In a recent issue of Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, Gosling et al.1 provide evidence for what is a surprisingly controversial statement: social people tend to use online social media most often.
To understand why this is controversial, you must first consider the heritage of research on and beliefs about online behavior. Originally, the Internet was seen as the bastion of asocial recluses – programmers, engineers, and the like (I can say that because I’m a programmer!). These were folks that would rather drop to the command line and write a pretty shell script than engage another person in live conversation. As a result, most research focused on the negative aspects of computer usage and the hazards associated with long-term exposure.
We still see this research. Recent work on addictive behavior related to World of Warcraft [WoW], for example, paints an often disturbing image of parents ignoring the cries of their children and the needs of their spouses with the hopes of making a little virtual gold with their virtual friends. We even see examples of people dying, so intent was their focus on WoW. Gaming and internet addictions, while not unique psychological disorders in their own right, are nevertheless real concerns that any heavy user should be aware of.
But what about people without mental disorder? What about the people who simply use the Internet a lot, but perhaps not to a harmful degree? Who, exactly, is motivated to use the Internet?
In our own research in 2006 published in Computers in Human Behavior, Lounsbury and I2 found a negative relationship between agreeableness, conscientiousness, and extraversion versus computer usage (r = -.21 to -.23). Or in other words, the more you use the Internet, the more likely you are to be uncooperative, unorganized, and socially withdrawn. That’s a bit exaggerated, of course, but this is the basic profile. This was also not very surprising; most of the other research we could find up to that point said essentially the same thing.
Social media should be a simple extension of this; we would expect those that spent the most time on Facebook, theoretically withdrawn from in-person social events, would still be the most disagreeable, lazy, and asocial of them all, content to watch other people’s lives from the sidelines without actively participating. But Gosling et al. found precisely the opposite: extraverts use Facebook more often than introverts across a wide range of objective criteria, including number of Facebook friends, hours spent on Facebook, and the frequency of many specific behaviors (e.g. adding photos, changing your profile picture, reading comments). Gosling found these relationships with both self-reports of Facebook usage and objective coding of their Facebook profiles.
This is therefore contrary to the prior research findings discussed above. The more social you are offline, the more likely you are to be social online.
Gosling et al. also found relationships with openness and conscientiousness, but I am less convinced by these correlations. While some of them are reasonably high (up to r = .31), the researchers did not apply any sort of family-wise error corrections to their hypothesis tests, and they may have discovered these significant correlations by chance alone.
So all of this opens up an important new question: is there something unique about social media that draws in extroverts, or does this reflect a general shift in the population of Internet users? If this does reflect a shift, we must be careful to revisit old research findings and interpret them in this light. And if social media is unique, then we certainly need more social media focused research to understand why. This is the motivation behind my own grant project, certainly, but we need more people looking critically at this fascinating new area.
- Gosling, S., Augustine, A., Vazire, S., Holtzman, N., & Gaddis, S. (2011). Manifestations of personality in online social networks: Self-reported Facebook-related behaviors and observable profile information. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking. DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2010.0087 [↩]
- Landers, R.N., & Lounsbury, J.W. (2006). An investigation of Big Five and narrow personality traits in relation to Internet usage. Computers in Human Behavior, 22 (2), 283-293. DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2004.06.001 [↩]
Neo-Academic has received yet another honor – we are one of the Top 25 Psychology Blogs of 2011 according to thebestcolleges.org.
You always wonder when you get these things if it is just a means to boost the awarding organization’s Google PageRank (there are a fair number of you folks reading this, after all), so I took a look around their website. They seem to be linked to elearners.com, which has a mixed-to-poor reputation on Web of Trust (if you don’t use the WOT add-on, get it immediately). From the look of it, their site provides useful, helpful information, but may be a bit overly aggressive in their marketing techniques (with some folks criticizing them for spam).
So, with the assumption that this list of blogs qualifies as good information, we thank you for the recognition – especially as one of only two I/O psychology blogs on the list!
If you aren’t following them already, there are several other blogs on the list that I strongly recommend following:
- Jeromy Anglim’s Blog – Psychology and statistics from a University of Melbourne psychologist.
- Milton Broome’s Virtual Psychology – A blog on psychology, virtual worlds, skepticism and more from the avatar of Dr. Simon Bignell, Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Derby.
