Virtual relationships

• Self-disclosure in virtual relationships

  Compared to face-to-face relationships, virtual relationships have a high level of self-disclosure
• Anonymity of virtual relationships


  • Reduces the risks of self-disclosure, e.g. disapproval or fear of being socially embarrassed
  • Information being leaked to someone they know
• Disinhibition


  Feeling less inhibited and less accountable for actions, which can make disclosure much more likely
• Deindividuation


  Reduces a person's sense of individual identity, which means people feel freer from the constraints of social norms (disinhibition) and this can lead to blunt and even aggressive communication which can reduce the amount of self-disclosure
• Hyperpersonal model

  • Online relationships can be more personal and involve greater self-disclosure than face to face
  • Self-disclosure often happens earlier, leading to intense, close and intimate virtual relationships developing more quickly than face-to-face
  • But they can also end more swiftly, because the high excitement of the virtual interaction is often not matched by the trust between the relationship partners
• Selective self-presentation


  Online personas can be heavily manipulated and controlled, making it easier to promote intimacy in online relationships
• Catfishing


  People lure others into a virtual relationship by presenting a fictitious persona on social media
• Effects of absence of gating on virtual relationships

  • In face-to-face relationships, personal factors (e.g. physical appearance, age, social background) tend to determine whom we develop romantic relationships with
  • In virtual relationships there is an absence of these barriers or 'gates' that normally limit the opportunities for the less attractive, shy or less socially skilled to form relationships
  • This means less physically attractive and less socially skilled individuals have a greater chance to build relationships via social media to the point where intimate self-disclosure can occur
  • A person's true self is more likely to be active in internet relationships than it is in face-to-face interactions
• Online social networks such as Facebook can empower 'gated' individuals to present the identities they hope to establish but are unable to in face-to-face situations
• Self-disclosure


  A process of virtual relationships
• Evidence to suggest that self-disclosure is a process of virtual relationships has been found by Joinson (2001)
• Joinson's laboratory experiment


  1. Participants in the computer condition showed significantly more self-disclosure than the face-to-face participants

  2. Pairs who could see one another over video had significantly lower levels of self-disclosure than pairs without a video
• These findings that the use of self-disclosure is boosted in virtual relationships appear to be replicated in real life
• Parks & Floyd (1996) studied relationships formed by internet users


  • People report disclosing significantly more in their internet encounters compared to their face to face relationships
• Use of self-disclosure


  Boosted in virtual relationships more so than in face-to-face ones
• Absence of gating


  • Key feature in the development of virtual relationships
• Evidence for absence of gating

  • Bargh et al. (2002) found intimacy developed more quickly with virtual than face-to-face relationships due to lack of gating features
  • Mckenna and Bargh (2002) found lonely and socially anxious people were able to express their 'true selves' more in computer mediated communication than face-to-face
• 70% of romantic relationships that initially formed online survived more than two years, which is a higher proportion than for relationships that formed in the offline world (49%, Kirkpatick and Davis)
• Lack of gating


  Helps individuals develop (virtual) relationships where they would have had many more barriers in face-to-face ones
• Virtual relationships

  Relationships formed through the internet and digital technologies
• Virtual relationships

  • Particularly helpful for shy people
  • Allow shy people to overcome barriers to forming relationships in real life
• Social media sites

  • Facebook
• Greater use of Facebook


  Higher perceptions of friendship quality for students high in shyness
• Virtual relationships have social benefits and are useful for developing confidence, something that may not have developed without the use of the internet to initiate romantic relationships
• Baker and Oswald (2010): 'Virtual relationships are particularly helpful for shy people'
• Limitations of explanations of the nature of virtual relationships

  • Lack of recognition that relationships are conducted both online and offline and through many different media
  • Interaction between people online will influence the interaction in the face-to-face relationship including the level and speed of self-disclosure
  • Two kinds of communication (online and offline) have to be considered together and not separately
  • Many types of CMC being used which leads to different levels of disclosure
• Disclosure occurs more on

  • Gaming sites
  • Chat rooms
• Disclosure occurs less on


  • Dating sites
• This suggests that the current theories may underestimate the complexity of virtual relationships reducing the validity of the explanations
• A problem of virtual relationships research is that the external validity of any study in the area can be questioned
• The relevance of research support changes rapidly as technology and social media platforms are updated
• Research conducted before the year 2000


  Very different to the more modern day studies
• The way we interact with people over the internet in today's society has changed dramatically
• In the 90's


  • Databases were used to match people in romantic relationships based on their answers to personality questions and lacked the ability for visual face-to-face interaction
• Nowadays

  • People have a much more active role in initiating virtual relationships with the use of social media platforms, Facetime, emoticons and Tinder and the advanced technology allows for real life 'live' interaction
• The temporal validity of the early research can be questioned as it may not be a true representation of our understanding of virtual relationships in today's society