Jill
Serpentelli
Haverford
College
Differences in communicative structure was studied on three electronic communication systems, two interactive (LambdaMOO and Internet-Relay Chat) and one non-interactive (VaxNotes, an electronic bulletin board), in two different subsettings (on each system, a topic focused on computing and a more general topic) by coding transcripts of conversations according to type of utterance. Significant results were found that the LambdaMOO setting had more greeting statements, statements indicating interaction with system code, statements relating to computing, and a trend toward more affectionate statements. Notes, however, contained the most biographical information statements, more statements coded "other", and a trend toward more humorous statements. The experimenters concluded that this study provides some basic data that can delineate the differences between different systems of electronic communication, and that can be generalized to speculate on some personality correlates of people who use these systems. However, the researchers also concluded that much more work needs to be done on both communicative and personality aspects of electronic communication.
Computers
from their advent have led to the creation of a subculture set apart by the
passion for a certain form of computer activity or interaction. This subculture has existed since the
arrival of computing into today, from the earliest people involved in the most
technological aspects of creating and programming the first computers, to those
who devote careers and hobbies to programming, to those who rely on electronic
mail for conducting business and maintaining friendships, even to those who
devote time and effort in mastering computer games. Any serious computer-based interest affects the way a person thinks
about and interacts with both the machine and the world at
large. With the
emergence of increasingly complex ways in which to interact both with and
through the computer, computer-based social groups and interaction are becoming
a rich medium in which to study the various personality correlates of those who
choose to take part in such groups.
One of the
first such groups formed almost simultaneously with the integration of the
computer into our language and society.
From the beginning of computers to the present, the "hacker"
has been the subject of many an
anecdote in many writings.
Hackers then and now are people who, though often defying the
stereotypes that have been afforded to them, "like nothing better than to
fiddle with computers." (Amy
Goldschlager, personal communication) The hacker develops a certain way of
living and thinking which allows him to devote much of his time to programming
and ever improving his prowess at computing.
Despite the many descriptions of the hacker
"type," there has been little actual research studying the phenomenon
of this culture or the psychological makeup of its members. However, the anecdotal literature is rich
with description. Jennings (1990) in
her writings notes a description of the college hacker coined by Joseph
Weizenbaum, which summarizes well the "hacker persona":
"Bright young men of disheveled appearance,
often with sunken glowing eyes, can be seen sitting at computer consoles, their
arms tensed and waiting to fire...When not so transfixed, they often sit at
tables strewn with computer printouts over which they pore like possessed
students of a cabalistic text. They work until they drop, twenty, thirty hours
at a time. Their food, if they arrange
it, is brought to them: coffee, Cokes, sandwiches. If possible, they sleep on cots near the computer. But only for a few hours - then back to the
console or the printouts. Their rumpled
clothes, their unwashed and unshaven faces, and their uncombed hair all testify
that they are oblivious to their bodies and to the world in which they
move. They exist, at least when so
engaged, only through and for the computers.
These are computer bums, compulsive programmers. They are an international phenomenon (p. 74)."
To complement this intense, solitary image of the hacker,
Jennings (1990) in her writings also describes the travails of the hacker
culture:
"The college hacker rises like a vampire when
the sun goes down in order to invade the computer room during off-hours,
between 10:00 P.M. and 5:00 A.M, when computer time is cheaper and the computer
works faster because fewer people are using it. His alertness peaks during a cusp of the night when most people
are deeply asleep. The electronic
alchemy makes time fall away...both his diet and his sleeping patterns go to
hell. So does his body. He's sucked into a multihour computer
confrontation that hackers call sportdeath, as he pushes his body to the limits
in his mind duel with the machine (p. 71)."
The world of the hacker involves a near-obsessional relationship
with the world of computer programming, which lends a unique lifestyle and
identity to those who pursue these interests.
Jennings describes a world characterized by
solitude, discipline, and control, attributes which are most
often ingrained, to a greater or lesser extent, in the personalities of those
who affiliate themselves with the hacker culture.
