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The Social Brain Hypothesis (Dunbar, 1998) tested on Facebook, using generic behavioural closeness metrics (number of friends who people a) post on their wall, status updates or photos; or b) message/chat with), by the social network’s in-house sociologist Cameron Marlow.
from The Economist (26 Feb 2009): Social networks: Primates on Facebook
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Adamic, L. A., Lento, T.M. and Fiore, A.T. (2012). How You Met Me. ICWSM’12 short paper.
full text pdf
According to their analysis of responses of more than 2.5 million posts to the popular Facebook meme, “Leave one memory of how you met me…” from July 2010 to Nov 2011, the team identify trends in the source of connections made on the social network.
A really excellent analysis.
Fantastic graph detailing differences in categories by age (a significant categorical difference). Majority of responses across all age groups - by a mile - is school, although this reduces in number as respondents get older. Work is next popular for respondents of all age groups except <18 years old, whose second most-frequent connection is “birth”, denoting a parent, sibling or other family member.
Only gender differences:
Men were 57% more likely to meet a friend through sports than women, while women were 34% more likely than men have befriended a neighbor.
As for future research, the authors propose:
There may also be some close ties, e.g. siblings and spouses, who play a disproportionate role in shaping individuals social networks in ways that have not been studied on a large scale.
Facebook is clearly therefore more about reinforcing existing relationships than forging new ones, echoing a recent comment at a lecture I gave from an undergraduate student, “if you want to make new friends, don’t go to Facebook. Go to a dating site.”
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Johnson, K. A. (2011). The effect of Twitter posts on students’ perceptions of instructor credibility. Learning, Media and Technology, Vol 36(1): 21-38.
full text pdf
A small-scale study that shows an increase in students’ perceptions of instructor credibility (competence, trustworthiness & caring) as a function of self-disclosure on Twitter. Specifically there was evidence for an increase in ratings of credibility if the instructor used the microblogging platform to tweet about personal information.
Interestingly, there was no evidence of an effect between social-only tweets (greatest credibility of all) and a combination of social and instructional tweets, or instructional-only tweets and the combination of social and instructional tweets.
I like this explanation:
No longer do teachers need to use class time to reveal bits of personal information about themselves: instead, this revelation of information can take place outside of class in a forum where students can choose whether to look at it.
Hogan, B., Li, N. and Dutton, W.H. (2011) A Global Shift in the Social Relationships of Networked Individuals: Meeting and Dating Online Comes of Age. Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. (full text pdf)
This report comes out of the cross-national research Dr Bernie Hogan has been doing at the OII on the Me, My Spouse and the Internet project.
Abstract
This paper reports on an analysis of original data from a cross-national survey in 18 countries of couples and their social relationships. The survey focused on cohabiting couples, who have the Internet at home. Each member of each couple was asked how they met their partners, what dating strategies they used before they met, how they maintain their current relationships and social networks, and how these individuals use the Internet in everyday life and work. The survey was conducted online, using a professional pool of respondents to draw our samples. There is wide variety across the world and within nations, such as in approaches to online relationships, to friendships, and to the Internet. However, several general patterns are clear. First, slightly over a third of the sample has some experience with online dating, while 15 percent are currently in a relationship that started online. Beginning in 1997, coinciding with the rise of Web 2.0 technologies, online dating starts to gain prominence. This rise in prominence continues until 2009, when over 30 percent of Internet-enabled couples appear to have met through online dating. A similar growing prominence of the Internet is also occurring around the maintenance of relationships, and the development of social relations more generally. In these and other ways, it is clear that the Internet has become a new place to look for relationships, and that the Internet is important for strong as well as weak ties within social networks.
my notes:
the most relevant sections to love are 2, 3 and 6.
“the Internet is also reconfiguring strong ties – the relationships of people who are our most physically close and emotionally intimate, such as married couples and cohabiting partners [Dutton et al., 2009b]”
Interesting emphasis on networked individualism’s impact on dating and falling in love: there’s a shift towards “individualistic activities rather than group-oriented ones”.
Some of the key findings:
22.6% of relationships in the UK began online (since 1997)
offline, most people still meet their current partners at work, then at a bar, pub or club, followed by being introduced by a friend.
online, 38.5% of people meet through dating sites, followed by a chatroom/MUD/MOO, followed by a social networking site.
many people will disclose intimate and personal details in online settings with individuals other than their spouse or partner [Whitty, 2004]
striaght/gay women and men agree on the behaviours they approve/diapprove of a their spouse doing (except gay men, who approve of a partner discussing life with another person he finds atrtactive and viewing explicit content with someone he finds attractive); straight women and gay women have strongest disapproval for spouses who discuss life, personal information and a relationship with another person. They view cybersex and having an “emotional relationship” with the same amount of disapproval.
