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I have almost finished my reading of the book “Social Psychology”, 5^th edition, S. Brehm et al and I will review material from other texts in psychology, and sociology. Mainly the textbooks already identified in the initial blog posting.

One of my aims for this week was to review some of the outputs of groups. After careful reading I decided that best approach is to review group processes and their affect on outcomes, rather than focus on outcomes. Two of main exercises that groups are engaged in are decision making and brainstorming. Decision making in groups often suffers from phenomenon known as groupthink. Groupthink describes polarization and bias in group decision making. Researchers found that group discussion usually exaggerates the initial leanings of a group. Group polarization is when group members simply find about other people’s opinions. It is an example of social comparison, when individuals forming a view of social reality by comparing themselves with others. They then distinguish themselves within the group by adopting more extreme position of the group norm. Social categorisation also plays part in groupthink. People want to be part of ingroup, distinguish their own group, and so they stay away from arguments or taking a stance that would leave them in a position of being viewed as part of an outgroup.

Creative ideas are second outputs of a group I will discuss. Group members who interact face to face actually produce fewer creative ideas when brainstorming than nominal groups (several individuals working alone). Computers making use of the network of the Internet offer promising improvements to group brainstorming. They combine freedom of being alone at a PC with the stimulation of new ideas over the Internet. Some recent studies of online groups have shown that in many cases online groups are even better at brainstorming than nominal groups.

In regards to projects, groups are even more prone to feeling entrapped by previous commitments and are less likely to withhold investments from failing projects. One other phenomena which I found very interesting was the resource dilemma. This describes when larger groups are more likely to exhibit selfish behaviour in a situation with limited resources than smaller groups. This occurs partly because in a larger group establishing norms of co-operation are less likely, people are less committed to each other and perceive that their actions have less impact. Do online groups suffer as much from resource dilemma than offline groups? Arguably less so and many have even referred to the Internet as the “Copying Machine” for digital artefacts. I had some difficulty finding cases of resource dilemma in online groups and it would be an interesting exercise for any Web Sicentist to find examples of this and document them. Scarcity of digital material or resources on Internet isn’t usually an issue. Bits are easily copied and easily reproduced, much to the angst of rightsholders who have problems with the “copy and share” mentality of filesharing groups. I may come to look at online and offline groups who engage in file sharing as this seems to be a highly debated and hot topic at moment, especially as Digital Economy Bill has several proposals to tackle groups and individuals engaged in this activity.

In terms of the psychology aspect of the topic, one of the more fundamental traits of theories of personality is the realisation and enactment of central traits. Galen was the first person to examine the issue of personality and the way in which it is formed and according to him the individual was made up of four different chambers and the extent to which these chambers interacted with one another represented the way in which the individual’s personality was formed.

The theory now reads that people cannot be put into discrete categories that they neatly fall into and instead everybody has some traits and the personality is made up of the degree to which those traits are exposed. What has been noted is that people react differently in different types of situations, so where in one types of situation you have a particular trait in any other situation, another trait becomes more expressive and dominant and as a result your perceived personality changes.

Identification of Personality Traits

There have been a number of theories of the identification of personality traits one of which was Allport’s Search for Traits where essentially Allport found people with a particular trait react similarly across situations because they experience a unique sense of similarity across those situations that guides their feelings, behaviours and thoughts. It is interesting when you relate this to the web and our usage of the web. With the web our ability to interact with people like minded with us has increased; you can now find those people that you share things in common with that you could not have found pre the web. The fact that the web gives us so much more choice just in the field of say entertainment alone is example of this.

In this sense the identification and deployment of personality trait can be far greater than it has in the past with us being able to find people in more ways tan previously and as a result the ability to build relations with others is far greater on the web than it can be otherwise.

Another aspect that he highlighted were cardinal traits; those traits that experienced a strong unifying influence on a person’s behaviour. He believed that these traits were rare in people but that when they did appear that these would help to get the person and have them stand out of the crowd, for example Hitler. If you relate this to the Web it is interesting because in theory the web seems to provide individuals with greater ability to take heed of their wants and wishes and that as a result. In theory therefore what we should expect is more people expressing their cardinal traits and standing out from the crowd. By proxy however it could also be suggested that with more people being out in the public domain and being visible to others that you will not stand out from the crowd. The fact that the web allows everyone to be able to express themselves and broadcast themselves would suggest that actually people would not be able to stand out in the way that they do otherwise.

