred Small, J.D., "Everything Possible"
