Published in 2017, The Cyber Effect is one of the first CyberPsychology books to be written specifically for the general public.
A book that everyone should read, especially parents. It will open your eyes to the potential opportunities and dangers that exist online.
Professor Mary Aiken is a Professor in Forensic Cyberpsychology at UEL. Go directly to her website or follow her on Twitter.
Current necessity may have sped up the inevitable trend towards remote and flexible working practices. Our perceptions and narratives may need to change as we (re)discover the benefits of working-from-home and companies may need to change their working practices and benefits to attract key skills and future talent.
There is no doubt that the working world is shifting for knowledge workers. The intensity of that shift is still to be determined, but what this first day of UK lock-down is showing us, is that it is possible for employees to operate remotely and (to a greater or lesser degree) successfully. There have been a number of compromises and disruptions involved in this rather rapid scramble to get as many people set up to work from home as quickly and effectively as possible, but most people have managed to find a (semi-)workable solution.
What the next few weeks (or potentially months) may reveal, is how many companies may view flexible and remote working going forward, and how employees may change their perspective of, and requirements around, their work-life balance. Although there are some negative aspects of remote or flexible working, there are also many benefits:
For remote or flexible working to be effective, we are going to need to challenge workplace culture and workplace narratives around productivity from that of job success = time spent on work, to job success = output delivery. There will also need to be some training around:
It is impossible to predict the future, especially around so much uncertainty, but this systemic upheaval in our working lives may have a number of profound effects on the way we work going forward than we can really imagine at this point.
We know that cyber-bullying is an issue that has affected many of us, to a greater or lesser degree. We have also heard of people who have been publicly shamed with their reputations dashed to pieces. Jon Ronson, in his book ‘so you’ve been publicly shamed’ investigates how recipients of online shaming have coped with their experience (for better or worse).
But, what about those who instigate or perpetuate online abuse or shaming? And, what about those who reveal more about themselves to online strangers than they would to someone physically present?
John Suler, (a pioneer in cyberpsychology and psychology professor at Rider University) first published his six perceptual classifications on The Online Disinhibition Effect in 2004, which still holds true today and goes some way to explain why people can display uncharacteristically unsociable behaviour online when they wouldn’t do so offline.
The first is the perception of being unknown (dissociative anonymity). Each site or app offers varying degrees of anonymity, but in many cases, a person’s true identity can be partially hidden through unrecognisable usernames created as their avatar. What they then say or do online is unlikely to be tracked directly back to them and therefore unlikely to result in any social reprimands by anyone in their immediate social circles
Linking into this is the second effect, the perception of not being physically seen by the recipient of the message (invisibility). When around 55% of our message is portrayed in our body language and about 40% in our tone of voice, not having to worry about how one present themselves or their message, can mean inhibitions are less likely to be held in check.
When there is a delay in a message being sent and the reply being received (asynchronicity), such as emails or text messages, a person has more time to contemplate their reply, potentially resulting in overthinking each element of the message without the bonus of social cues that face-to-face communication allows for the correct interpretation thereof. This delay and lack of social cues can allow for toxic thoughts to form, influencing the response given.
It is human nature to fill in information gaps. When a friend talks about someone we don’t know, we often form a visual impression of the person in our heads, which often differs substantially from what they actually look like. When we read messages from someone we haven’t met in person, we often perceive the message as a voice in our head (solipsistic introjection). Based on the phrases and words used in a message, we develop a tone of voice, intonation and persona around the person we have only met online. Any gaps in our knowledge of them, we fill in with our own ‘personal expectations, wishes and needs’ of who they ought to be. This leads to developing a much deeper affinity with someone we engage with online and can encourage us to reveal substantially more detail about who we are than if we were to meet the same person face-to-face.
Engaging with people online can sometimes seem ‘unreal’. Any online characters we create, e.g. when creating a gaming or virtual world avatar or even our social media profiles, can lead us to perceive our online selves as existing in a different, almost fictitious, realm (dissociative imagination). Because this world does not always transcend into reality, the rules and norms that exist online aren’t linked to and have no accountability in the real world. Some may even convince themselves that their online self can suspend its moral conscious with the belief that ‘it isn’t really me’.
