Negatively Disinhibited Online Communication: The Role of Visual Anonymity and Public Self-Awareness

• Main Author: Finn, Elizabeth Marie
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01.01.2016
• Subjects: Behavioral Sciences; Communication; Internet and social media studies; Social research; Web studies
• ISBN: 9781369233018; 1369233019

Visual anonymity is often thought to contribute to negative disinhibition and anti-social behavior online (Lapidot-Lefler & Barak, 2012; Halpern & Gibbs, 2013) because it has been associated with similar behavior in the physical world (Zimbardo, 1969; Deiner, 1980). Given that this behavior routinely occurs in online spaces where users are visually identified, theories that rest on the traditional effects or social identity effects of visual anonymity do not represent a complete explanation for disinhibited online behavior. The work presented here proposes that self-attention is affected by factors in mediated communication environments and the resulting direction of self-attention provides a more complete explanation. In an 2 (self awareness cues/no self-awareness cues) x (visually anonymous/visible) 2 online experiment where participants are either visually identified by their Facebook profile picture or remain visually anonymous, this work examines how the absence of self-awareness cues in online environments—specifically cues that prime the effect of human eye gaze—interact with visibility and perceptions of anonymity to influence communication behavior. Although specific predictions were not supported, a post-hoc analysis indicates that visibility and cues to human eye gaze influence how people pay attention to themselves. Thus providing a framework to explain negatively disinhibited behavior in online spaces where users are visually identified. Visibility affected the way people thought about themselves depending on how identifiable they were in their profile picture. Perhaps surprisingly, visible participants were generally more negatively disinhibited than visually anonymous participants, but participants who rated themselves high in physical identifiability in their Facebook photo exhibited less negative behavior. Further, cues to human eye gaze also affected participants differently depending on whether or not they were visible or visually anonymous. For visually anonymous participants, the eye gaze prime increased public self-consciousness. For visible participants, the prime resulted in lower public self-consciousness. The eye gaze prime did not affect negative disinhibition, but it did make people harsher judges of their behavior in self-assessments.