This is only very slightly off-topic, and since I've never figured out how to start a new thread (instructions, please), I thought I'd share it here. It's from The New York Times:
Essay
Flame First, Think Later: New Clues to E-Mail Misbehavior
function getSharePasskey() { return 'ex=1329714000&en=27234df5c6a72130&ei=5124';} function getShareURL() { return encodeURIComponent('http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/20/health/psychology/20essa.html'); } function getShareHeadline() { return encodeURIComponent('Flame First, Think Later: New Clues to E-Mail Misbehavior'); } function getShareDescription() { return encodeURIComponent('Social neuroscience offers clues into the neural mechanics behind sending messages that are taken as offensive, embarrassing or downright rude.'); } function getShareKeywords() { return encodeURIComponent('Computers and the Internet,Psychology and Psychologists,Electronic Mail'); } function getShareSection() { return encodeURIComponent('health'); } function getShareSectionDisplay() { return encodeURIComponent('Essay'); } function getShareSubSection() { return encodeURIComponent('psychology'); } function getShareByline() { return encodeURIComponent('By DANIEL GOLEMAN'); } function getSharePubdate() { return encodeURIComponent('February 20, 2007'); } By DANIEL GOLEMAN
Published: February 20, 2007
Jett Lucas, a 14-year-old friend, tells me the kids in his middle school send one other a steady stream of instant messages through the day. But there’s a problem.
Skip to next paragraph
Christian Northeast
“Kids will say things to each other in their messages that are too embarrassing to say in person,” Jett tells me. “Then when they actually meet up, they are too shy to bring up what they said in the message. It makes things tense.”
Jett’s complaint seems to be part of a larger pattern plaguing the world of virtual communications, a problem recognized since the earliest days of the Internet: flaming, or sending a message that is taken as offensive, embarrassing or downright rude.
The hallmark of the flame is precisely what Jett lamented: thoughts expressed while sitting alone at the keyboard would be put more diplomatically — or go unmentioned — face to face.
Flaming has a technical name, the “online disinhibition effect,” which psychologists apply to the many ways people behave with less restraint in cyberspace.
In a 2004 article in the journal CyberPsychology & Behavior, John Suler, a psychologist at Rider University in Lawrenceville, N.J., suggested that several psychological factors lead to online disinhibition: the anonymity of a Web pseudonym; invisibility to others; the time lag between sending an e-mail message and getting feedback; the exaggerated sense of self from being alone; and the lack of any online authority figure. Dr. Suler notes that disinhibition can be either benign — when a shy person feels free to open up online — or toxic, as in flaming.
The emerging field of social neuroscience, the study of what goes on in the brains and bodies of two interacting people, offers clues into the neural mechanics behind flaming.
This work points to a design flaw inherent in the interface between the brain’s social circuitry and the online world. In face-to-face interaction, the brain reads a continual cascade of emotional signs and social cues, instantaneously using them to guide our next move so that the encounter goes well. Much of this social guidance occurs in circuitry centered on the orbitofrontal cortex, a center for empathy. This cortex uses that social scan to help make sure that what we do next will keep the interaction on track.