- Mind Hacks – Neuroscience and psychology tricks to find out what’s going on inside your brain.
- PsyBlog – Helping you understand your mind.
- The Media Psychology Blog – The psychology of media, social media and emerging technologies from Dr. Pamela Rutledge.
In a study of 1222 undergraduates, Selwyn1 examined differences in cybercheating levels between a variety of majors and student types. Overall results? 61.9% of students cybercheat.
Before getting into this, it’s important to distinguish cybercheating/online plagiarism and cheating in online courses. These are not the same. Cybercheating can be defined as cheating enabled by the internet – so cybercheating can occur in any course. For example, one variety of cybercheating is the use of “paper mills.” These websites employ people to write papers for undergraduates for a fee. A student might pay $2 per page for a term paper, for example. But such papers can be used in either in-person or online courses. This is not in any way unique to online courses.
According to Selwyn, estimates thus far vary a great deal as to what percentage and types of students engage in cybercheating, but they are all a little depressing:
- In a US study, 50% of students admitted to cybercheating at some point while they were in college.
- In another 30-40% of students admitted to copying text from the internet into their own work without citing the source. 10-20% did so for large sections of their assignments (i.e. more than a sentence here and there).
- About 25% of graduate students engage in these same behaviors.
- Typical profile of the most likely cybercheater: young male underclassmen experienced with the Internet
There is some disagreement as to why students engage in these behaviors. Some blame higher expectations for high grades, while others blame a changing youth culture where the copying of intellectual property is simply not seen as an important concern.
So how bad was it in Selwyn’s sample? 61.9% (757 students) admitted to engaging in online plagiarism. 59% copied a few sentences, 30% copied a few paragraphs, 12% copies a few pages, 4% copied entire documents, and 3% purchased essays. 22.3% admitted to engaging in such behaviors regularly.
Cybercheating rates were higher for males and for poor students. Contrary to prior research, rates were higher for more experienced students. Perhaps most interesting to me was the rate breakdown by field of study. Here they are in rank order of prevalence of at least a few sentences copied:
- Engineering and technology (72%)
- Computer sciences and mathematical sciences (71%)
- Social studies (64%)
- Business and administrative studies (63%)
- Law (62%)
- Creative arts and design (61%)
- Architecture, Building and Planning (60%)
- Medicine (58%)
- Natural sciences (57%)
- Humanities (46%)
Students with greater perceived Internet competency were also more likely to cybercheat, though not by a wide margin (about 8 percentage points across 4 categories of expertise).
The study also examined “traditional” plagiarism and found similarly high levels – again, 61.9% of the sample reported some type of plagiarism, though this time from books and articles. I am not wholly convinced that the researchers adequately differentiated “online articles” and “offline articles” (students may consider these to be the same thing), but there is not enough detail reported on their method to be sure either way.
I find this quote from a student particularly interesting (from p.473):
Things are a lot easier to get away with on the internet if you wanted to (giving false information for example.) But copying work without sourcing it is easier from books in my opinion, as universities have methods of screening essays for plagiarised work through the internet. (Female, 19 years, social studies, year 1)
It seems like this student has taken the time to reason through how she might cheat in the course and the relative risks of being caught. This is not a desperate student driven to cheat with a paper due at the last minute; this is premeditated.
We also get a window into why faculty are so bitter about online education in general. Consider these students (from p. 475):
… it’s easier to claim ignorance on a computer if you get caught doing something bad. (Male, 20, humanities, year 2)
As more and more people are using the Internet illegally (i.e. limewire etc.), I feel that the chances of being caught or the consequences of my actions are almost insignificant. So I feel no pressure in doing what ever everybody else is doing/using the Internet for. (Male, 19 years, engineering, year 1)
Again, purposeful deception, and not much regret over it.
All in all, these results are not all that surprising given previous research in this domain, but it does not seem as if things are getting any better. People wonder why I worry about cheating on hiring tests; well, where do you think these students go after they graduate?
- Selwyn, N. (2008). Not necessarily a bad thing…: A study of online plagiarism amongst undergraduate students. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 33 (5), 465-479 DOI: 10.1080/02602930701563104 [↩]