Eysenck 3 Factors

Eysenck highlighted three factors that he felt were the key in developing the person; extroversion, neurotisicism and psychoticism. He argued that in general a person’s personality in determined by these 3 factors and the way in which they interact with each other in the same way that a combination of the three primary colours leads to the creation of any other colours.

The 5 Factor Model

This model presupposes that the personality is composed of five areas: neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness. A body of evidence suggests that there is a high degree of heritability in respect of the five factors involved. DeNeve and Cooper showed that the five factors could be used to predict subjective well being in a person’s personality and Vollrath found that there was moderate predictability to responses to daily hassles of people’s lives.

It is interesting when you see these five factors and the way in which they interact with one another and the way in which when you are on the web, you can be a different person and as a result your level of openness and agreeableness for sure can be determined by what you want.

Symbolic Interactionism

In respect of the sociological research one of the more interesting things that I have found has been the theory of symbolic interactionism with Goffmann going against this and suggesting that our lives are made up of ‘performances’; we put on a performance with different roles when we are put in front of audiences when in different occasions. He highlighted that there was a difference between the backstage area (where nobody gets to see) and the performance area.

I would suggest that actually the web allows for amore interesting way to see this differentiation. The screen is almost that boundary or performance stage behind which you are in the prepatory area with the screen being the stage on which you perform. In turn the greater exposure allows you to carry out your performance to a greater number of persons than before because of its wider reach and therefore you have to playa a lot more persons.

He highlighted that there was a key difference in the performance that you give in real life and that on the stage; in the latter every word has to be perfect where as in the former you can allow for mistakes because interruptions re a part of everyday life. However on the web, this might seem at slight odds because as it might be seen a prepatory area it is not expected that everything that you do is flawless and perfect.

I’ve thought of a title for the paper: “Understanding the Proliferation of Extremism on the Web”.

This week I have been reading Introduction to Social Psychology (2nd ed.) by Hewstone, Stroebe and Stephenson.  It is a compilation of theories from multiple authors relating to large-scale social psychology.

I have selected a few concepts from the book which are relevant to extremism on the Web.  I have also decided that to understand extremism on the web, the process needs to be split into two main sections: why people join extremist groups and how they behave within these groups.

Perhaps surprisingly, extremism on the web is both pro- and anti-social.  From the individual (socio-psychological) point of view it is pro-social, joining these groups is a way to meet like minded people, converse and make friendships.  From the sociological p.o.v. it is anti-social, as the motives for joining these groups are almost always to persecute others.

Motives for affiliation – why do people join these groups?

• Social Comparison Theory
  • People want to compare themselves to others to confirm their attitudes.
• Buffer Effect of Social Support
  • People who feel supported are less affected by stressful events, having social support (especially by people who share your ideals)  is an elemental component of ‘happiness’
• Loneliness / Isolation
  • Having an extreme view can lead to loneliness in one’s geographical social group

Why do people behave differently in these online groups?

• Diffusion of Responsibility
  • There is a reduced sense of social responsibility when one is part of a group of people who are behaving in the same way.  Examples of this behaviour are seen in the offline world in collective violence, for example mobs and looting that occurs because a large number of people partake.  This is closely related to deindividuation.
• Deindividuation
  • Defined by Leon Festinger as “the situation where anti-normative behavior is released in groups in which individuals are not seen or paid attention to as individuals.” Simply put, deindividuation is immersion in a group to the point at which the individual ceases to be seen as such. [courtesy of wikipedia].  This is used to explain collective violence such as mob fights etc.
• Social Influence / Conformity
  • This has been explained in my earlier blog post.  Many people will conform in fear of retaliation or rejection.  This is also true of online groups and can explain why people with moderate views who join extremist groups could develop extreme views themselves.
• Freedom of a Safe Environment
  • This relates heavily to my last post.  People’s behaviour in social situations is governed by learned responses and reactions to certain cultural signs.  Online there are no such signs, one reaction to this is to treat the Web as a free space where ‘anything goes’.  This topic also relates to the diffusion of responsibility in group membership: ‘if every one else is doing it, it must be OK’.
• Group Polarisation
  • A group may start out with relatively tame intentions / beliefs, but through polarisation, innovation and compliance more extreme views may proliferate.
• Lack of Social Responsibility
  • People behave in certain ways because they have a social responsibility to.  These responsibilities are outlined in all religious texts, as well as throughout primary education and family upbringing.  The Web offers a space without this social responsibility, without punishment.  This may lead people to ‘lash out’ and develop behavioural traits that would not have been expressed in the offline world.  This behaviour may not even be related to the individual’s personality, but be a product of sudden freedom of expression in an anonymous environment.

