Exposure in Cyberspace as Means of Enhancing Psychological Assessment

Abstract

For those who regularly surf through cyberspace and experience it as a parallel and not unusual social environment – whether this takes the form of online forums, chat rooms, or personal communication through instant messaging (IM) – it is customary to encounter various types and exhibitions of human behavior. Many Internet surfers, in the beginning, are convinced that most other surfers impersonate, lie, cheat, or at the very least attempt to pull your leg; later, however, it occurs to them that this basic premise is generally wrong. After spending much time in virtual communities, publicly and privately interacting with numerous anonymous individuals, many people start to realize that their behavior in cyberspace reflects their actual personalities or mood states. To their astonishment, as they observe over time other people’s gestures, behavioral patterns, writing styles, frequency and intensity of involvement in group situations, personal associations, vocabulary, choice of verbal expressions, netiquette, and other features of their online behavior – all based on textual communication – laypeople realize that they can learn a great amount about themselves and about others. Moreover, it occurs to them that under these circumstances, they could learn even more about many people’s personality dispositions, attitudes, moral values, sensitivities, habits, needs, and preferences than in an offline, face-to-face (F2F) environment. This intuitive recognition by many Internet users is consistent with what behavioral theorists and researchers of cyberspace have argued in regard to the emergence of self in cyberspace. That is, in contrast to common belief, we now know that many people, when immersed in cyberspace, remove their everyday, offline masks and games and expose their more authentic selves, revealing their longer-term personality dispositions and traits or their current mood and emotional state (McKenna, 2007; also see McKenna, Chapter 10). This chapter takes another step in this knowledge direction. Under the assumption that people not only tend to express and reflect themselves in online situations but also usually feel comfortable doing so, the idea advanced here is that the online environment may constructively be used to assess and evaluate people in professional terms. Because psychologists so widely use and need assessment and evaluation activities – for clinical, educational, vocational, and other purposes – cyberspace may be professionally exploited to