Great references section.
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UPDATED 2 JULY 2012!
more notes and quotes:
slightly over a third of the sample has some experience with online dating, while 15 percent are currently in a relationship that started online.
the key point that emerges from this timeline is that beginning in 1997, online dating starts to gain prominence. This coincides with the rise of Web 2.0 technologies… This rise in prominence continues until 2009. By 2009, over 30 percent of Internet-enabled couples appear to have met through online dating.
older people are disproportionately more likely to use online dating as a means to find their current partner, than younger people. About 23 percent of people below forty started a relationship through the Internet, whereas about 36 percent of people forty and above found their current partner online
The northern European countries are slightly but significantly more likely to use online dating
marriage markets have not changed dramatically since the rise of online dating, except in the very important respect that people have now added the Internet to the repertoire of means for meeting potential partners.
online dating sites remain the primary context for making successful online matches
where’d you meet your current partner (except gay men): friends of friends, clubs/bars, public space, wasn’t looking, family, social networking sites, hobby groups, online dating, church events, personals
previous partners? (before 1997): clubs/bars, friends of friends, public spaces, wasn’t looking, family, hobby, church, personals, social networking, online dating
offline (now): work, bar/pub/club, friend of friend, house party, college, public space, known since child, large social event, family, neighbour, hobby group, sports team, church
in the past 15 years people have not only gotten more individualistic about their relationship strategies, but also more instrumen tally focused. Individuals are increasingly considering the practice of finding a mate as a distinct and intentional activity with its own set of contexts and conventions, rather than something that just happens’ as one goes about other activities.
38.5% of online contexts where people met their current partner was in online dating sites
where people meet someone new that they later meet offline: SNS (55.4%), direct contact, forum, chat room, online dating, gaming, personal
cybersex: 7% hetero female, 11% lesbian, 10% hetero men, 21% gay man; emotional relationship: 7% hetero female, 10% lesbian, 9% hetero male, 16% gay male
least approval of one’s spouse doing these activities, even those who’re having emotional relationship w another (but not cybersex)
Internet-enabled individuals are likely to know someone who dated online, or know someone who married their online-met partner.
From the Oxford Internet Institute, led by Dr Bernie Hogan.
Abstract:
The project uses survey data from Australian and UK couples to look at the significance and impact of the Internet on intimate relationships, including how people use ICTs to meet each other and maintain relationships, and how ICTs affect their behaviour.
Some very interesting papers here.
Levine, D. (2000). Virtual Attraction: what rocks your boat. Cyberpsychology & Behavior. 3(4): 565-573.
I first read Levine’s paper in 2003, when I was starting my MSc in Social Psychology. It subsequently became an important part of my thinking about how relationships - romantic and platonic - are formed online. I particularly like the way she maps an existing offline romantic relationship framework on the online experience, drawing parallels between the two (thus, assuming the similarities of online and offline social experience), and explaining the differences by highlighting where the theory doesn’t match the shortcomings of computer-mediated communication.
Abstract:
Flirting online is not the same as flirting face-to-face. The beauty of the virtual medium is that flirting is based on words, charm, and seduction, not physical attraction and cues. The online world gives those people who do not fit a stereotypical model of human beauty a chance to be Don Juans and Carmen Mirandas and have an equal opportunity to be found desirable. For those considered beautiful by societal standards, it gives them a chance to be attractive to others for reasons other than their physical qualities (i.e., intellect, charm, interests, etc.). It is possible to account for the richness and depth relationships can take on via this seemingly impersonal medium by applying psychosocial theories of intimate attraction as well as describing the qualities of interpersonal interactions that take place online. Components of attraction as based on the theory of the development of face-to-face relationships are explored, and then considered in terms of how these theories hold up under a new application. Examples of stories of people who have begun relationships online are used to illustrate. Implications for future research are explored.
Full text (pdf)
her key elements of relationship formation (with my notes in parentheses):
Professor Aaron Ben-Ze’ev is the President of the University of Haifa. He was trained as a philosopher, and his research has focussed on the subtleties of emotions. He’s published papers that examine the implications of elements of computer-mediated communication that are different than offline interactions (for example, our penchant for online openness, honesty and self-disclosure), and wrote Love Online: Emotions on the Internet in 2004.
In this interview, he talks about how much our romantic ideals have transformed because of the web, and why it’s the best place to look for a long-term partner, and he tackles the important issue of deception in online dating encounters.