Last week I read selected chapters of Thinking Sociologically by Zygmunt Bauman.  Although I have not read as much as I plan to yet, I have picked up some interesting and relevant topics, especially from the chapter “Nature and Culture”.  I have selected some quotes and will explain why they are relevant:

“The environment of my and anybody else’s individual life-processes consists in no small measure of other individuals with motives and purposes of their own – and thus the ‘normative regulation’ of individual motives and patterns of conduct is an important factor in the overall regularity and predictability of the environment.” pg 146

Here Bauman explains that one’s social norms and behaviour is governed mainly by the others that we observe.  Individuals regulate their behaviour in a social context by the behaviour of others within that context.  In the area of extremism on the web this partially explains why people within extremist groups share a relatively monotonous behaviour pattern.

“… most of our behaviour is learned.  We memorize those of our past actions which proved successful: brought the desired effect, the pleasure, approval and praise of people around us.” pg 147

Similar to the statement above; Bauman states that we behave in a way that is approved of in the current social context.

“If I confuse things, and behave in a way suitable for one context in circumstances which this conduct does not fit, I am likely to feel embarrassed or guilty … I may feel ashamed – as if I’ve let out some secret truth about my ‘real self'” pg 148

Here, Zauman shows that we learn separate behaviour patterns for different social situations; for instance one would not behave in the same way while having a formal meeting as they would while meeting for drinks with close friends.  These are two individual social settings where the expected behaviour has been learned from personal experience and shared experience through media such as television and the web.

“culturally trained individuals are structured – that is ‘articulated’, with the help of oppositions, into separate social contexts calling for distinctive conduct and separate patterns of behaviour suitable for distinctive social contexts – and the two articulations [are isomorphic].” pg 150

So our structured behaviour patterns are enforced with positive and negative responses until we meet the expected behaviour for the situation.  Online there is little enforcement of social expectations of behaviour, web 2.0 sites allow communal filtering, commenting and rating which helps this, but extremist groups reside in corners of the web which remain unchecked such as private newsgroups, forums or IRC channels which can have restricted access.  Here there are no pointers to expected behaviour patterns in the wider context, but expected behaviour is judged by the other members of these closed groups, creating a self-maintaining extremist community.

“The device which secures this .. correspondence between structures of social reality and of culturally regulated behaviour is called the cultural code.”  pg 150

Bauman goes on to say that this code is represented by signs: visual, olfactory, colours, dress, tones of voice etc.  It is clear that almost all of these signs are not present in the online world, so one must transfer one’s offline cultural code to the online space.  This may or may not be a conscious decision, some may consciously decide to ignore previously known code and treat the online world as one where ‘anything goes’.  This will allow people who have extremist views but do not express them in the offline world to speak freely online.

This week’s research has tended to focus upon more psychologically based topics as opposed to the previous weeks that have tended to focus more on the sociology part of my research.

Within psychology there are a number of different branches that that focus in on a number of different specific areas and the ones that I think that are more related to me and my research areas are social psychology and cognitive psychology. Social in an exploration into the way in which people’s thoughts, behaviours and feelings are influence by the actual, imagined or implied presence of others. Within this branch of psychology, the individual is examined as a member of the society through socialisation. It is stated that the major and most determining part of socialisation occurs in the early childhood as this is the time at which a child learns most social norms and values. This in itself is really interesting as you might argue that actually with the web becoming such a fundamental part of our lives, a vast number of our norms and values are being are learnt in this area. If this can be accepted to be the case, it cannot really be said that children are readily on the Web as they tend to fall within the category of being adolescents, early adults and onwards. In this respect you might have to argue that socialisation as a process is beginning to occur more and more later on in life because of the deployment of the Web in our lives and thus the theory needs to be updated.

