The Psychology of Cyberspace by John Suler, Ph.D. - Online Continuing Education Articles

The Final Showdown Between
In-Person and Cyberspace Relationships

or.... Can I Hold You in Cyberspace?

Whether you like it or not, cyberspace has become the new frontier in social relationships. People are making friends, colleagues, lovers, and enemies on the internet. The fervor with which many people have pursued this new social realm is matched by a backlash reaction from the skeptics. Relationships on the internet aren't really real, some people say - not like relationships in the real world. Socializing in cyberspace is just a cultural fad, a novelty, a phase that people go through. The critics say it can't compare to real relationships - and if some people prefer communicating with others via wires and circuits, there must be something wrong with them. They must be addicted. They must fear the challenging intimacy of real relationships.

Is this true? Is it true that "real" relationships are intrinsically superior to relationships in cyberspace? Or might relationships in cyberspace in fact be better?... Here is the showdown for us to explore.

But first, let's first settle on some terms. What exactly should we call relationships in cyberspace and relationships in the "real" world? Right off the bat, I'm going to discard the term "real" because it already biases our discussion in favor of relationships in the physical world. Whether or not those relationships are more "real" is the very issue at hand. The same is true of "virtual relationships" because the word "virtual" implies that those relationships are somehow less-than or not quite up to snuff. Some people like to say "face-to-face relationships" (ftf, f2f). I'm not particularly thrilled by that term either, because video conferencing on the internet surely allows people to present their faces to each other. We could say "physical relationships," although that conjures up images of wrestling and sex.

Well, I've already given away my preference for a term, as you've probably guessed - unless you let the title of this article slip right by you. I like "in-person relationships" because it captures the feeling of physical presence without necessarily getting physical. I doubt that even when holographic multimedia communication arrives (many years from now?) we will ever say that we meet our internet acquaintances "in-person." So it seems like a term that safely falls outside the realm of cyberspace. We can even abbreviate it nicely as IP and IPR.

Now, a term for cyberspace relationships.... How about (surprise again!) "cyberspace relationships" - aka, CSR? We also could follow current trends by calling it "computer-mediated relationships" (CMR), but I like the word "cyberspace." It conjures up feelings of place, location, and spatial interaction. People do indeed experience cyberspace as containing places where they go and meet others. Rather than highlighting the fact that cyberspace is controlled by computers, I like to emphasize instead that it is a psychological and social space.

With terms in hand, we're back to the showdown. Which is better? IPR or CSR? The key word here is "relationships." One approach to understanding that phenomenon is to examine the various pathways by which people communicate with and connect to each other - by the specific mechanisms for "relating." On the most fundamental level, we can compare IPR and CSR according to how people connect via the five senses:

hearing the other
seeing the other
touching the other
smelling the other
tasting (!) the other

The first - hearing - involves that basic human skill for language, which isn't necessarily auditory. So, before getting to the five senses, let's back up a notch to examine language.

The Word

A powerful way that people connect to each other is through words. In the beginning, CSR relied mostly on language conveyed through typed text - mostly e-mail and message board (newsgroup) posts. Even today, typed-text accounts for a very large majority of communication over the internet. There are at least three distinct advantages of these text-mediated relationships over IPR.

1. The interaction is asynchronous. It doesn't occur in "real time" so you can respond to your net-mate whenever you wish, at whatever pace you wish. That gives you time to think about what you want to say and to compose your reply exactly the way you want. This comes in very handy for those awkward or emotional situations in a relationship. Unlike IPR, you're never on the spot to reply immediately. You can think it through first, do a little research or soul-searching, if you wish. My advice for those very emotional moments is to compose a message, wait at least 24 hours, reread your message, modify it if necessary... THEN send it off. This wait-and-revise strategy can do wonders in averting impulsiveness, embarrassment, and regret. Chat and instant messaging systems, which also involve typed text, are much more synchronous than e-mail and message boards. However, they too often involve a slightly but meaningfully longer delay than IPR.

2. The written dialogues of CSR may involve different mental mechanisms than in-person talk. It may reflect a distinct cognitive style that enables some people to be more expressive, subtle, organized, or creative in how they communicate. Some people feel that they can express themselves better in the written word. Surely, there have been truly great authors and poets who sounded bumbling or shallow during IP conversation.

3. Text-mediated relationships enable you to record the interactions by saving the typed-text messages. Essentially, you can preserve large chunks of the relationship with your net-mate, maybe even the entire relationship if you only communicated via typed-text. At your leisure, you can review what you and your partner said, cherish important moments in the relationship, and reexamine misunderstandings and conflicts. This kind of reevaluation of the relationship is impossible in IPR, where you almost always have to rely on the vagaries of memory. In fact, if you want to get downright philosophical about it, you could make the argument that your complete archive of text communications with your net-mate *is* the relationship with that person, perfectly preserved in bits and bytes. It's not unlike a novel, which isn't a record of characters and plot, but rather *is* the characters and plot.

The big disadvantage of text-driven relationships is what's missing vis-a-vis IPR. There are no voices, facial expressions, or body language to convey meaning and emotion. That issue takes us to the first of the five senses - hearing.

