online relationships

Virtual Relationships in Social Media - Overview of Virtual Relationships

• Definition: Virtual relationships are connections formed through Computer-Mediated Communication ($CMC$), including email, instant messaging, chat rooms, and social networking sites ($e.g.,$ Facebook, TikTok).

• Psychological Interest: Research focuses on how the absence of physical proximity and non-verbal cues alters the development of intimacy and emotional bonds compared to traditional face-to-face ($FtF$) encounters.

Key Terms

• Self-disclosure:

  • Definition: The act of revealing personal information. In virtual settings, this often happens much faster than in $FtF$ interactions.

  • The 'Boom and Bust' Phenomenon: Cooper and Sportolari ($1997$) suggested that online relationships become intense very quickly ($boom$) because of early disclosure, but can collapse just as quickly ($bust$) due to the lack of a stable foundation or underlying trust.

• Absence of Gating:

  • Definition: Gates are barriers like physical unattractiveness, stammers, or social anxiety that hinder relationship formation in person.

  • Anonymity and the 'Stranger on a Train' Effect: Bargh ($2002$) noted that people feel safer disclosing deep secrets to anonymous others because there is a decreased sense of accountability and less fear of being judged in their daily lives.

Theoretical Perspectives

• Reduced Cues Theory (Sproull and Kiesler, $1986$):

  • Non-verbal Cues: CMC lacks physical cues (facial expressions) and emotional cues (tone of voice).

  • De-individuation: The lack of these cues leads to a loss of individual identity and a reduced sense of social responsibility.

  • Disinhibition: This leads to "flaming," where individuals communicate in blunt, aggressive, or hostile ways that they would avoid in $FtF$ settings.

• Hyperpersonal Model (Walther, $1996, 2011$):

  • Idealization: Relationships can become more personal than $FtF$ because of how information is shared.

  • Selective Self-presentation: Senders use the asynchronous nature of CMC to "edit" and "polish" their messages, projecting an idealized version of themselves.

  • Receiver Reinforcement: Receivers often over-interpret these cues, creating an idealized mental image of the sender.

Research and Evaluations

• Support for Absence of Gating (McKenna and Bargh, $2000$):

  • Studies of lonely and socially anxious people found they were more successful at expressing their "true selves" online.

  • Durability: For romantic relationships formed online by shy individuals, $71\%$ lasted at least $2$ years, which is significantly higher than the $49\%$ success rate for relationships formed in the physical world.

• Limitations of Reduced Cues Theory:

  • The theory is criticized for ignoring "modern" cues. Users utilize proxies like emoticons, emojis, and acrostics to replace non-verbal cues.

  • Timing: The timing of a response—such as an immediate reply versus a delayed one—serves as a sophisticated social cue in CMC.

• Multimodal Relationships (Walther, $2011$):

  • Most modern relationships are "multimodal," meaning they exist across both digital and physical platforms. Communication in one medium is almost always influenced by interactions in the other, making them difficult to study in total isolation.