The Development of Online and Offline Romantic Relationships: A Turning Point Study by Sophia W. McDowell
Early research in CMC found that the medium was mostly shallow, impersonal, and sometimes hostile (e.g., Dubrovsky, Kiesler, & Sethna, 1991; Walther, 1994; 1996). However, later research, as well as anecdotal evidence, seem to indicate that the medium may have some important interpersonal qualities. For example, although the Internet was originally developed for defense and research related intentions, almost immediately after its inception, people began to use it for personal e-mail (Zakon, 1996). Growing numbers of reports are appearing in popular and scholarly descriptions of online life (e.g., Turkle, 1995) attesting to relationships that are equivalent to, or even surpassing, FtF in some interpersonal aspects. In Parks and Floyd’s (1996) study of Internet newsgroups, nearly two thirds (60.7%) of participants reported that they had formed online personal relationships (acquaintances, friendships, and other) with people whom they had met for the first time via a newsgroup. The proportion of people participating in MOO’s who were involved in personal relationships online was found to be even higher: 93.6% (Parks & Roberts, 1998). In studies of e-mail use in the workplace, users reported that the medium was used regularly to socialize, maintain relationships, and receive emotional support (Finholt & Sproull, 1990; McCormick & McCormick, 1992).
In some circumstances, CMC can even surpass the level of affection and emotion of parallel FtF interaction (Walther, 1996). For instance, one participant in a MOO observed that through their Internet relationship, he and his significant other knew "so much more about each other than is normally possible through a conventional relationship" (Parks & Roberts, 1998). Walther (1996) labels this phenomenon, in which CMC is experienced as more intimate than similar FtF communication, "hyperpersonal communication."
Drawing on Social Identity Deindividuation (SIDE) theory, Walther (1996) developed an explanation for this hyperpersonal effect, suggesting that under certain circumstances, CMC message receivers inflate the perceptions they form about their partners. It is thought that particularly when communicating with someone who is physically distant (e.g. someone in another country), or with a person about whom one has little prior personal knowledge, subtle social context or personality cues within a CMC message may take on particularly important values. CMC partners may make more meaning out of relatively insignificant information such as spellings errors, use of punctuation, or word choice, and thus develop stereotypical impressions of the other. These attributions, depending on whether or not participants believe that they are in some form of group relationship, can either be positive or negative. Walther (1996) predicts that "when participants are led to perceive that they are in a group relationship, each tends to hold a ‘social self-categorization’ rather than an ‘individual self-categorization,’ [resulting in] attributions of greater similarity and liking with one’s partners" (p. 18).
Another possible contributor to the hyperpersonal properties of CMC is the ability for people to optimize their self-presentation online. The absence of physical interaction in CMC allows participants more flexibility in their expression of self. Physical appearance and physical attraction have been shown to be very important in relational development, and particularly so for romantic relationships (Brehm, 1992; Hatfield & Sprecher, 1986). However, unlike in FtF interaction, the other’s physical presence— his/her attractiveness, age, race, ethnicity, gender, and mannerisms—is not evident. A person’s impressions of an online communication partner are based instead upon whatever information the partner has chosen to reveal about him or herself (Cooper & Sportolari, 1997; Walther, 1992b). As Bell and Daly (1984) observed, people in general try to present themselves in socially favorable ways and try to get others to like them. Therefore, it follows that the impression a person creates about an online relational partner is likely to be more positive than that which might have been formed if the interaction had occurred offline.
In FtF conversations, much emotional and cognitive energy is spent trying to correctly construct and understand verbal talk (which tends to be spontaneous, sometimes simultaneous, and thus difficult to comprehend), paying attention to the numerous different cues, and following conventions of turn-taking. In contrast, asynchronous modes of CMC, in which each individual logs on separately, and there are delays between communications (e.g. e-mail), allow communicators more time to reflect upon, prepare, and self-censor their messages at their own pace (Walther, 1996). As online communicators are better able to concentrate on message construction at their own pace, their communication may end up being more socially desirable and effective than in FtF interactions. The extra time and energy afforded by asynchronous communication also allows online communicators to further improve their self-presentation to their partners.
One of the defining factors of FtF interaction is the necessity for entrainment: the synchronization between partners of their activities in order to be co-present. McGrath (1991) suggests that the entrainment that is necessary in FtF interaction can at times be inconvenient and challenging to the interactants. In synchronizing their schedules, for example, each communication partner must take time away from his/her own individual activities, and because the resource of time is often scarce, the time the pair do spend together may be more focused on tasks rather than on social talk. In asynchronous CMC, however, communication does not require the same form of entrainment, and individuals can communicate with others at their own convenience—often when all other individual activities have stopped. Because each communication partner can participate in the relationship on his or her own schedule, some of the time pressures experienced in entrained interactions are removed. Thus, each partner has more time to devote to socially oriented exchanges, and not feel like time devoted to sending and probing for interpersonal information is time taken away from task completion (Walther, 1996).