Listen Carefully (hearing)

The human voice is rich in meaning and emotion. A sharp edge to someone's words can rouse your suspicion or anger. Just the sound of a loved one's voice can be enough to create feelings of comfort and joy. Singing - one of the most expressive of human activities - powerfully unites people. In CSR mediated by text only, both obvious and subtle nuances in voice pitch and volume are completely absent. And singing is impossible (unless you consider the mutual recitation of lyrics as singing... which some onliners do).

Advocates of text-driven CSR do have a comeback to this criticism. Lacking auditory and visual cues, the e-mail message or newsgroup post can be productively ambiguous in tone. When reading that typed message, there is a strong tendency to project - sometimes unconsciously - your own expectations, wishes, anxieties, and fears into what the person wrote. Transference reactions, as described in psychoanalytic theory, may develop. This distorting the person's intended meaning could lead to misunderstandings and conflict. It could stimulate countertransference reactions from your internet partner. On the other hand, if you discuss your (mis)perceptions with your friend, you are revealing underlying (perhaps unconscious) elements of how you think and feel. In a sense, you are being more real with the other person, allowing a deeper relationship to form. Of course, this more rich and meaningful relationship will only develop when people are mature enough to talk about and work through those projections and transferences with each other.

An entirely different comeback for cyberspace advocates is that one's voice CAN be heard via the internet. It's only a matter of time before audio-streaming becomes perfected to the point where it matches the quality of IPR. In fact, conversing in cyberspace may have some distinct advantages. If you so desire, conversations easily could be saved and replayed - which isn't possible in IPR, unless you're carrying a tape recorder. Using software programs, nuances in voice pitch and volume can be examined more carefully for subtle emotions and meaning. Programs also could allow you to modify your voice as you transmit it. If you want to speak in the voice of Bill Clinton, Arnold Schwartzenegger, or Daffy Duck, so be it. Or you can add in any auditory special effect you desire in order to embellish your words - Pomp and Circumstance, explosions, quacks.

As we'll see over and over again, a unique feature of CSR is the ability to use imagination and fantasy to shape the way in which you desire to present yourself. This can be a fascinating and revealing dimension to a relationship.

SEEING is Believing

I could write this section on SEEING almost word for word as I wrote the previous section on hearing. The human face and body language are rich in meaning and emotion. Critics of text-only communication in cyberspace complain that all these visual cues are missing, hence making the relationship ambiguous and depleted. Advocates of text-driven CSR again could reply that this ambiguity creates an opportunity to explore one's transference reactions, thereby enriching the relationship. They also may praise its level playing field. Appearances - such as gender, race, and whether you are "attractive" or not - are irrelevant. Everyone has an equal voice and is judged by the same standards: their words. Some claim that text-only talk carries you past the distracting superficial aspects of a person's existence and connects you more directly to their mind and personality.

Like audio-streaming, video transmissions will eventually make face-to-face meetings both practical and realistic, with the added feature of making it possible for you to LOOK like Bill Clinton, Arnold Schwartzenegger, or Daffy Duck, if you so choose. The multimedia chat environments where people use "avatars" to represent themselves is the first step in this opportunity to present yourself visually in any form you desire. It's the perfect way to express all sorts of things about your personality. You also can interact with others in any of an almost limitless variety of visual scenes. Want to meet your friend at the bottom of the ocean, or on a space station, or in the Oval Office?.... No problem. There is a big disadvantage, though, of audio/visual cyberspace meetings involving three or more people who can see each other only on computer screens. The subtle body language of who is looking and gesturing at whom is lost. Eventually, holographic meetings will solve that problem.

Can I Hold You in Cyberspace? (touching)

Humans need physical contact with each other. Infants sink into depression and die without it. How parents interact physically with them becomes a cornerstone of their identity and well-being. Adults deprived of tactile contact for long periods will tell you just how depriving it feels. In day to day relationships, never underestimate the power of a handshake, a pat on the back, a hug, or a kiss.

On this level of human relating, cyberspace falls short... way short. In multimedia chat communication there are some vague hints of physical contact, as when you snuggle up your avatar next to someone else's. But this is a far cry from the in-person counterpart. Unfortunately, it's not very likely that CSR - even holographic ones - will ever develop kinesthetic capabilities, unless technology figures out how to accurately record someone's caress and transmit that digital record into the other's nervous system. Not very likely. You can argue until the cows come home about how you can psychologically and emotionally embrace someone through words alone, but the bottom line is that you can't and probably never will be able to hold your loved one in cyberspace.

In the physical, tactile, spatial world we also can DO things with people. We can play tennis, go for a walk, eat dinner together... and, of course, have sex. Doing things with people creates bonds. It creates a history to the relationship. Are these things possible in CSR?... Sort of. In multimedia environments, we can "meet" people at some specified site and move with them from one visual setting to another. It feels a bit like "going places" with them. There also are lots of games we can play with others via the internet - games that sometimes have an imaginary physical feeling to them. Then, of course, there's cybersex, which mostly consists of talking dirty to each other. That's "doing" something, isn't it?