Sigmund Freud in his work on psychoanalysis he found that there were generally 3 stages of being (1) id, (2) ego and (3) superego. He believed that all 3 had to be in perfect balance with one another or otherwise the person would be either too deficient in some areas or over compensating in others. For example too much id would lead to a person being governed by their impulses and being selfish where as too much superego and the individual is too rigid, moralistic and bossy.  In an online word you are able to almost be a completely different person; may be the person that you wished you were or just someone different from your everyday life. You can therefore be that person who acts on his id as it were and is selfish online and be governed by your impulses in ways that you would allow yourself offline in the real world. As a result may be there needs to be a changing of how we perceive these various areas.

You can also see from the above how important trust is. In this areas as you are able to be the person that you wish you were able to be and for on the other end to interact with that person you have to able to trust that they are who they say they are and are not someone who is really too much id trying to be different.

Allport has come up with a theory in respect if clustering traits and the way in which personality is developed. He argues that thee are 5 central traits that reflect a characteristic way of behaving and dealing with others. Alongside these are secondary traits that are more permeable and prone to change such as likes. The five big ones don’t include trust; the extent to which you are trustworthy, the factors that you take into consideration, the extent to which you are able to trust etc. It is interesting that it is not regarded as one on its own; yet it could be argued to fall under the fifth which the extent of an individual’s openness to new experiences versus their resistance to these new opportunities. It might be conceded that trust now needs to be one of these because especially in the case of  ages of 15-30 a lot of personality is built online. Even away from the online world, there is not a notion of dishonesty or trust and this could by proxy therefore lead to the conclusion that it actually is not that important or as important as it may be believed.

As planned I have spent this week reading Social Psychology, 5th Edition, S. Brehm et al, and I found to be a good introductory textbook on the subject.

We will start by defining a group as a set of individuals having at least one of these characteristics:
(1) direct interactions with others over a period of time
(2) joint membership in a social category based on sex, race or other attributes
(3) a shared common fate, identity or set of goals.

This set of characteristics should be sufficient to define a group in offline and online world, and by understanding characteristics it should allow us to see that groups can be as little as two people or over 1000 as long as they satisfy one of the above criteria. The interesting thing I would like to look at is why people choose the particulat groups they want to be part of and be affiliated with.
The need for affiliation -is a social motivation, humans are drawn to each other. Everyone has a different strength of need for affiliation and they will be motivated to set up a optimum balance of social contact, sometimes wanting company of others and sometimes wanting to be alone. Affiliation can also satisfy other needs such as: attention, stimulation, information and emotional support.
Affiliation is a necessary first step in forming a social relationship. I wrote in my last blog about social facilitation and will now add that being in presence of others can lead to increased arousal and increases an individuals tendency to make a dominant response. This dominant  response is the reaction elicited most quickly and easily by a stimulus. Usually dominant response will only be successful / correct whenever task they must respond to is easy or they are well practiced at doing it. This means that in presence of others, a person who is well practiced can perform at their best when aroused by presence of pthers and the opposite is also true. People need presence of other people – to celebrate, share news, commiserate, learn from or just chat. People can also be at their best, or worse when in a groups. Through groups individuals can form communities that can pool resources and share in success, and it is through groups frustration can turn into mob violence, conflicts turn into wars. Most big decisions are made by groups such as governments, businesses and other organisations that and we don’t imagine such decisions being left to any individual. By working in a group people can produce great performances or achievements – such as orchestra concert or ballet performance. Conversely groups working against each other can lead to violence, death and destruction. While this book on social psychology deals mainly with physical “real-world” groups I found most of the ideas could equally be applied to online groups. Online groups have made some good collective achievements such as wikipedia, open source software, or annotating free maps, but they also have led to flame wars, and denial of service attacks.
One other key theme that kept re-occuring when I was researching existing online communities was that they can come to an end or be destroyed – in many cases Spam has been cited as a contributing factor.

social loafing: describes the reduction in individual output on easy tasks where contributions are pooled in a group. The example the book gives is that studies have shown people do not cheer louder or clap harder with increasing group sizes, instead individual contribution becomes less, social loafing phenomenon.
This ties in neatly with the collective effort model which asserts that individuals work harder on a collective task when they believe their efforts will help achieve an outcome they personally value.
Some of studies of social psychology have highlighted some troubling effects of presence of others – chiefly deindividuation, that often leads to a person losing control. The book did mention that people may be motivated if there is the possibility of being evaluated. In the offline world it could take careful observation of individuals within a group to accurately evaluate their contribution, whereas in online groups most interactions are facilitated by technology, can be recorded and made instantly available. This could then be quickly analysed and simple evaluation of an individuals activity and contributions could be presented to the group and could act as deterrent to social loafing.

