Written by- Shaiful Alam
The caption “on the internet, nobody knows you’re dog” used in New Yorker cartoon [2] gives a very good idea about the notion, how different our personality is in real and virtual world. If we are digging for the reason behind it, personality theories give us a very good idea. Behavioral Theories (by B.F Skinner and John B Watson) suggest that personality is a result of the interaction and learning between an individual and the environment. And we can relate the virtual and real environment around our different persona in different worlds. Virtual reality is more like ‘man-maid’ and controlled. It is meant to be nice and ‘tiptop’. On the other hand, the reality around us was developed in more like uncontrolled way with a lot of uncontrolled variables.
The caption “on the internet, nobody knows you’re dog” used in New Yorker cartoon [2] gives a very good idea about the notion, how different our personality is in real and virtual world. If we are digging for the reason behind it, personality theories give us a very good idea. Behavioral Theories (by B.F Skinner and John B Watson) suggest that personality is a result of the interaction and learning between an individual and the environment. And we can relate the virtual and real environment around our different persona in different worlds. Virtual reality is more like ‘man-maid’ and controlled. It is meant to be nice and ‘tiptop’. On the other hand, the reality around us was developed in more like uncontrolled way with a lot of uncontrolled variables.
The world is biased towards extroversion [1]. And ‘being wanted’ is desired by most of the personalities by nature. In virtual world we have this opportunity to express ourselves in a way we want to. That might be the reason, extroversion is most popular trait people shows or want to show in virtual world.
During the early ages the use of virtual world for people were limited. But with time it has raised in a way that today it is unenviable not to have a virtual identity for most of the technology users. According to the Guardian Uk adults are spending more than 20 hours a week which is twice as much as 10 years ago [2]. That means in present everyone is being observed for a longer period of time. From that context, it should be unreal that a person have very different personality in real and virtual life. In my opinion, now a days in virtual life people reveal their partial image of inner-self. They only show their part of personality that presents them as not very distant, but somehow a bit different version of how they are in real life.
If we are talking about using this insight in designing technologies, the first thing comes to mind is making the user interface friendlier in a way where user can express themselves how they want. That involves giving the control to user to show what they really want to show outside world and what they don’t.
From the point where everyone likes to express their extrovert traits, it can be a good idea to involve the opportunity of communication with other users. As an example, If any user is sharing something for outside world to see, user must be expecting some kind of feedback about their content. That makes the appearance more real and satisfying.
Sources:
[1] Lecture slide 10, Psychology of pervasive computing- TIE-40106 2018.
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2015/sep/24/online-offline-personality-digital-identity.
During the early ages the use of virtual world for people were limited. But with time it has raised in a way that today it is unenviable not to have a virtual identity for most of the technology users. According to the Guardian Uk adults are spending more than 20 hours a week which is twice as much as 10 years ago [2]. That means in present everyone is being observed for a longer period of time. From that context, it should be unreal that a person have very different personality in real and virtual life. In my opinion, now a days in virtual life people reveal their partial image of inner-self. They only show their part of personality that presents them as not very distant, but somehow a bit different version of how they are in real life.
If we are talking about using this insight in designing technologies, the first thing comes to mind is making the user interface friendlier in a way where user can express themselves how they want. That involves giving the control to user to show what they really want to show outside world and what they don’t.
From the point where everyone likes to express their extrovert traits, it can be a good idea to involve the opportunity of communication with other users. As an example, If any user is sharing something for outside world to see, user must be expecting some kind of feedback about their content. That makes the appearance more real and satisfying.
Sources:
[1] Lecture slide 10, Psychology of pervasive computing- TIE-40106 2018.
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2015/sep/24/online-offline-personality-digital-identity.
Yes, most of people possess different personality in real and virtual world.
ReplyDeleteThere is a case that happened in my friend. She is introvert in the real life but extrovert in virtual life. In real life, she is too shy to talk with others, so she often puts an end to a conversation. However, she is talkative with others in virtual life. Every time, when I chat with her through internet, I think she is a different person, not the person I met in the real life. There-fore , I think she wants to talk more with friends in real life but she may afraid that the word will offend people or make them feel angry. In contrast, it is easier for her to chat in the virtual life and it could relieve her nervous to face people.
Hence, virtual world is a great place for people to reveal another personality and to satisfy that characteristic they couldn’t reveal in real world.
