Personality and the Internet by Yair AmichaiHamburger

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Personality and the Internetby Yair
Amichai-Hamburger

• LAI Wing Chi, NanaStudent ID 50320476

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What is Internet ?

• It is a modern communication technology which
  create a comprehensive for users.
• It is a secure environment for users to have
  interaction.

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What is Personality ?

• It is a source of ?Emotions?Cognition?Behav
  ior

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Focus of this Chapter

• It studies if the secure Internet environment has
  a direct impact on the personality of users.
• It is divided into 4 parts
• Interaction between Personality and Internet Use
• Expression of Identity over the Internet
• Negative Social Consequences associated with Net
  Use
• Positive Consequences of Internet Use

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Interaction between Personality and Internet use

• Personality and Differential Behavior on the Net
• New Directions on Personality-Internet
  Interaction
• The Rogerian Self-concept and the Internet

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Personality and Differential Behavior on the Net

• Extroversion and Neuroticism Personality Theory
  (Eysenck Eysenck, 1975)
• The personality components are
• Extrovert
• Introvert
• Neurotic
• They coexist within the same personality, while
  one may dominate, the other is also present, it
  maybe just undeveloped (Jung, 1939)

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Personality and Differential Behavior on the Net

• Introverted and Neurotic people may express
  themselves more freely through Internet because
• User is anonymous
• No physical contact with others
• Feels being in protected environment
• Internet social services answer their social
  needs
• This preference cannot be found on extroverts and
  non-neurotic net users.

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Personality and Differential Behavior on the Net

• Introverted people on the net (Maldonado et al.
  2001)
• They send message with extroverted tone
• Contains more information
• Do not behave their usual behavior pattern
• Internet allows individuals to express the
  undeveloped part of personalities

• Extroverted people on the net (Kraut et al.
  2002)
• As high involvement in net communities as their
  daily, physical interaction
• Enlarge their social circles
• Rich get richer phenomenon

BUT Internet creates opportunities for poor to
get rich, protected environment encourages
introverted to express themselves more than in
traditional channel
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New Directions on Personality-Internet
Interaction

• Four more relevant personality theories
• Need for Closure
• High VS Low
• Affect their willingness to start new internet
  relationship
• Locus of Control
• External VS Internal
• Affect their willingness to release information
  about themselves

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New Directions on Personality-Internet
Interaction

• Attachment
• Secure VS Avoidant VS Anxious
• Affect the level of intimacy between themselves
  and their Internet partners
• Sensation seeking and risk taking
• Sensation seeking need for new and varied
  experience
• Risk taking ready to take action involves
  significant degree of risk
• Affect if they are open to new experience on net
  or behave more cautiously

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The Rogerian Self-concept and the Internet

• Rogers (1980) people had deserted their innate
  personalities in modern life and replaced them
  with a set of characteristics they believed would
  guarantee them loves of others.
• The structure of Rogerian personality (1961)
  contains 3 different selves
• The self-concept
• The true self
• The ideal self

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The Rogerian Self-concept and the Internet

• McKenna et al. (2002)s real me concept
• They derive their concept from the true self
  concept used by Rogers (1951)
• It is a version of self that someone believes is
  the truth, but the one find difficulty in
  expressing.
• They had a series of 3 experiments and found as
  below
• People who are social anxiety can better express
  their true self on Internet
• They strive to move their significant Internet
  relationship from online to offline.
• 63 talked on phone 56 exchanged photo 54
  sent letters 54 met Internet friends
  face-to-face

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The Rogerian Self-concept and the Internet

• Bargh et al. (2002)examined the impact of
  Internet on expression of self by 3 experiments
  and found the followings
• Actual self is more accessible in face-to-face
  interaction
• True self is more activated in Internet
  interaction
• People interacted on net are more successful in
  representing their true self

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The Rogerian Self-concept and the Internet

• Internet Real Me Concept Extroversion and
  Neuroticism Personality Theory
• Amichai-Hamburger et al. (2002) introverted and
  neurotic people locate their real me on Internet
  while extroverts locate their real me through
  traditional social interaction
• McKenna et al. (2002) location of real me on
  the Internet are highly related to introversion
  and neuroticism
• Norton et al. (1997) positive relationship
  between social anxiety and neuroticism and a
  negative relationship between loneliness and
  extroversion

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Concept of Real Me

• Real me concept enables us to understand the
  importance of the Internet for certain types of
  people.
• Internet is the significant part of the lives of
  introverts, neurotics and people with social
  anxiety
• Internet is not the replacement for real world
  of these people, but to avoid the psychological
  disorder

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The Expression of Identity over the Internet

• Explore our identity on the Net
• Identity and Multiplicity
• Personal Website and Identity
• Group Identity on the Net
• Negatively Stigmatized Groups on the Net

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Explore our identity on the Net

• Turkle (1995) Internet is an identity lab
• Participation in identity games is similar to
  participation in psychodrama
• Fine (1983) Fantasy Game Turkle(1995) MUD
  (multiuser dimension)
• People playing frequently take on persona of the
  individual they act. When they play a character
  for long time, they become more identified with
  that and begins experience the emotions and
  feelings of them
• Many users use different accounts in different
  MUD sessions to experience different identities
  at the same time.