Deindividuation is a persons loss of individuality and reduction in normal constrainst on deviant behaviour, and most most investigators found this phenomenon to only occurs in the presence of others. They found that arousal, anonymity, and reduced feelings of responsibility together contribute to de-individuation. When reading this I particularly thought that online groups are at more risk of deviant behaviour occuring since Internet provides instantly two contributing factors: anonymity and feelings of reduced responsibility.

Finally, one of main questions I wanted to review was why join a group? Social psychology gives several reasons such as it provides affiliation, protection or sense of security. Also fro reasons of social status and identity, Some simply join because they like members and want to interact with them. Usually people will join because they are optimistic about the benefits they will get from belonging to a particular group, and one of main reasons people leave or disengage from activities whithin a group is when the benefits don’t outweigh the costs.

Next week I will focus on roles within groups, and the outputs of groups.

Below you may find some notes that I have written, while reading a book entitled

Exploring Social Psychology 4th Edition, by R. A. Baron, D. Byrne and B. T. Johnson

What is Social Psychology about?

Understanding how and why individuals behave, think and feel as they do in situations involving other persons.

-Often, in the offline world, social behaviour can be affected by temporary factors (changing mood, fatigue etc.). In such situations we pay attention to people’s nonverbal behaviour (changes in facial expressions, eye contact, posture, body movement etc.).

However, in the online world such an interpretation is not available as people do not come face to face physically. When our privacy is breached we can never use the nonverbal behaviour of the attacker, as we have no direct contact to him and in many cases we have no idea who the attacker is.

– In the offline world, we usually want to understand what attitudes and traits underlie a person’s behaviour; we want to understand the reasons why that person has acted in a particular way. The process through we seek all this information is known as attribution. How do we accomplish this? We focus our attention on the most likely to be informative behaviours.

In the online world attribution takes place when people search for information about others on the Web. For instance, people quite often search a person’s personal page to learn more about their lives and their personality. In addition to this, people often use social networking sites, in order to retrieve information about others. They search for their profiles and if these are open, they can easily check their information and photos. But is that an example of privacy breach? Apart from individuals, many companies also use this method in the hiring process or when they just want to spy on their employees’ private life.

– Of great interest is the fact that attribution is in many cases subject to errors; errors which may lead to wrong assumptions about other people’s behaviour. We have the tendency to put labels on other people, by saying that someone is ‘that kind of person’, rather than try and seek for the external factors that may have affected someone’s behaviour.

On  the Web this happens quite often. People say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but in many cases the picture itself may lead to wrong assumptions, as it only represents only one second from a specific moment. For instance, it may show a person falling of a chair; however we do not know how that person managed to fall of the hill. He may have done intentionally or it might have happened by mistake.

In that sense, information that we often find online can be misleading and we may perceive a person’s action differently than it actually is.

– A study that took place in 1994 revealed that Americans are more keen in generating trust than Japanese.

Japanese have high levels of mutual assurance, i.e. the belief that other people will act in predictable ways, because they have a long-term and stable relationship with each other. On the other hand, Americans assume that even strangers to them are likely to behave in an honest manner and with good intentions.

What is noticeable here, is that this research took place 16 years ago, so the findings are very likely to have changed by now. Furthermore, during the last years the Web has changed significantly the way people trust each other. From the moment that people began posting personal data online, trust and faith in other people’s good intentions is not as it used to be. As people’s trust between one another declines, more things do they consider to be private rather than public.

–  Gender refers to all  the attributes associated with being male or female, whether determined by biology or by culture. As people develop, they acquire gender identity by learning to label themselves as female or male. The gender role that they adopt reflects what they do and how other people respond to them. In many cases gender stereotypes are born and interpersonal behaviours may be influenced.

As there are many gender differences between men and women the same applies to their perception of privacy. Something that a woman may regard as private, a man may regard it as public.

What are attitudes?