I-CHEN
First I want to say that the blog you have written is very interesting. I think you are right that many persons nowadays are able to express a different version of themselves in online (virtual) worlds. Especially for introverted people it might be an opportunity to be the extraverted person which the person sometimes maybe desires to be. The structure of your blog is nice as well, which makes it easy to understand and read the story. If I would give one comment, I would say that you might also want to consider the outer self. You are mainly writing about the inner self which people are able to express, but I think that the outer-self is also a part of ones personality. Many programs for example also give users the opportunity to customize themselves as how they want to be. What is customization of the self able to bring for people?
ReplyDeleteThank you for this very interesting post ! I liked how you explain that it's unreal that a person may have a very different personality in real and virtual life, they only reveal one part of their personality.
ReplyDeleteI may be a bit extreme, but from my point of view people don't have different personalities in real and virtual world at all. Our personality is what we are, what defines us. We don't have several ones (except maybe for people with psychic disorders or other conditions). The difference is that in virtual worlds we can easily lie, show what we want to show, or create a character who behaves differently than we do. Yet, this character comes from us, from our personality. It reveals what we desire to be deep down inside us, or what we would be without the « norms and laws » of real life. To sum up, I don't think we have a different personality in virtual world, just a different way of expressing it.
Jeanne Raynaud
Very good and very interesting post that explains the different personalities of people between the real world and the virtual world.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the main ideas of the post, in particular the fact that the virtual world makes it easier for shy people of nature to express themselves more easily.
For example, this could be as simple as asking a question to a teacher. Some students are afraid to speak directly to the teacher and are more comfortable writing an email to him.
In a way, they are more comfortable in the virtual world.
Also, as mentioned in the post, the virtual world powered by the Internet and mainly social networks allows many people to express a personality different from the one they have in real life.
I think this is mainly due to the fact that people control what they post on social networks, i.e. they can post and therefore only show others what they want. Thus they will mainly show things that enhance them. And of course no one wants to show his introverted character....
Thank you for your excellent post! It has always fascinated me what kind of differences people have in their communication in different situations. Social media versus real life offers a whole new set. The difference in behaviour depends on the use of social media. I think there are two extremity: people being super polite or super critical and posting hate speech. I don't even want to think why someone would use their time for hate speech.
ReplyDeleteA lot of people use social media for professional use or developing their personal brand. In my opinion the personality in social media should be similar to yourself in real life. You can of course give just a glimpse of your personality but stay true to yourself. It might seem weird ff a colleague or a friend finds out that you are acting completely differently in social media.
This is a very interesting topic indeed.
ReplyDeleteThe virtual world has a tendency to exaggerate the notions of what it is to be socially agreeable.
Even so to a frightening degree. One of the very visible effects of this is the need to always appear as socially extroverted and outgoing.
Its unfortunate how backwards this actually is since everyone posting into social media are likely doing it while being alone instead of spending quality time with their friends or networking in real life.
Another scary aspect of social media is also the way that it has changed us into hiding behind our online personas and text messages instead of calling each other or meeting face to face.
It is just easier to use your online persona, isn't it.
In the chat you can be the happiest person ever and never show your true feelings, even to a degree where you are able to hide the feelings from yourself.
Thanks for great thoughts about this topic! This is something I've been thinking as well. Especially in internet games, there are quite many people who rage a lot and are rude to others, are they really like that in the real life? Probably not, but in the virtual world where we are mostly "faceless", people forget that there is a real human behind the nickname and that's why they behave differently too. I'm trying to be myself in virtual world and not act differently towards other users of internet.
ReplyDeleteBut there's also positive side in the virtual world, because people can try new things and act differently much easier than in real life, and it might develop real life communication skills for those who are more shy than others.
Thank you for this interesting blog post. I think you have done great work by connecting psychological theories to the topic and written it in a very interesting way.
ReplyDeleteI think that virtual world and "real world" set different kind of boundaries to control the communication and self-expression. These boundaries guides the behaviour of ours in different settings and therefore affect the way our personality appears to be to others.
I also think that for someone social media is a place where they can express themselves more freely than in "real life". Some people might act very reserved in public situations but at the same time be very active in social media. This way it might seem that the person has two different personalities.
Thank you for your great post. This post made me bit nostalgic. Once someone told me, "you are such a gentle person in real life, how could you write such aggressive post in social media!" I replied by a smile. Later I thought about it lot. Why I am so different in two life? It's not that I consciously hide one side of me and show off better side in social media. I think it may be because when I am posting in social media, the possibility of hurting specific person is pretty low, because I am not targeting people but idea. But in real life, I am just more concern about people surrounding me. But in social media, there are no one around me who I think can get hurt. This is how calm, quite and gentle me become rebellious in virtual life.