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Explore our identity on the Net

• Positive consequences
• Identity games help to bring about psychological
  maturity (Turkle, 1995)
• Internet can help people to transform themselves
• Gaming fantasy is not autistic and egocentric but
  construct shared experience through communication
  with other players (Fine, 1983). Thus, theres a
  need of ego
• Gender identity game may teach men/women
  something of what women/men feel (Silberman,
  1995)
• Negative consequences
• Some people would act as fatal identity to treat
  others, it would hurt others.
• People would lost their trust in the information
  supplied by Internet

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Identity and Multiplicity

• Multiplicity can exist between personalities that
  can communicate among themselves?it is heavily
  rooted in literature dealing
• Although many scholars advocated coherent
  personality and idea of unity, multiple selves
  can also benefit people
• People with higher self-complexity have a greater
  no. of selves and distinction, they can cope
  better with stressful events (Linville, 1987)
• Internet enables people to hold varying
  identities

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Personal Website and Identity

• Creation of personal website is visual
  construction of identity
• Wallace (1999) construction of personal website
  is an expression of ideal self of creator
• Building a personal website is a chance for the
  creator to think of their identity, deciding
  which parts of ones identity to display

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Group Identity on the Net

• Group Identity means our identity is affected by
  both the groups we belong to and those we do not
• LeBon (1903) when people are part of crowd,
  they are in group mind
• Lea et al. (2001) interact with strangers on
  the net would depersonalized ones individual
  identity but their group identity becomes more
  attractive

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Negatively Stigmatized Groups on the Net

• Belonging to a group which is perceived
  negatively made members to 1)hide their group
  identity and 2)not to identify their belongings
• But in Internet world, these stigmatized /
  marginal groups are easy to be found. These
  groups online would not have the risk being
  identified as social stigmatized sector.
• Members of these groups are 1)more likely in be
  involved, 2)they considered their belongings more
  important than non-stigmatized group members.

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Negatively Stigmatized Groups on the Net

• Self-completion theory (Wicklund Gollwitzer,
  1982) people are highly motivated to express
  their significant identity in offline world
• Posters in the stigmatized groups online, are
  willing to tell ones close friends/family their
  identity / belongings
• It is a transformation of a negative group
  identity to positive
• Internet is a modern tool to for users to reveal
  him/herself

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Negative Social Consequences associated with Net
use

• Loneliness
• Addiction

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Loneliness

• In Kraut et al.s longitudinal study in 1998,
  they found heavy use of Internet caused
  experience of loneliness
• McKenna et al. (2002), Hamburger and Ben-Artzi
  (2000) found people with social anxiety and
  loneliness benefit from the Internet
• Amichai-Hamburger and Ben-Artzi(2003) found that
  the use of Internet services was related to
  loneliness only in the case of women.

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Addiction

• Technological addiction as behavioral addiction
  involving human-machine interaction (Griffith,
  1995)
• For addictive, not Internet itself, but specific
  Internet interaction services (Young, 1997)
• Two main profiles of people have tendency to
  become addicted 1)people with social inhibitions
  and 2)sensation seekers

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Positive Consequences of Internet use

• Relatedness and Autonomy
• Generalizing from Positive Internet Experience

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Relatedness VS Autonomy

• All the people fight for freedom and autonomy but
  they need to relate to significant others at the
  same time (Fromm, 1941)
• It is result of 5 basic human needs
• A need to relate to others
• A need for transcendence
• A need for rootedness
• A need for identity
• A need for a frame of reference
• Services from the net can answer these needs
• Interaction with group members?relatedness
• Freely self-expression?autonomy
• Internet creates environment where contrast
  between need for relate and autonomy is very
  limited

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Generalizing from Positive Internet Experience

• Internet can assist people who have social
  difficulties to develop ability to build and
  maintain relationships with people from online to
  offline in the following 4 steps
• Communicating by text only
• Text and Image
• Communicating by video
• Face-to-face interaction

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Conclusion

• Certain disadvantaged individuals may feel
  comfortable in highly protected world of Internet
  to express real me to avoid psychological
  disorders
• Internet can serve as identity lab for net users,
  but both positive and negative consequences may
  occur
• Theres complexity on Internet and social issue,
  loneliness and addiction. So, further research on
  this is recommended
• Two effective ways in well-being maybe improved
  though Internet
• Personality theories from schools (such as Jung,
  Erikson, Rogers and Fromm etc.) were introduced
  to help in further research on personality and
  cyberspace

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End of Presentation

• Thank you!!!