While doing things with others certainly is possible on the internet, it doesn't have as powerful a physical, tactile, or spatial feeling as activities in IPR. Almost anything you can do with someone in cyberspace you could also do with them in-person, simply by the fact that they can be sitting side-by-side with you while you do it. But the reverse isn't true - everything you can do with someone in-person can't be duplicated in cyberspace. That's a big disadvantage for CSR.

Getting Real Close! (smelling and tasting)

The scent of perfume, hair, clothes, skin. Smell brings us very close to the other. It stirs up powerful emotional reactions. The sense of taste brings us closer still. It's the sensation of lovers. One might say that smell and taste are rather "primitive" interpersonal sensations, but both are the cornerstones of deep intimacy - maybe because they ARE so primitive, so fundamental. In addition to touch, smell and taste are the primary ways an infant connects to its mother. It is one's very first, essential relationship that serves as the prototype for all later relationships in one's life.

On this level of relating, a CSR once again falls flat on its noseless, tongueless face. Will computers ever be able to duplicate smells and tastes and then accurately transmit those sensations to another person hundreds and thousands of miles away?... Don't hold your breath.

As with tactile sensations, when it comes to the smelling/tasting dimension of intimate relationships, IPR wins hands down over CSR.

Putting It All Together (sensory integration)

Rarely in IPR do we connect to the other person by one sense alone. At the very least we see and hear simultaneously. During more intimate relating we see, hear, touch, smell, and maybe even taste. The complex and subtle interactions among all that sensory input far exceeds the interpersonal meaning we can extract from any one of them alone. Mother nature was pretty clever in giving us eyes, ears, skin, noses, and tongues - all interconnected in marvelous ways that science still doesn't fully understand. Those clusters of sensations make for relationships that are highly robust in emotion and meaning.

As internet technology improves, auditory and visual sensations will be more effectively coordinated with each other. But even with unlimited bandwidth and highly imaginative code, we'll never see all five sensations integrated as in IPR. In CSR the five senses tend to be dissociated... and that's a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the rich interpersonal qualities afforded by the five senses is lost, resulting in human encounters that may run a bit on the stale side. On the other hand, extracting out some sensory modes - like vision or voice - creates unique ways to interact with others. E-mail and typed chat can be rather fascinating styles of developing a relationship. The sensory limitations can fuel the imagination and lead to creative patterns of communicating that are not found in IPR.

Read My Mind (intuition)

Sometimes we humans connect to each other in ways that seem to defy the traditional laws of sense impressions. Call it telepathy, empathy, or intuition, we seem to know what others are thinking or feeling without being aware of just how we know it. Some people think that we reach those conclusions based on an unconscious detection of subtle qualities in voice, body language, or things said between the lines. If that's the case, then sensory information indeed is influencing how we experience the other. We just don't realize how exactly we're being subliminally influenced.

Curiously, people report that even in the stripped down sensory world of CSR - like text-only chat - others sometimes sense what you are thinking and feeling, even when you didn't say anything to that effect. Did they detect your mood or state of mind from some subtle clue in what or how you typed? Are they picking up on some seemingly minor change in how you typically express yourself?

Or does their empathy reach beyond your words appearing on the screen? Perhaps they are in tune with your mind via some pathway that neither psychology nor computer technology can fully explain. If that kind of intuitive connection really exists, then the differences between IPR and CSR become rather insignificant. On that mysterious level, human relating transcends sense organs and microchips.

The Final Showdown

So what's the outcome of the final showdown? Which is better: IPR or CSR? It's a loaded question since "better" is an ambiguous term. Better for what? There are distinct advantages to the time-stretching, distance-shortening, and potentially fantasy-driven dimensions of CSR. On the other hand, IPR have the advantage of touch, smell, taste, the complex integration of all the five senses, and a more robust potential to "do things with" other people.

So is the showdown a draw? People can and will continue to argue for their side of the debate. As for me, the acid test is a very simple one. As much as I respect and enjoy cyberspace relationships, I would be very unhappy if I could ONLY relate to my family and closest friends via the internet, even if sophisticated visual/auditory technology made it seem like actually being there with them. Cyberspace relating is a wonderful supplement to IPR, but in the long run it's not ultimately fulfilling as a substitute, especially when it comes to our most intimate relationships. Most people who develop close friendships and romances in cyberspace eventually want and need to meet their friend or lover in-person. And once they've done that, returning to cyberspace-relating often feels at least a tiny bit flat and incomplete.

In an ideal world, we could have it both ways. We could develop our relationships in-person and in cyberspace, thereby taking advantage of each realm. But we don't always have the luxury of ideal circumstances. There will be some people who we can only or mostly meet in-person, and others only or mostly via the internet. In the not too distance future, most people will have three types of social lives that will be distinct but overlapping. We'll have friends, colleagues, and lovers whom we know only in-person, those whom we know only via the internet, and those whom we know both in-person and online.

Variety is the spice of life.

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This article is from John Suler's online book The Psychology of Cyberspace. Other articles from the book that are offered for CE credit by the Psy Broadcasting Company are listed in the index located at www.truecenterpoint.com/ce/index.html