“new to LambdaMOO, enchanted by its fluidity and playfulness but still somewhat shut out of it all by my own ungainly newbiehood, I gravitated toward this warm, quick-witted, and MOO-savvy new acquaintance with an eagerness that soon became an unmistakable infatuation - complete with anxious, RL blushes (and other, less G-rated physical responses) whenever she so much as typed a standard MOOish greeting-hug my way. I have no idea what exu really looked like then, nor really any sense that it could make much of a difference if I knew. It was only after my crush had somewhat abated that I met her face-to-face, during her brief visit to New York with Kropotkin, and through I found I couldn’t take my eyes off her - so fascinated I was with this sudden, raw intimacy, this standing there with nothing between us except air - I can say that I felt anything like physical attraction. The real-life exu just was not my type. And even so, the erotic undercurrent of my affection for her never really died out. It only ebbed and flowed, a wayward tide, rising and falling in answer to a distant body that hardly needed to be seen to make its gravity felt.” (p. 238)
“…the attraction Ashlet-Melissa sparked that day was a curiously enduring thing. The mind I’d seen at work in her description remained the same… excepting of course the assumptions I’d made about its gender. And even that distinction -0 significant though it seemed to me as a man of hitherto unwavering heterosexuality - ended up a bit of a blur in the long run, smudged over time by Niacin’s constant shifting back and forth between girl and bot, so that the better I got to know him, and the more I saw of his many, delectable morphs, the closer my aborted feelings or the creator of Ashley-Melissa crept back toward the threshold of awareness, maturing as they did so into an ambiguous concoction indeed, I mean, what was it, really, that was drawing me to this person? Was it the women he made? Was it the man who made them? Ot was it the seductively indefinite relationship between the two?” (p. 239)
"—
Julian Dibbell’s lovely description in his 1996 book My Tiny Life of his infatuation for two of his fellow participants in LambdaMOO, a popular (and well-studied) text-based online community in the mid-1990s
his observations about these infatuations:
“it’s very unlikely I would ever have come to feel the way I did about either Niacin or exu had my only contacts with them been face-to-face. And if you feel like drawing from that fact some sort of heartwarming, humanistic moral - you know, about the beauty that lies waiting to reveal itself to those not blinded by the accidental shapes biology bestows on mortals such as we, or whatever - then by all means be my guest. Personally, however, I tend to think that what I learned from these early attractions was more or less the same home truth I later got to know as one of LambdaMOO’s most cherished maxims: ‘In VR, it’s the best writers who get laid.”…
Well-rounded, colourful sentences start to do the work of big brown soulful eyes; too many typos in a character’s description can have about the same effect as dandruff flakes on a black sweater; and neither these nor any similar textual attributes, of course, turn out to be much more reliable as indicators of a person’s real worth than their physical counterparts have ever been.”” (p. 240)
OkTrends is original research and insights from OkCupid. We’ve compiled our observations and statistics from hundreds of millions of OkCupid user interactions, all to explore the data side of the online dating world.
OkCupid is the biggest free dating site in the U.S.; since we went online in 2004, we’ve collected an enormous amount of data on human interactions. This blog was started in July 2009 as a way to share some of the things we’ve learned about people.
Some interesting posts/images:
From the post, 10 Charts About Sex
Best Questions for a first date
Don’t be ugly by accident! (or, what your profile pic says about you)
When Monica Whitty and I connected for an interview for this blog, she also told me about some ESRC-funded research that she is conducting looking at an online dating scam (pdf).
Practically, the scenario’s pretty standard: scammers extract money from victims. However, the implications reach beyond personal finance; it tells us something about the intensity of the online environment as a field for the development of interpersonal trust and emotional commitment. It even helps us peer into the nature of love.
Here, Monica describes what it is and some of the early results - including who’s most at risk.
How has the most revolutionary innovation of our time - the Internet - transformed our world? What does it mean for the modern family? How has it changed our concepts of privacy? Of celebrity? Of love, sex and hate?
This is the online reporter's notebook for The Untangling the Web column in The Observer newspaper and the Untangling the Web book, published September 2012 by Guardian Books.
It's the collection of interviews, links, photos, videos and brainstorms that are feeding this compendium of the latest research about the social effects of the online world.
Contribute your ideas, stories and experiences by email to aleks.krotoski.freelance@guardian.co.uk or via Twitter, by tagging your tweets with #UTTW or @aleksk.
Aleks Krotoski has been writing about interactivity since 1999. She has a PhD in social psychology, focussing on relationships and influence online. Aleks is the host of the Tech Weekly podcast.
Read Aleks' Observer column at guardian.co.uk/untanglingtheweb
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