In the real world, a person’s authority is often displayed by their dress code, their body language and their possessions. Online, the dissolution of many barriers allows anyone to become well-known, to be an authority, to be heard by many and to reach previously unattainable goals. This has led to the perception that rank and hierarchy have been flattened out online (minimising authority). We mostly feel a lot more equal in an online world and, therefore, have limited fear of disapproval from authority figures, giving us the opportunity to ‘speak out and misbehave’ in ways we otherwise wouldn’t.
In reality, it’s not just about understanding how others behave deviantly online, recognising these tendencies and traits in ourselves can help us to regulate ourselves a little more online, both in how we communicate with others and how we interpret what others say. If almost 95% of what is said needs to be seen in body language or heard in the tone or intonation of our voice, when interpreting technology-based communication we maybe need to be a little more conscious of our tendency to read more into what is said and become a little more cognisant of how we phrase things online.
iGen is that latest in a series of books Jean Twenge has written based on her decades of research into generational differences and the impact of technology on younger generations.
Her iGen book outlines her most recent findings on the younger generation having grown up as ‘Digital Natives’. Like the interpretation of any research results, she makes some insightful links between the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and the behaviours and mental health of the younger generation.
Although there are a number of critics of the conclusions she draws from her research, there are stem startling warning bells we should all take note off to some degree.
Jean Twenge is a professor of psychology based at San Diego State University in the USA. She is a leading expert and researcher on how technology is changing the way children and teens are behaving in addition to generational behaviour and childhood development. She has a number of concerns about the adults of the future.
She has written a number of books including:
Having officially started my academic journey into CyberPsychology, it seems a good time to clarify what this discipline within Psychology involves. The British Psychology Society defines CyberPsychology as: ‘a scientific inter-disciplinary domain that focuses on the psychological phenomena which emerge as a result of the human interaction with digital technology, particularly the Internet’ (BPS, 2019)
I have spoken a lot in the last 9 months (to anyone who happens to be within earshot of me) about my deep fascination with CyberPsychology. Anecdotally, the initial misconception is that it falls within the realm of Cybersecurity – i.e. how to keep your data safe and secure online. Although there are a number of elements of psychology linked to cybersecurity, CyberPsychology differs in many ways. If you compare the cyber-world directly to the real world, cybersecurity is like having the right mechanisms in place to keep your house and physical valuables as safe as possible from those who want to rob or exploit you. If you have precious items you want to keep safe, you hire external experts to help set up the correct security measures to do so.
Like any real-world psychological services and experts, Cyber Psychologists work across a broader range of cyber-related areas including (but not limited to) forensics, mental health, addictions, academics, etc., their work often crossing over, connecting and integrating the online and offline worlds. Although this field of psychology has been a core focus for some psychologists for many, many decades, it has only started to gather momentum and become more mainstream in the last few years. In late 2018 the British Psychology Society recognised the need to set up a CyberPsychology section, officially recognising this as an important part of our ‘being’ as humans.
As a profession, we still have a long way to go in researching and understanding many aspects of how we behave online and how this affects us, those around us and our society in general – both online and offline. One key to bridging this broad gap in our knowledge is in broadcasting the insights we gain as CyberPsychologists to a much wider audience, including how technology is constantly shifting and how we, as humans, act and interact with ourselves, with each other and with the steady stream of innovations that will be our future norm. Another key is encouraging and exciting a greater number of tomorrow’s psychologists to navigate, explore and discover this world with us.
Future generations will look back on us and wonder how on earth we could have been so naive and antiquated in our view of cyber and the psychology that surrounds it. However, for me, right now, this journey is (like the Star Trek TV heroes of my youth) the ultimate cyber-space adventure ‘to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilization, to boldly go where no man has gone before’ (a bit cheesy I know, but couldn’t resist it!)