Turkle
(1984), in her writings about the expression of personality attributes through
computers, describes more of the personality aspects that form and are formed
by an association with this kind of computer culture. Issues of separation and
exclusiveness figure prominently in her analysis, especially in her
descriptions of conversations with students involved in the hacker culture of
MIT. She describes the two different
life pathways these students can take:
"One path leads to what many MIT students call
the 'real world.'...Those who take the second path flaunt their rejection of
'normal' society by declaring, 'We are the ugly men. You can keep your hypocrisy, your superficial values, your empty
sense of achievement. We have something
better and purer.' (p.198)"
The hacker culture seems in some senses to comprise
"the elite of the outcast," a group of people who accept their
dissimilarity with much of their social group and reclaim it as a badge of
honor. Turkle suggests that the roots
of
this elitism not only rests in the computer culture itself,
but in the backgrounds of those who are drawn to the computer culture. She cites the experience of another MIT
student:
"Most of these young men grew up as loners. Many of them describe a sense, as long as
they can remember, of a difference between themselves and other people. Finally, they feel that they belong. Alex is very clear about this: "I always
knew I was weird. I mean I didn't know
why I was weird, but you could see from how other kids treated me that I must
have had a big sign on me saying: 'Weird One - Fold, Bend, Spindle, and
Mutilate this One.' (pp. 212-213)"
The hacker culture, thus, was and is in many ways defined as
a group set apart from "them"; both set apart from a group that can
not understand their single-minded focus on computers and pushed into that
single-minded focus by being "different" from their peers even before
the advent of their interest in computers.
Turkle
suggests that the hacker personality is formed partially by the needs for
control, safety, and perfection which are very prevalent for many young people,
especially for the young men who make up much of the hacker population. She explains the obsessional nature of
hacking in these terms:
People are not "addicted" to test piloting
or race-car driving or computer programming.
They are addicted to playing with the issue of control. And playing with it means constantly walking
that narrow line between having it and losing it. (Turkle, 210)
Despite this narrow boundary within the hacker culture of
having control and being out of control, maintenance of that boundary can
provide the hacker with a purity of control not found in other cultures. The computer, despite its inscrutability and
often frustrating linguistic and logical constructions, can be mastered and
understood, unlike social interaction which is a maze of often unpredictable
reactions. This aspect of computing, as
well as the atmosphere of the hacker culture itself, can make computing a safe
haven for the introvert and the perfectionist.
Turkle elaborates:
It (the hacker culture) is a culture of people who
leave each other a great deal of psychological space. It is a culture of people who have grown up thinking of
themselves as different, apart, and who have a commitment to what one hacker
described as "an ethic of total toleration for anything that in the real
world would be considered strange."
Dress, personal appearance, personal hygiene, when you sleep and when
you wake, what you eat, where you live, whom you frequent - there are no
rules. But there is company. (Turkle, 213)
Thus, control, safety, and acceptance become intrinsic
elements of the hacker culture, influencing both the type of members the
culture attracts as well as the way it shapes its members once assimilated into
the culture.
The
movement of the computer culture from the very elite realm of computer
scientists and the hacker community to the more public, easily accessible
realm, made possible by the greater availability of personal
computers and the general progression toward a more
computerized society, made even more apparent the divisions between people who
became assimilated into the computer culture and those who stood outside
it. The increased visibility of
computing in society also increased the non-visibility of those who seemed to
be absent from this new phenomenon. One
of the most apparent and widely-researched differences in computer use was the
gender split in computer interest.
Males have had, and still have, a greater interest in computers and use
them more. This is a phenomenon that
started in the hacker community, according to Turkle:
There are few women hackers. This is a male world. Though hackers would deny that theirs is a
macho culture, the preoccupation with winning and of subjecting oneself to
increasingly violent tests makes their world peculiarly male in spirit, unfriendly
to women (Turkle, 210).
This view of the computer culture as technological,
competitive, and generally unfriendly to women who have been largely viewed as
more oriented towards the humanities and cooperation rather than competition,
as well as this view's
actual effect on women, has been borne out in empirical
study as well as anecdotal literature.
Many
studies have shown that women do tend to avoid the areas of computing which are
the most technologically and programming oriented. Temple and Lips (1989) found that although women in their sample
used computers as much as the men, they took less formal computer science
courses and did not as often choose to major in the computer sciences. The researchers note that "the
difference between women and men in this sample is not that women are avoiding
computers more than men are; rather, it is that women, more than men, are
avoiding the formal pursuit of specialized training and careers in computer
science." (pp. 222-223) This study
further suggests that this difference does not constitute a lack of interest on
the part of women, but rather a male-dominated atmosphere in computer science
that puts women at a disadvantage when trying to enter the field. The researchers assert that according to
their findings, women are not disinterested but are, rather, "scared off
by uncertainty about their own abilities - and uncertainty that is apparently
reinforced by, among other things, the attitudes of their male peers (p. 223).
These attitudes appear to create a vicious circle for women,
in which the computer culture started out male-dominated due to the greater
percentage of men in science and technology in general, and remains
male-dominated through
negative attitudes toward women even though women's own
conception of their interests and abilities now more allows them to pursue an
interest in science and math related fields.