Attitudes are defined as evaluations of virtually any aspect of the social world. That means that attitudes refer to how positive or negative we are about some object or entity. Attitudes are very important as they influence the way we think about and process social information and as they influence our behaviour.

Our attitude regarding privacy is not something that we were born with, but something that we obtained while growing up and based on our experiences. The opinion that hold on this subject definitely affects our behaviour.

How do we develop the views we hold?

Attitudes are mostly being developed through our experiences, though some are influenced by genetic factors. One source of our attitudes is the interaction with others (called social learning). Another source is social comparison; comparing ourselves with others in order to determine whether our view of social reality is correct or not.

When do attitudes influence behaviour?

In some case people cannot express their attitudes, because it is against the norms in a given social situation. (Norms are rules indicating the way people are supposed to behave in a given situation.)

A case when people usually express their attitudes is when they are under time pressure, as they have no time to think over the consequences of their behaviour and tend to use their attitudes as an easy solution.

Moreover, people’s attitudes tend to determine whether they are going to enter a certain situation or not. For example, if someone is against posting personal data online, he is more likely to attend a meeting regarding this subject. When someone is very passionate about this matter ( i.e. has very strong attitudes about it) he is more likely to commit himself to this.

How do attitudes influence behaviour?

There are 2 mechanisms through which attitudes shape behaviour. The first takes place in situations where we need to think carefully about our attitudes and their implications for our behaviour. In these situations we tend to think about how others will evaluate our behaviour and whether this behaviour is difficult to accomplish. The second mechanism takes place when we have time pressure and have to be very quick, where our attitudes are instantly activated and influence our behaviour.

What is persuasion?

It is the process of changing attitudes and can be divided in 2 mechanisms. Systematic Processing refers to careful consideration of the message content. People think about the matter, evaluate the strength of the arguments and finally either resist persuasion or not. Heuristic Processing refers to the use of heuristics on the acceptance or denial of persuasion.

When the first blog was created how did people react upon persuasion? Most people were very eager to create and maintain their own blog. When the ‘NewsFeed’ feature in Facebook was created why did people react against it? In this case the process of persuasion inititally did not work successfully, as it was against people’s attitudes.

As part of my review I have been reading the book: “psychology”, 3rd ed. G. N. Martin et al, and this week concentrated one of the main branches of psychology: social psychology.

Some of key areas of social psychology fall within 4 issues:

leadership: where someone tries to influence the whole group.

conformity: several group members encourage others to adopt a particular attitude.

obedience: when authority figure tries to make someone comply with  their demands.

prejudice: where attitudes of one group influence behaviour towards another group.

As well as these four issues there was another large theory that has been well established in branch of social psychology:

Social facilitation: process of behaviour change as a result of being in presence of others

Another theory was that emotions organise our activities. They tell us what we want to do or do not want, and importantly emotions can function as motives. e.g. a distressed child will seek comfort and security or cry for help, and mostly people seek to be close to those they love. Extrapolating from this textbook example, I believe emotions can act as motives for why we seek to join or be part of groups, perhaps for same reasons, as well as many more than cited in the example. There are two types of emotions: primary motives to satisfy basic needs and secondary motives such as friendship, power, and fame are acquired or learned needs. At this stage I am outlining this as one possible hypothesis: that emotions drive or make up part of our motives for joining and participating in groups.

Additional ideas from psychology that may be relevant to outlining factors as to why we join and participate in activities are the two contrasting theories to illustrate motivation: homeostatic drive and goal theory.

Homeostatic drive theory: an action is driven by a sense of imbalance and continues until the balance is restored.

Goal theory: key to some one’s motivation is what they are consciously trying to do: their goal.

As part of  my review of sociology literature I looked at “introductory sociology”, 4th ed. tony bilton et al.

Of interest was the line “the Internet has enhanced the potential for shared experiences, and increased the immediacy with which a wide variety of information can be disseminated”.  If this is true then perhaps further reading of other material may show that shared experiences are cohesive factor for joining and staying in a group, and perhaps online societies facilitate this better than offline groups.

One key theme was Urbanisation and how it affected the social and physical environment. A shift from a close-knit community , personal and stable relationships between friends and neighbours, and based on clear understanding of social position to associations based on transition, instrumental relationships that were specific to a particular setting and purpose and did not involve whole person. I understood this to mean that there was a change in the relationships and structure of groups, from close knit,  personal, stable groups with clear hierarchies, to groups which were disjointed,  impersonal, transitional and with no clear heirachy.