Losing the need for entrainment may also provide people with a sense of personal space and control over the relationship. Particularly for those who avoid intimate relationships because of fears about being trapped or losing their freedom, CMC relationships may be attractive because people are freer to engage and disengage when they want to (Cooper & Sportolari, 1997).
Another phenomenon that often occurs in minimal-cue interaction is the magnification of the reciprocal influence that partners exert; a process called behavioral confirmation (Walther, 1996). Snyder, Tanke, and Berscheid (1977) studied this process as it occurs in telephone interactions. In this experiment, male and female subjects engaged in telephone conversations. Before the actual phone interaction, male subjects were shown a photograph of either a physically attractive or a physically unattractive woman, and were told that the photo depicted their conversation partner (though it really pictured paid models who were not participants in the study). Female participants were not aware of whether they had been portrayed as attractive or unattractive, and indeed they did not know that their conversation partner had been shown any alleged photo of them at all. It was found that not only did the photos affect the male subjects’ judgments of their partners’ sociability, poise, sexual warmth, and outgoingness—both before and after the interaction with the partner—but that when observers coded the females’ communication during the interaction, they found the females who had been thought to be more attractive displayed more confidence, greater animation, greater enjoyment of the conversation, and greater liking for their partners than those who were thought to be unattractive. In a form of self-fulfilling prophecy, when a male believed that he was speaking with an attractive female, his communication reflected his impression of her, which in turn appeared to affect the female’s communication in a way that confirmed the male’s initial projection.
It is possible that behavioral confirmation occurs in CMC as well, and may contribute to the formation of intensely intimate interactions online (Walther, 1996). A person, for instance, might place a particularly attractive picture of himself on a webpage, or perhaps even claim that the photograph of another more attractive man is himself. Based on Snyder et al.’s (1977) findings, we might expect this image to affect others’ judgments positively. Even if a visual image of a person is not available, an individual might portray herself in her written communication as more attractive than she really is. This verbal description might be sufficient to make others believe that she is very attractive, and cause behavioral confirmation to occur.
A similar self-fulfilling cycle involving self-disclosure may also occur in CMC. Mutual self-disclosure has been found to be a central ingredient in developing intimacy between two people. Partners who self-disclose more to each other report greater emotional involvement in dating relationships and greater satisfaction in marriage (Brehm, 1992, p. 206). New acquaintances tend to match each other’s level of self-disclosure: One partner will disclose more if the other person discloses, and will hold back when the other withdraws (Hendrick & Hendrick, 1982).
Because of the perceived distance, relative anonymity, and safety in CMC, people may reveal more than they normally would in real life (Cooper & Sportolari, 1997). As one user of CMC explained, "I was talking to people [online] about my problems endlessly… I find it a lot easier to talk to people [online] about them because they’re not there. I mean, they are there but they’re not there. I mean, you could sit there and you could tell them about your problems and you don’t have to worry about running into them on the street the next day" (Turkle, 1995, p. 198). If one partner feels liberated to share intimate information about him/herself, the other will tend to view him/her more favorably, and should in turn respond with his/her own self-disclosure. This cycle of mutual disclosure sustained by CMC will lead to a sense of great relational closeness.
This hyperpersonal sense of closeness is unlikely to last indefinitely, however, as mentioned above, Cooper and Sportolari (1997) suggest that online relationships are vulnerable to a "boom and bust" phenomenon. While Internet romances may feel exhilarating at first, it is reasoned that this intensity cannot be sustained because the underlying trust and true knowledge of the other are not there to support it. At this point, either the growth in relational closeness might either slow down gradually or, as Cooper and Sportolari (1997) predict, the relationship may "bust," resulting in great disappointment and bitterness.
Anecdotal as well as some experimental evidence (e.g., Parks & Roberts, 1998) exist that support Walther’s (1996) theoretical predictions of "hyperpersonal" effects in CMC. However, no study has thus far measured this predicted phenomenon directly. This study proposes to observe this effect by comparing the rate of change in levels of commitment as reported by partners in similar online and offline relationships over time. Specifically, the following hypothesis is proposed:
H3: The change in level of reported commitment in online romantic relationships will be faster than that of offline romantic relationships at the beginning of relational development. However, the rate of reported commitment change in online relationships will taper off and match the rate in offline romances over time. (See Figure 1 for illustration of this effect.)