Though
studies constantly reiterate the finding that boys and men are more confident
and involved with computing in general, it has also been consistently found
that these differences lie somewhere else than lack of innate ability on the
part of girls and women. Arndt,
Clevinger, and Meiskey (1985) found no correlation between gender and scores on
a questionnaire measuring attitudes toward computers. Rather, one of the crucial factors affecting attitude toward
computers was amount of prior computer experience. In the same way, Levin and
Gordon's (1989) study showed a much
greater effect of prior computer experience on positive attitudes than of
gender. These researchers also found
that boys have much more extracurricular exposure to computers, and show more
positive attitudes toward computers as an important part of their lives and
future, two findings that mirror the general overall greater effect of prior
experience on attitudes toward computer use.
Studies
such as these seem to indicate several factors that contribute to women's
lesser involvement with computers and the computer culture. First, the programming aspect of computers
put women at an early disadvantage, for women are discouraged from
participating in math/science related activities in general. The idea that computer programming is a
"language", a field in which women are thought to be proficient,
seems to be downplayed in favor of
emphasizing computers as a "science", a male
domain. Second, the competitive and
solitary nature of a programmer's dedication to the computer world -
exemplified in the hacker culture but true to some extent of many
computer-related activities, majors, and careers - is at odds with the reality
of many women's experiences in relating to the world in a more connected,
cooperation-oriented fashion, as has been theorized by feminist writers such as
Gilligan (1982). It appears that this
initial exclusion of women from the computer culture perpetuates itself by
discouraging them from joining the field and tailoring it more to women's ideas
and interests. Thus, the products of
the computer field most often remain those which would appeal to male users (violent
video games are a good example, as noted later), the culture remains one of
competition, and each aspect feeds into one another to further discourage women
from crossing this gender gap.
However,
other research indicates that this gap can be narrowed somewhat in order to
allow women more access to computers.
Though the computer culture may be discouraging women entry, some
studies indicate that the
stereotype of women as less capable are less ingrained than
might be expected. A 1988 study done by Siann, Durndell, Macleod, and Glissov
at the University of Edinburgh compares the reactions of subjects to stories
about one of two computer scientists, "Kevin" or "Karen",
and rate the scientist on a series of personality attributes. The researchers found that contrary to their
hypothesis that a female computer scientist would be stereotyped negatively,
subjects rated her just as positively and even more positively on many
attributes. As the researchers note,
their results suggest that negative stereotypes of women are not the largest
contributing factor to the gender gap in computer science. This suggests that the gender gap is more
often caused by the way computers are experienced and used by men and women
than by outright prejudice on the part of the computer culture against women's
participation in the field. The
implication is that if computers are made more accessible to women's
experience, if the computer culture became less solitary and more affiliative,
women would find easier access to computing in general.
One of the
first widespread computer phenomena, which led to a culture of sorts, was the
release and popularity of video games, both in arcades and in the home. Unlike the mostly underground and highly
technological hacking culture, the culture inspired by this phenomenon prompted
more attention, media and otherwise, and more research on the psychological
effects of these miniature virtual realities.
Studies seemed to reveal the same sorts of
profiles that were revealed in other aspects of computer
use, along such lines as gender, introversion, and nonconformity. McClure and Mears, in a 1984 study, found
that the main subculture of videogaming was made up of people they described as
young, male, bright, and competitive, much like the group that seemed to be
attracted to computers at large (McClure & Mears, 1984). Melancon and Thompson, in addition, found
that arcade-based samples of both genders, though they had sex-role preferences
that were not as clearly defined as the control population, tended toward more
masculine and less feminine sex-role preferences. These researchers also noted that cognitive variables are of
limited use in researching computer game play, and that personality variables
should be considered when researching such phenomena (Melancon & Thompson,
1985). This focus was considered in
McClure and Mears' 1986 research, in which they researched videogames and their
effects on psychopathology. Despite the
many media warnings of the negative effects of video games on young people,
these researchers found no significant correlation between a high rate of play
and conduct disorders or neurotic pathology.
The researchers concluded that "video game playing is chiefly for
casual enjoyment and not a reflection of anti-social trends, thrill-seeking, or
neurotic manifestations." (McClure
& Mears, 1986)
Another
widespread, communicative aspect of computing began to develop soon after the
video game culture became entrenched.