ReplyDeleteI also have trust issue in social media. I've noticed most people like to show off their best. So do not judge people based on their social media activities. I am not sure how to describe this tend of showing off. This is also the reason I do not use Instagram. I think Instagram is a show-off social media, show people what best you got
It was interesting to read the blog post. Considering positive aspects of virtual world, it makes communication effective and easy to reach millions of people around the world.
ReplyDeleteFor an example, we can express our inner positive thoughts and impacts on social growth through the virtual world which might be unknown to my relations, by sharing those thoughts may create a complete persona and it in turn would help reach the people and be with the people of same thoughts.
Apart from creating such a inner personality to the vitual world , there may be some instances in real world , where we cannot share our thoughts completely due to restrictions. In such cases these virtual world may be effective.
It was interesting to read the blog post. Considering positive aspects of virtual world, it makes communication effective and easy to reach millions of people around the world.
ReplyDeleteFor an example, we can express our inner positive thoughts and impacts on social growth through the virtual world which might be unknown to my relations, by sharing those thoughts may create a complete persona and it in turn would help reach the people and be with the people of same thoughts.
Apart from creating such a inner personality to the vitual world , there may be some instances in real world , where we cannot share our thoughts completely due to restrictions. In such cases these virtual world may be effective.
The topic of displaying different personalities in different environments and situations is really interesting and I can definitely see it in myself too. In the real life people often display slightly different personalities depending on the situation and surrounding people, for example a group of friends, relatives, collagues, a cute girl… We often alter what sides of our personalities we show in a situation. In the internet and virtual world this can be even more amplified, as people there don’t know the real you and you have the possibilty to completely reinvent yourself without the limits your your life.
ReplyDeleteAll and all, you had a really interesting take on the topic about how people can try to be more extroverted as it’s valued in our society, in addition to that I think it could be easier for an introverted person to socialize anonymously or with a nickname.
I really liked your post.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you that the virtual world is much more "perfect" because it is made by humans and mostly of our wishes or how we would love it.
The problem really is that you don't know who is behind the screen or a nice profile picture. It is no secret that there are a lot of fake profiles and bad people going around which use the fact that it's anonym and nobody knows who he actually is.
So that is the point in my opinion where we need to change something. Be cause we don't talk about influencer who make their life look better as it is - but we're talking about people who are making real fake profiles, so change their age or gender and try to get private pictures or something like that.
It is far to anonym what happens in the virtual reality and this is what we need to change- for the good of the generations which are coming after us.
Reading about your topic, which is interesting, made me visualize how extroversion works in the real world, in contrast to the virtual world. Can we humans have, in this age of technology, adapted extroverted traits because of our constant interaction through technology? What about augmented reality?
ReplyDeleteI believe this ceaseless form of interaction with and through technology, have formed us humans to develop more extroverted attributes. In a sense it has made us become more absent in the real world and more present in the virtual world. When these types of virtual worlds were new, interesting and hype about one and a half decades ago, I remember people spending several hours a day in interaction with them. Today, these groups of virtual worlds are strongly declining or have declined ever since their creation.
In my opinion, the advancement of technology and how we human continuously interact through it, has merged us with these commonly observed extroverted attributes in virtual worlds. For this reason, I believe we have left the necessity of interacting through virtual worlds behind us, so to speak.
I have no doubt that the way our social interaction and expression of self has developed; one influencer behind it has been social media. Whether it is with people, in different situations or circumstances, technology has made it possible to express ourselves in any way we want to. If you think about it, the available social interactive platforms we have today, for example Instagram and Facebook are good archetypes of how humans use a technological agent as a medium to express highly extroverted characteristics.
The Digital Ruins of a Forgotten Future
Second Life was supposed to be the future of the internet, but then Facebook came along. Yet many people still spend hours each day inhabiting this virtual realm. Their stories—and the world they’ve built—illuminate the promise and limitations of online life.
tps://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/second-life-leslie-jamison/544149/
I also agree on the fact that internet and an virtual world might change peoples personality. I think it comes from the fact that you actually can be anything you want in a virtual world. There are no boundaries from the reality tying you to your personality. In virtual world noone knows who you are, so you are free to define yourself. This excites people, and thats no suprise. Being able to define yourself is something that is somewhat a luxury in real world and can easily be done in virtual world. you can actually define yourself multiple times. Noone knows your the same guy posting from another forum. People want to know how it feels to be someone else and it can be done by acting a different way than normally. This is easily done in virtual world.
ReplyDelete