Another key theme relevant to social groups was: Living in Post modernity; that Since 1970s’ new social trends have prompted some commentators to suggest a great Transformation is underway, heralding an area of post modernity. What does this mean? At its most extreme, individuals are no longer ‘unified subjects’ they no longer possess fixed, stable and coherent identities, but an increasingly composed of fragmented, multiple and often contradictory identities. This forces us to (re) evaluate social development and our place in them.

This theme re-enforces what I found last week, that the fragmented postmodern young generation of both Eastern and Western Societies were each searching for a new collective self, perhaps reason why there is such a growing ad diverse range of groups online, to satisfy this market of indiviuals looking for collective self.

Actions for next week:

Read an introductory textbook on social psychology, this branch of psychology appears most relevant to my review.

Look at individual actors, roles and personalities often found within groups.

Document any sociological factors that influence groups such as languages and culture.

Below you may find the books that I read during the past week and some thoughts on privacy that I had while reading them.

My research focuses in on the value and perception of trust when it comes to building a relationship with people on the Web in comparison to the approach that we adopt in the real world and am going to be studying the issue from sociological and psychological points of view.

Sociology

There are a number of different core theories in the field of sociology that when you put them next to the Web to compare their approach online, the results are interesting and one such is the theory of social cognition. The theory reads that to understand people behavior you have to be able to see them; their physical appearance and heir characteristics to make a judgment. So if you are at a market trading for goods, you might decide on whether you want to buy the goods from that particular person based upon these issues. However online when you decide to buy a good from a seller on eBay, you cannot see them and therefore your decision is based upon what they tell you about them; there is therefore a huge element of trust involved in the process.

There is also the concept of central traits and so where we grow to know somebody that initial judgment call on how we perceive will be based upon a range of information some of which are going to central to the decision and others that are going to be no more than ancillary. These traits that are central such as are person is happy or excitable we can make that determination for we by looking at the person but you cannot do that in the case of individual online that you have never seen or met. Again therefore the notion of trust becomes even more of an important issue.

The notion of group behaviors online is hugely affected by the notion of trust. In the real world, to a great extent what we do is influenced by those around us; when we see those around us do a particular act we are more prone to doing the same and we see them not do a particular act we are more prone to not do it. To a large degree this is so because we trust the people that are acting so; we know them and trust the decision that they have made and decide o follow. However take the example of an e-petition, here research has shown that a lot of people sign online petitions and join causes based upon the strength of umbers that it already has; they do know the people who have decided to take that action but decide to follow nonetheless. The level of faith and trust put in these people is really interesting and great in the context here.

There are also the notions of obedience to authority and interpersonal relations with the latter to a great degree being built upon perceptions that we make up those around us.

Psychology

According to Erikson there 8 stages of human progression that we all have to pass through as we make way through our lives. One of these is the ability to trust, which he cites as coming at the beginning when you’re a new born. The theory is that when you’re born because you are unable to fend for yourself you depend on family to look after you and put your trust in them. If they fail, you struggle throughout the rest of your life to be able to trust.

Erikson relates the theory to a new born child however it ca obviously apply to any point I your life; there is not point at which stop trusting. There are actions that occur throughout your life that affect your ability to trust for example having a partner who might cheat on you. Therefore the individual’s ability trust has changed because of the Web. Trust in a large part is built on the ability to believe hat somebody else tells you but at the same time when you are with them personally your can always make sure for yourself as you are in their company. However that is not always the case online.

Erikson’s theory of stage development seems a little inconsistent with the ability of the Web to be able to allow you to trust. It almost brings an entirely new element to the trust stage because you having to trust people with whom you may never have any contact at all, as opposed to say family and friends.

References

• ‘Sociology: Making sense of Society’- Marsh et al.
• ‘Introductory Sociology’ – Bilton, Bonnett, Jones, Lawson, Skinner, Stanworth & Webster.
• ‘Invitation to Psychology’ – Wade & Tavris.
• ‘Psychology: The Science of Behaviour’ – Carlson et al.
• ‘Hilgard’s Introduction to Psychology’ – Atkinson et al.