The use of electronic mail systems and electronic bulletin boards became
a major phenomenon across the country, especially in academic settings. The advent of the Internet, a system linking
the individual computer systems of colleges, businesses, and government
organizations across the country and world, expanded the use of electronic
mail, allowing people to send messages and ideas far beyond the realm of those
connected to one specific computer system. Much
research on the effects of electronic mail and computer conferencing on social
interaction has been undertaken by Kiesler (1984) and her colleagues, focusing
on academic settings but also
generalizing to office and other non-academic based computer
communication. Her findings, especially
in academic settings, have fully supported the notion that computer
communication changes, often radically, the way people think and interact. In one 1984 study, she and her colleagues
define the groups of college students who heavily use computer interaction as
an "alien culture" sharing several common traits. Since computers are used for so many
different uses, note the researchers, this culture attracts people with a wide
variety of interests and fields.
Further, people who use electronic communication are afforded relatively
direct access to the computer with personal computer accounts for mail and
other communicative activities.
Finally, the culture tends to be made up mainly of students who are as a
group young, smart, have few responsibilities other than academia and thus have
a flexible time schedule, and have the stamina to stay up late into the
night. Kiesler et al stress the
importance of looking at computing as a culture as well as a tool, implying
that the nature of computing attracts a group of people with certain common
attributes and goals.
Other
researchers have studied and noticed this social aspect of electronic
communication among its users.
Hellerstein, in her 1985 study of a group of users utilizing a bulletin
board at the University of Massachusets, notes that the users do form a
subculture of sorts, in which users greet each other verbally by username, can
be found on the computer system all
hours of the day and night, and never tire of debating issues with one
another. She further notes that such a
bulletin board, as well as electronic mail, can become a springboard for
off-line relationships, both friendly and romantic. Though these relationships
are in themselves fairly normal to college experience, Hellerstein observes,
the members of this subculture are separated from the college mainstream by
their common experience with the
computer. She notes that this
culture can be pervasive in its members' lives to an extreme sense, to the
point where members shirk real-world responsibility in exchange for spending
time on the computer system.
In
analyzing the group of subjects Hellerstein termed "heavy users",
those who used mail and the bulletin board several times a week, she found that
heavy users use mail much more purely for social purposes, to initiate and
continue off-line friendships, and spend less time in phone
or face-to-face communication. Heavy
users also overall reported feeling too dependent on the system, yet preferred
to use it as a means of meeting others, and considered
the membership in the computer-based subculture a positive
and freely-chosen aspect of their involvement with electronic
communication. However, Hellerstein
also noted a common theme in her interviews with the heavy user
group. Some subjects
argued that electronic communication, because of its attractiveness, ease, and
unique capabilities, makes its users very prone to addiction, or to being
controlled by the medium instead of controlling it.
Several
common themes emerge from her findings. First, the computer is not, especially for this subculture, purely
an anti-social medium. Rather, it
becomes a new medium, and for many a better medium, of achieving new social
relationships. Second, it appears that
computer users see themselves as being part of something set apart, something
unique and special. However, they also
acknowledge that this involvement can be overly seductive in its appeal, and
thus become problematic when it becomes intrusive on real-world concerns.
Hellerstein
concludes that "the idea that the computer mediates and facilitates an
individual's social life leads to many interesting questions...are the rules
for communicating over a computer different from those of face-to-face
communication or telephone-mediated communication? When people communicate over a computer is some quality missing,
or does the computer actually add something to the communication process?"
(p. 196). Other researchers have
attempted to answer this question by studying the nature of electronic communication,
as well as the nature of the type of communication the environment
affords. Mihalo (1985) observes that
one of the most salient aspects of electronic communication, bulletin boards in
his study, is the relative anonymity of those communicating with one another:
"In a
face-to-face environment with a stranger, various social conditions inhibit
communication. Such characteristics as
class, race, sex, age and dress can have a dramatic impact on the length and
quality of a face-to-face interaction between strangers. In a computerized bulletin board on the
other hand, these barriers are absent.
Consequently, one must interact solely on the basis of what is written. Without these barriers for interaction,
there is a potential for developing more intimate relationships (p. 201)."
Mihalo argues that computer-based relationships, though they
might seem limited by distance, time, and anonymity, can be very stable
relationships due to the equalizing effect of the computer-based medium. In this viewpoint, the
computer is not the anti-social or competitive medium of the
hacker culture, but rather a medium that can add a new dimension to human
relationships. Mihalo asserts:
"One cannot predict that such relationships will emerge as frequent
complements to other kinds of interactions, such as those in face-to-face
encounters, but if they do, they will temper the bleak image, painted by
futurists, of a completely impersonal society brought about by the computer (p.
205)."
Thus, the computer can be seen as less of a danger to human
interaction than as a compliment to this interaction.
With this
idea in mind, the most obvious question is how, concretely, will computer-based
communication affect communication?
There has been little empirical study of this area, but a 1984 study by
Kiesler et al provides some striking insights.
