virtual relationships

• During the last decade, social media has increasingly become an important part of everyday life
• Websites such as Facebook and Twitter have millions of people logging in every day; many of them communicate daily with people with whom they have never met face-to-face
• The prominence of virtual relationships in people's life has made it a fascinating topic for psychologists to study
• Initial research suggests that the nature of online communication is distinctly different from our social interactions in real life
• Self-disclosure


  Tends to occur much faster in virtual relationships compared to face-to-face
• Anonymity


  Associated with online relationships, leading to faster self-disclosure as there is less fear of ridicule or rejection
• People tend to hold off disclosing personal information in real life


  Unless they are confident they can trust the person and the information won't be leaked to mutual friends
• There is much less risk of personal information getting leaked in virtual relationships, so people can share personal experiences and thoughts without much risk
• Hyperpersonal model of virtual relationships

  As self-disclosure in online relationships happens earlier than in face-to-face ones, relationships quickly become more intense and feel more intimate and meaningful, but can also end more quickly as it is difficult to sustain the same level of intense self-disclosure for a long time
• Selective self-presentation


  Participants in online conversation have more time to 'edit' their responses to present themselves in a more positive light, which then makes an online partner want to disclose more personal information, increasing the intensity of the relationship
• 'Stranger on the train' phenomenon


  We are more likely to share personal information with a stranger because we are likely never to see them again
• Reduced cues theory


  Reduction in communication cues in virtual interactions leads to deindividuation, diminishing people's feelings of individual identity and bringing on behaviours that people usually restrain themselves from displaying, such as aggression, which may make online communications more aggressive and lead to less self-disclosure from others
• Gating


  In real life, our attraction to other people is greatly influenced by their appearance, mannerisms and factors such as age and ethnicity, limiting our choice of potential partners, but these barriers are absent in virtual interactions, creating more opportunities for shy and less attractive people to develop romantic relationships
• Even when physical factors are discovered later, when relationships move from virtual to the face-to-face phase, they rarely decrease an already-developed attraction, as a result of the feeling of intimacy brought by more open self-disclosure
• The absence of gating also means that people can establish virtual identities they could never create face-to-face
• Research clearly demonstrates the effect of a virtual environment on self-disclosure, with online discussion forums having more direct, probing and intimate questions and answers than everyday face-to-face interactions
• Research shows the importance of online communication for developing romantic relationships, with 71.8% of those with internet access being married or having a romantic partner, compared to only 35.9% of those without internet access
• The absence of gating in virtual relationships may be particularly useful for shy people, as online communication helps them to overcome their shyness and improve the quality of their face-to-face communication
• The absence of gating and more meaningful self-disclosure online can also have positive effects on people's offline relationships, as they can create an online identity that is appreciated by others, enhancing their overall self-image and the quality of their face-to-face relationships
• The degree of self-disclosure depends on whether a website user anticipates the information to become available to a wider audience or just to close friends, with more personal information being disclosed to close friends
• People are involved in both online and offline relationships every day, and their offline relationships tend to influence what and how they choose to disclose online, and vice versa, meaning there are fewer differences between online and face to face relationships than explanations seem to suggest
• Research arguing that online relationships lead to a decrease in self-disclosure due to a lack of subtle cues has been rejected, with the claim that non-verbal cues in online interactions are not absent, they are just different
• Most research examining virtual relationships was conducted in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and as technology is changing rapidly, the nature of online relationships is also changing, lowering the temporal validity of this research
• Research into virtual relationships is based on the experiences of mainly Western, technologically developed cultures, and attitudes to self-disclosure are different in different cultures, lowering the validity of this research and limiting the range of relationships it explains
• There are important gender differences in virtual relationships, with women tending to rate their relationships formed online as more intimate and valuing self-disclosure, especially in regards to emotion, more highly than men
• Research into online relationships may show alpha-bias, as it assumes that males' and females' experiences on virtual relationships are different, when it could be that their experiences are similar and there are methodological issues with the research that exaggerate the differences
• Virtual relationships


  Relationships developed through online communication, often with people one has never met face-to-face
• Social media has increasingly become an important part of everyday life, with millions of people communicating daily with people they have never met face-to-face
• Virtual relationships


  • Self-disclosure tends to occur much faster than in face-to-face relationships
  • There is less risk of intimate information getting to people one knows
• Hyperpersonal model of virtual relationships

  As self-disclosure in online relationships happens earlier than in face-to-face ones, relationships quickly become more intense and feel more intimate and meaningful, but can also end more quickly
• Selective self-presentation


  Participants in online conversation have more time to 'edit' their responses to present themselves in a more positive light
• Stranger on the train phenomenon

  We are more likely to share personal information with a stranger because we are likely never to see them again
• Reduced cues theory


  Reduction in communication cues in virtual interactions leads to deindividuation, which may make online communications more aggressive and reduce self-disclosure
• Gating


  In real life, our attraction to other people is greatly influenced by their appearance, mannerisms and factors such as age and ethnicity, limiting our choice of potential partners. In virtual interactions, these barriers are absent.
• The absence of gating in virtual relationships creates more opportunities for shy and less attractive people to develop romantic relationships
• Research shows that in online discussion forums both questions and answers tend to be more direct, probing and intimate than in everyday face-to-face interactions
• Research found that 71.8% of participants with internet access were married or had a romantic partner, compared to only 35.9% of those without internet access, suggesting that a virtual environment helps people to establish and maintain romantic relationships
• Research found that shy people who use the internet more perceive the quality of their friendships as high, implying that online communication helps people to overcome their shyness and improve the quality of their face-to-face communication
• Research suggests that the absence of gating and more meaningful self-disclosure online can have positive effects on people's offline relationships, as they can create an online identity that is appreciated by others, enhancing their overall self-image
• The degree of self-disclosure in virtual relationships depends on whether the information is anticipated to become available to a wider audience or just to close friends