Internet, Social Psychology of

Social psychology has been defined as the scientific investigation of how the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. As such, the discipline is particularly germane to understanding human behavior in a communication medium such as the Internet, which takes many varied forms and in which the real or virtual presence of individuals is the subject of both social and technological construction.

Social psychology has a long history of researching the effects of communication technologies, such as the telephone and television, on individuals and groups. Social psychological research on the Internet has focused predominantly on computer-mediated communication (CMC), such as e-mail, bulletin boards, news-groups, conferencing, and chat. These have been compared both theoretically and empirically with face-to-face communication or with some other standard that controls for critical features of CMC, including anonymous or identifiable communicators, realtime or asynchronous communication, and distributed or co-present interaction. However, as Internet technology advances, CMC is being realized in an increasing variety of forms ranging from real-time audio and videoconferencing to virtual reality interaction systems, and these newer forms of CMC have also begun to be the subject of social psychological research. Social psychological studies on audio and videoconferencing made prior to the emergence of the Internet are also relevant to these developments.

Social psychological research focuses upon a range of domains that are crucial to understanding the practical implications of Internet use. Social influence and group decision making are foremost among these in that they are central to social and work groups and the wider organizational context of Internet use. How CMC affects group definition and group dynamics is an important question for developing and evaluating new ways of working on the Internet (e.g., tele-working, computer-supported collaborative work). How the Internet affects perceptions of self and others has implications for all aspects of relating online, including developing personal relationships, using counseling services and social support groups, and achieving a sense of belonging to virtual community groups. The Internet provides a context not only for communication within groups and communities but also for intergroup communication—communication across group boundaries and social divides, such as gender, ethnicity, and social class. How perceptions of status and power differences that normally operate in face-to-face interaction and which are particularly salient in intergroup contexts may be affected by Internet communication is a further issue. More fundamental still is the issue of how identity is defined in cyberspace, where some of [Page 780]the visual reality constraints relating to physical embodiment and face-to-face communication do not always apply.

Studies of the Internet have the potential to inform social psychology theory, especially as most theorizing about group dynamics and relationship development has assumed face-to-face interaction as the norm. How well these theories can account for social behavior between people when face-to-face interaction is diminished or entirely absent is a question that study of the Internet can help to answer.