In their study of electronic communication by both bulletin board-like
and more interactive means versus face-to-face communication, the researchers
found that the computer-mediated groups took longer to reach consensus on
issues, participated more equally in conversations, and were less inhibited in
behaviors like swearing and hostility toward one another. These findings occurred both with adult and
non-student users and with undergraduate student users. Thus, it appears that this type of
less-inhibited activity is not just a function of the relatively young
population that most often uses electronic communication means.
In addition
to more established mediums of computer communication such as electronic mail
and electronic bulletin board, one of the newer forms of computer-based
interaction is the advent of MUD systems.
A MUD, according to a set of 1991 articles distributed through e-mail by
Jennifer Smith, stands for Multiple User Dimension, Multiple User Dungeon, or
Multiple User Dialogue. MUDs, originally created by Lars Penski (Smith, 1991),
are text-based virtual realities in which a created character can interact with
its environment and other players in such a way that it can have conversations,
handle and create objects and places, engage in combat, or any number of other
options. These systems are run on
servers throughout the country and world.
Users employ the use of Telnet, a system that links Internet sites so
that one site can "call" another and log into a system long distance,
to call these MUD systems. New players
are usually allowed to log on as a guest character to explore the system, and
later are allowed to create their own characters and character
descriptions. The Smith articles
describe the MUD process after the player
connects to the system:
"Each user takes control of a computerized
persona/avatar/ incarnation/character.
You can walk around, chat with other characters, explore dangerous
monster-infested areas, solve puzzles, and even create your very own rooms,
descriptions, and items." (Smith, 1991)
The extent
to which the user can employ these items and the way in which s/he can use them
is greatly determined by the type of MUD system that s/he explores. Smith further explains that TinyMUDs tend to
be social MUDs, on which players mainly meet to talk, joke, and have
discussions (Smith, 1991). However, the article goes on to note that LPMUDs
(after Lars Penski the creator of LPMUD), AberMUDs, and DikuMUDs (both named
after universities in Sweden where they were created are usually more oriented
to the role-playing genre (Smith, 1991) .
This is because TinyMUD and derivitaves of this programming code is much
more suited to room-building and description, while LPMUDs, AberMUDs, and
DikuMUDs are programmed such that the system can accommodate the
combat and character statistics needed to moderate an
role-playing atmosphere. These MUDs are very much like computerized
Dungeons-and-Dragons or similar type games, in which a character engages in
combat, finds possessions, and gains
points in order to advance in the game's experiential hierarchy (Smith, 1991).
No matter
what kind of MUD system is being used, a user will have to engage in some
social interaction. Despite the
fantasy-based nature of the environment itself, the social interactions that
take place within it can be
strikingly realistic.
As Smith states, "The jury is still out on whether MUDding is
"just a game" or "an extension of real life with gamelike
qualities", but either way, treat it with care...certainly the
hack-'n-slash stuff is only a game, but the social aspects may well be less so
(Smith)." The author's own personal
experiences with MUD systems have confirmed this analysis. Social interaction on MOO seems far from
taking on a fantasy-like quality; though the environment may be somewhat
fantastical, the conversations and actions that take place are surprisingly
sincere. Players build friendships,
debate issues, and even have romances within the context of these virtual
realities, giving many of the more socially-based MUDs the feeling of an actual
community of people interacting in much the same way a real-life
group would interact.
The
atmosphere of MUDs, especially LPMuds but also to some extent more
socially-oriented MUDs, provides an interesting analogy to an older but no less
complex phenomenon of role-playing games (RPG's), such as the most famous
example, Dungeons and Dragons.
Role-playing games are social, rule-based "adventures" in
which players create characters with certain powers and attributes, which in
turn explore a fantasy realm created by the dungeon (or
game) master within the sphere of the game's rules. Though role-playing games are fantasy-based,
like MUDs they can take very realistic social and psychological
attributes. Very little actual study
has been done on this particular topic, but the anecdotal literature is
revealing.
In his
essay on "Rational Coordination in the Dungeon," Terry Toles-Patkin
(1986) begins by explaining why any game necessarily takes on more
"real-world" connotations:
"Games serve as extensions of social man,
clarifying cultural forms that have become so familiar that their meaning is
lost or obscured as we conduct the routine activities of every day life. Play is unique in that it stands apart from
ordinary life by virtue of its being "not serious" (i.e,
noninstrumental in nature) but at the same time absorbing the player utterly
and intensely. No material interest or
profit accompanies play, which proceeds within its own boundaries of time and
space according to rules fixed in advance.
Play is a fragile activity; at any time reality may rudely reassert its
rights either from outside the game context (through some interruption) or from
within (by means of an offense against the rules or a collapse of the play
spirit) (p. 1)".
