Anonymity opens up split personality zone
Faceless communication online or over phone often turns nice people nasty

One minute, they’re nice, normal people. The next, they’re frothing at the mouse.

“It’s mind-boggling the things people will say and even the things I will say,” says Catherine McIntyre, a 38-year-old medical billing specialist from Houston. “People who’d never say something horrible in real life will do it again and again and again online. It’s like the behavior of crowds, or those mass beatings where no one gets blamed because everyone’s at fault.”

Sheri Pineda, a 59-year-old customer service representative at the Daily Breeze in Torrance, Calif., encounters the same bad behavior in the after-hours messages left by her newspaper’s subscribers.

[i][/i]“It’s appalling the way people talk,” Pineda says. “They’ll rant and rave and cuss at us with extremely foul language. And I think a lot them specifically wait until we close the phones. They’re looking to let it all out and then get on with their day. And then they’re surprised when I get back to them. They’re like, ‘You actually heard that?’ and will be embarrassed.”

Hello. You have reached the split personality zone. Press 1 to melt down. Press 2 to hang up and act like a normal person again.

I, anonymous
Between out-of-control customers, vituperative online posters and road-raging drivers, it’s hard to find an individual who hasn’t succumbed to the siren song of faceless, consequence-free communication. Online boards are clogged with insults hurled by readers hiding behind deceptively mild screen names — (“I hope you rot in hell!” signed Kittyface) — and customer service reps endure blistering tirades from disembodied voices week in and week out.

These days there are a dozen ways to communicate without actually having to look somebody in the eye. As a result, not only have we developed an abrupt, abbreviated way to chat (IMHO), but our technological advances have spawned new psychological terms such as “online disinhibition effect” to explain our tendency to open up — in both good ways and bad — when we’re sitting in front of a screen.

But our split personalities aren’t limited to the Web. They tend to show up whenever no one’s looking.

In a February 2008 study published in the journal Psychological Reports, researchers found that out of four groups of participants, only those in the anonymous group took part in antisocial behavior — in this case defined as violating rules to obtain a reward.

“I definitely believe that anonymity affects the frequency of antisocial behavior among individuals to some extent, even when these individuals have a reasonable sense of morality — so-called ‘ordinary people,’” says study author Tatsuya Nogami of Nagoya University in Japan.

“In my personal opinion, people generally try to comply with social norms in everyday life, even when such compliance with norms and rules conflicts with their personal self-interests. However, if you can get what you want without receiving any punishment or negative evaluations from others, are you still 100 percent sure that you’ll always refrain from engaging in that kind of undesirable behavior?”


Share your stories
Readers share their monstrous anonymous behavior


Rage against the machine
Cindy Helgason, a 48-year-old soap maker from Des Moines, Iowa, says she can’t stick a sock in her anonymous persona no matter how hard she tries.

“Normally I’m a goody-two-shoes,” says Helgason. “But whenever I get in the car, I yell and cuss a blue streak. Everybody who drives slower than me is an idiot and everybody who drives faster is a maniac. The worst part is this isn’t a very big place. My kids will say, ‘Gosh mom, that’s Mrs. So-and-So,’ and I’m like, ‘Oops!’ That’s one of the reasons I took the sign for my soap-making business off the back of my car. I don’t want to be associated with the person I am behind the wheel.”

According to psychologist Patricia Wallace, senior director of information technology at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth, a car can offer us the same kind of psychological distance — and/or personality-cloaking capacity — as a computer.

“When your windows are rolled up, you feel relatively anonymous,” says Wallace, author of the book “The Psychology of the Internet.” “Not long ago I saw someone I knew going down the street furiously honking at the car in front of them. I turned the corner and waved and suddenly they weren’t anonymous anymore. You could see the incredible shame come over them because they’d demonstrated this behavior that from their perspective was out of character. Anonymity can draw out some very troubling behavior.”

McIntyre, the billing specialist from Houston, says the online news forums she’s participated in over the years have led her down many a dark and dysfunctional corridor.


See link for more : http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26837911/

LASIEFAIRE:

Anonymity opens up split personality zone
Faceless communication online or over phone often turns nice people nasty

One minute, they’re nice, normal people. The next, they’re frothing at the mouse.

Of course.
Like my friend says, a vagrant is a king on NL.
People come here to create an alter ego. If they are shy in real life, they become outspoken here
If they are quiet in real life, they become noisy here.
They create themselves using the cyber world. Give themselves usernames that reflect who they want to be and then go ahead living this life on cyber world.
Some spend so much time here because they are scared to face reality too. It's an interesting concept.

But whenever I get in the car, I yell and cuss a blue streak. Everybody who drives slower than me is an idiot and everybody who drives faster is a maniac.

hehhehe

j-girl:

Of course.
Like my friend says, a vagrant is a king on NL.
People come here to create an alter ego. If they are shy in real life, they become outspoken here
If they are quiet in real life, they become noisy here.
They create themselves using the cyber world. Give themselves usernames that reflect who they want to be and then go ahead living this life on cyber world.
Some spend so much time here because they are scared to face reality too. It's an interesting concept.

Anonymity changes some peoples behavior.
There a guy who opened a thread about Nigerian girls claiming mountains.
It won't come as a surprise if in real life he is far from what he claims.

LASIEFAIRE:

Anonymity changes some peoples behavior.
There a guy who opened a thread about Nigerian girls claiming mountains.
It won't come as a surprise if in real life he is far from what he claims.

Spot On

NL is a platform for many pple to live out their fantasy lives. . .

I dont have a problem with it except where they use people in process and hurt their feelings