{"id":50,"date":"2006-09-29T01:00:12","date_gmt":"2006-09-29T01:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.the-wests.net\/rick\/?p=50"},"modified":"2006-09-29T01:00:12","modified_gmt":"2006-09-29T01:00:12","slug":"are-you-a-different-personality-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.byuipt.net\/rickwest\/2006\/09\/29\/are-you-a-different-personality-online\/","title":{"rendered":"Are you a different personality online?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I speak Spanish after having spent a couple of years on an LDS mission<\/a> in Ecuador, and I was talking to a colleague of mine a couple of years ago who also spoke Spanish. He is more of a quiet, private type of person, but he commented that he noticed he was much more outgoing in Spanish, almost like he was a different person. I have noticed this with other people who speak a different language, who seem to be louder, quieter, more reserved or more flamboyant, depending on which language they are speaking.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never been able to figure out why that is the case.<\/p>\n

I was reminded of this strange linguistic phenomenon today after reading a Wired article by Tony Long<\/a>. In the article, Long discusses how relationships have changed because of technology. Ironically, coming from a Wired writer, he doesn\u2019t think this change is good. He argues that while we might communicate more because of modern technologies, the strength or depth of our interaction is less. He believes:<\/p>\n

It’s a paradox of the technology that even as the world shrinks, our actual communication skills are eroding. Instant communication encourages superficiality in the way we talk to each other. That’s because we really aren’t talking to each other. You have to look a person in the eye and speak in order to be doing that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He goes on to explain how face-to-face apologies seem more heart-felt that rapidly sent emails, which he feels \u201ctrivializes the act of contrition.\u201d He also discusses some studies indicating that we spend most of our days using technology for many tasks, including to communicate.<\/p>\n

At the end of the article, he refers to a study, which quotes a Yahoo executive reporting that mothers (yes, I know, this is WAY too far removed from the primary source) said that they communicates better with their teenagers through IM because that\u2019s the only way they WILL communicate with their parents.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost like these mothers describe their teens as being different people when communicating through technology. Face-to-face, he won\u2019t talk. But on IM they will.<\/p>\n

Do we, like these teenagers, have different personalities when we are communicating with technology, rather than F2F? Like when my friend who acts differently when speaking Spanish, I act differently when I communicate online. I think I am bolder, more confident, wittier (I hope), but more critical (unfortunately). My wife and I love to IM and have our funniest, laugh-out-loud kinds of discussions through IM (she also is wittier online!). In fact, a friend of mine teased me when I said that my wife and I do a lot of our communicating through IM. We talk F2F too, of course, but some of our most enjoyable conversations have been through instant messaging.<\/p>\n

And the best part is those wonderful conversations can be archived!<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard similar things happen when people participate in Second Life or MMOG online games\u2014they take on a different personality from their \u201creal\u201d one. Why do we act differently online? I don\u2019t know, but I think it\u2019d be an interesting research agenda to try and find out!<\/p>\n

Along a similar vein, Robert Putnam of Harvard recently spoke at BYU<\/a> and discussed how social connections are in decline. But there\u2019s a ray of hope: He said this has happened before, after the Industrial Revolution, and people found new ways of forming connections. He encouraged the BYU students to create new methods for connecting to others in our modern society.<\/p>\n

And what better way to do THAT than through technology?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I speak Spanish after having spent a couple of years on an LDS mission in Ecuador, and I was talking to a colleague of mine a couple of years ago who also spoke Spanish. He is more of a quiet, private type of person, but he commented that he noticed he was much more outgoing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-50","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-blogtracks","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.byuipt.net\/rickwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.byuipt.net\/rickwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.byuipt.net\/rickwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.byuipt.net\/rickwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.byuipt.net\/rickwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.byuipt.net\/rickwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.byuipt.net\/rickwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.byuipt.net\/rickwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.byuipt.net\/rickwest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}