Thus, Toles-Patkin suggests that any type of game is
culturally, and one could infer psychologically, revealing, because it
engrosses the player fully in a very intense environment of social rules. Thus, games become both an atmosphere of
freedom from the details of everyday life and an opportunity to look at aspects
of oneself and culture in a purer and more secure context than everyday life.
This aspect
of play is especially salient in an RPG context, according to
Toles-Patkin. He notes the progression
in gaming from a very rule-based approach to the game to a more nuanced
approach:
"New campaigns composed of inexperienced players
tend to mechanically kill monsters in what has been referred to as the
"hack and slash" school of D&D playing, but when they become
experienced in the basics of the game, communications among the players and the
dungeon master take on new importance (p. 7)."
This progression is the crucial aspect of D&D that leads
to its ability to be a domain in which players can express and reconcile a
variety of perspectives, both social and psychological. Toles-Patkin points out that the way in
which the games structure themselves, both in rules and plots, can be socially
revealing, while the dialogue and actions that take place within those
structures can be psychologically revealing:
“...process and content serve very different
functions: process symbolizes social structure while content symbolizes
psychological functioning (p. 8)."
Thus, Toles-Patkin implies that though the social structure
of games like D&D are on the surface "fantastical", the actual
process mirrors social realities that can draw out psychological facets of the
players involved.
In another
anecdotal article, John Eric Holmes (1980) supports and expands this notion of
role-playing games as psychologically revealing:
"The Dungeon Master's world is sort of a giant
Rorschach test...Almost always, the personalities of the characters turn out to
be combinations of people's idealized alter egos and their less-than-ideal
impulses (p. 84)"
The many anecdotes related by Holmes in his essay focus on
his players' enactment of these "less than ideal impulses, and his
interpretations of such role-playing.
He notes the amount of violence that is most often present in D&D
campaigns, an aspect that has often brought criticism of RPGs, and argues that
RPGs are more likely to be an acceptable outlet for aggressive influences
rather, as critics have claimed, encouragement for real life aggression:
"The
level of violence in this make-believe world runs high. There is hardly a game in which the players
do not indulge in murder, arson, torture, rape, or highway robbery... I don't
think this imaginary violence is any more likely to warp the minds of the
participants than is the endless stream of violence in TV, movies, or
literature. Quite possibly it provides
a healthy outlet for those people who are imaginative and inclined to enjoy the
game. In order for the game to provide vicarious release for unacceptable
behavior, the entire group of players must go along with the convention that
game roles are independent of the actual players. One teenager, who rarely complains, objected with untoward
violence when his centaur character was robbed and abused by a character of his
stepbrother's. "It's the
magic-user who did that to you," protested the other lad, "I didn't
do it, he did. He's a thoroughly
despicable person!" (p.
92)."
Holmes presents an interesting dichotomy here between the
realistic and fantastical elements of role-playing games. After first suggesting that the games can
become poignantly realistic in terms of social structure and the extent to
which players use their characters to express aspects of their personalities
and desires, to the extent that the games become violent and gross violation of
real-world social norms, the fantasy-based aspect becomes a protective sphere
that allows safe airing and working out of such impulses.
This aspect of role-playing, that
of using it as a medium to work out and better understand aspects of one's
personality, seems to correlate in Holmes' view with the fact that the most dedicated
of RPGs tend to at least begin their role-playing from their mid-teens to early
adulthood, when they are defining for themselves the salient aspects of their
personalities. Holmes notes that in his
experience, their characters tend to be, for the most part, "role
models" for some type of behavior they would like to be exhibiting but do
not in the real-world realm:
"My
earlier game companions consisted largely of teenage players, and these young
people, caught in the awkward adjustment to the adult world, produced game
characters who were suave, cool, deadly, and superbly adjusted to their world -
samurai, elven magicians, and clever hobbits.
For these characters, there were few problems that could not be quickly
solved by blowing somebody up with a fireball spell or slashing them to pieces
with a shining katana (p. 87)."
From this and the many other anecdotes on RPG's that have
been cited, it becomes obvious that something else besides sheer acting and
rule-following occurs in the context of these games. In the often-confused realm of growing from childhood to
adulthood, young people can find in RPGs an escape from the stress of everyday
complexities which can not be so easily eradicated with a magic spell, and,
more subtly, can also find an outlet for conflicts and questions about
identity, self-control, goal achievement, relationships, intimacy, and many
other aspects of personal growth. It
can be inferred that similar needs are met by a computer-simulated role-playing
environment such as a MUD, since the MUDs involve the same type of character
development and abilities for self-control as the non-computerized role-playing
environment.
Despite the
capacity of role-playing environments to provide a sphere for a particularly
revealing form of self-expression and growth, not all people, even those who
could greatly benefit from such a medium, are interested in such
environments. It appears that the
fantasy realm attracts a certain group of people; how these people are similar
is a yet unanswered question. However, the way in which people react to and use
such mediums should be highly contingent on their reaction to and use of
imagination and fantasy in general. Thus, understanding the personality correlates
of fantasy use could provide some insights into the type of person who tends to
be interested in fantasy-based alternate realities, computer-based or not.
Rhue and
Lynn (1987) cite a 1981 study by Wilson and Barber of personality types they
term "fantasy addicts" or "fantasy-prone personalities".
They found several types of childhood experiences that correlated with
fantasy-proneness; among them were encouragement to
fantasize from adults, early creative situations such as piano or dramatics
classes, and experiences of loneliness, isolation, and need to escape some kind
of aversive stimulus. A
somewhat disturbing attribute that is related to the last
attribute is Wilson and Barber's finding that, at least in the context of their
study, children who had suffered some form of abuse, mostly physical or
emotional, were more likely
to be fantasy-prone adults.
This finding further raises the question of the role of fantasy as a
coping mechanism.
In a study
of college students, Rhue and Lynn (1987) found that subjects, for them a group
of young adult college students, who tested high on several tests related
theoretically to fantasy-proneness also tended to report
childhood experiences of greater loneliness, a marked
enjoyment of imaginary games, and a good amount of time spent playing
alone. Fantasy-prone subjects also
produced MMPI profiles that were suggestive of highly unusual early
experiences, as well as experiences of conflict and
alienation. Several subjects in the
fantasy-prone group reported that they had been physically abused as
children. This inconclusive finding
suggests not that all fantasy-prone individuals have been abused, but that
abuse or negative childhood experiences can contribute to an individual's
tendency toward fantasy proneness.
Thus, Rhue and Lynn's findings agree with the earlier Wilson and Barber
conclusions that there seem to be developmental experiences that correlate with
fantasy-proneness in adults.
Given this
finding, the criticisms that are often leveled at role-playing games - that
they can be an unhealthy escape mechanism, that they can cause their players to
become too emotionally invested in the game/characters, thus putting them at
risk for emotional instability – could seem to be somewhat justified, since it seems
that many of the people who would be naturally attracted to such fantasy realms
may have suffered adverse experiences in the past which did affect or still
affect their emotional health. However,
Rhue and Lynn suggest an alternate viewpoint.
They suggest that fantasy may be an adaptive function for many people,
an escape mechanism that is used so that the real world will not become
unmanageable, a medium used to ultimately function more effectively in the real
world by preserving their emotional health.
They conclude that fantasy-prones may be unusually strong people rather
than weak people who use fantasy as a "crutch", as critics have
suggested:
"Fantasy-prone
college students may represent a particularly well-adapted group of individuals
who manifest a deep and extensive history of fantasy involvements (p.
135)."
Thus, despite the potential for fantasy to become a
pathological escape mechanism, results such as those of Rhue and Lynn suggest
that it can just as easily be a medium through which one can expand or improve
an already rich reality.
Along with
these studies suggesting that a certain type of background affects the extent
to which people use fantasy mediums, another study suggests there is another
crucial factor affecting whether a person is likely to explore
fantasy realms.
Maddi, Hoover, and Kobasa (1983) found that in a group of subjects high
on the scale of customary activation, or arousal level, their level of external
or internal orientation affected how they used this energy. Those subjects with
an external orientation, when placed in a waiting room scattered with various
interesting objects, would tend to touch and examine more objects than subjects
judged to have a more internal orientation.
The experimenters concluded that both types of people both were showing
an imaginatively-directed type of behavior, but that those with an external
orientation have more of a motivation toward curiosity, and those with an
internal orientation, toward creativity.
This finding is especially interesting when related to a MUD or
role-playing game type of environment, in
which both aspects, both an internalization of a fantasy
realm and actually exploring objects and places in this realm, are equally
salient.
Fantasy-proneness
and creativity appear to also be important aspects affecting how people
interact with mediums of computer communication, given the other-worldly nature
that such mediums can take on. However,
the extent to which interactive computer mediums can simulate another reality
in a role-playing/fantasy capacity is very dependent on the medium used. Bulletin boards are already limited in their
capacity to create an environment by the
fact that users do not communicate on these systems in real
time. However, even in real-time
mediums of computer-based communication, the apparent potential of such systems
to generate a "virtual reality" varies greatly. Unlike MUDs, not all
interactive communication systems provide a detailed "environment"
for description and exploration. An
example of such a system is Internet-Relay Chat, or IRC.
IRC is a
network of conversational channels that can be accessed by connecting, through
the Internet, to one of many networked servers across the country and world. The internal structure of IRC bears some
resemblance to a
MUD system; players log in under pseudonyms (though the
/whois command makes it possible for players to easily find out other players
actual email addresses, unlike MUDs which are more anonymous), and
conversations take place on channels that somewhat resemble MUD rooms. However, unlike MUDs, neither characters nor
channels can have descriptions, and there are no interactive objects. The setting is much more like being in a
conferenced phone call than actually being in a room-like environment. IRC also has many more players at one time
than almost any MUD system; hundreds of players could be logged in altogether
at a busy time of the evening; 25 to 40 could occupy a busy channel.
A user of
IRC, once having logged on and joined one of the busier, less structured
channels such as "#hottub", is most likely to find him or herself in
a sea of chaotic statements. A busy
channel may have as many as 25 people all
talking to one another, subjecting the observer to many
conversational threads all converging with one another. Conversation on the busier channels is
almost impossible beyond a superficial level; it would be impossible to
initiate or keep track of a serious conversation with so many people
talking. The effect is as if a crowd of
20 to 30 stood in a room and tried to all have a conversation with one another,
instead of breaking off into smaller groups as would most likely happen
normally in a crowd of this size (Appendix A). Another more realistic
comparison is the phenomenon of listening to a channel on a CB radio, which is
made up of many different people all trying to talk to one another at once (Amy
Goldschlager, personal communication).
On the more
structured channels, such as those discussing religion, computing, or a number
of other topics, tend to have less people; perhaps four to ten a channel. Thus, conversation on these channels tends
to be more focused and coherent.
IRC could,
in many ways, be seen as a forerunner to MUD-type systems, since it does share
the similar characteristics of character names, rooms, and real-time
communication. However, its capacities
to create an imaginative
"virtual" environment is severely limited by its simple structure. It provides little more than a text-based
conference call between various users; its function is only communicative
unlike MUDs which can also become an outlet for character description, room
building, role-playing, and active interaction with the system itself by way of
exploring rooms and manipulating objects.
Quite
recently, a new type of MUD has been implemented which allows an even greater
potential for interaction between the user and the environment, and for greater
development of virtual characters. This
new system has been dubbed MOO, or MUD-Object-Oriented. It is similar in format and function to TinyMUDs,
but allows a greater range of user activity in building, actually creating
interactive objects, and custom-tailoring characters. The first and largest MOO system, until recently the only
fully-functioning public MOO, is the LambdaMOO system, supported by Xerox PARC
and run from Palo Alto, California.
The authors
spoke with the creator and "archwizard" of LambdaMOO, Pavel Curtis,
known as "Haakon" on LambdaMOO.
In a discussion with Curtis which took place on the MOO system, he
described the history of this new type of MUD system. Since MUDs in general and MOO especially are such new mediums,
his insights into the history of LambdaMOO as well as its social interactions
were invaluable in better understanding the medium.
Curtis told
us that the MOO project was started in early 1990 by Stephen F. White, now
known as ghond on the MOO. Curtis
explained that ghond wanted to make this MUD "object oriented, a type of
programming that allows a user to program objects in such a way that one object
can be the child of a generic "parent" object, sharing most or all of
the characteristics of that parent. (Curtis, personal communication).
Curtis
noted that ghond began testing the new MOO, set up on a server at Berkely and
dubbed AlphaMOO, in April of 1990.
Curtis became active in the project at this point, as well as several
other present "wizards" on
LambdaMOO. He took over the project from ghond (who, according to
Curtis, was suffering from "temporary burnout") in September of
1990. Curtis explained to us that
AlphaMOO was the first MOO and did have some public access, but was not widely
used due to little advertisement and little documentation (Curtis, personal
communication).
Curtis went
on to explain how the transition occurred from AlphaMOO to LambdaMOO. After fixing bugs in the system, rewriting
some of the code, adding more programming capability, and writing
documentation, he had created what he
termed "a truly separate entity" from the original AlphaMOO. He dubbed this new system LambdaMOO, after
one of his names on the system and, according to Curtis, "because it's a
key word in some of the other non-mud research that I do." The new system was announced as open for
public access on UseNet (a world-wide bulletin board system) in February of
1991 (Curtis, personal communication).
Curtis
noted that the original response to the announcement was "lukewarm",
but that the number of players increased slowly but steadily. According to him,
growth over the past few months (the conversation took place in November of
1991) had been much more rapid, with more than 25 people logged into MOO at
almost any one time (Curtis, personal communication). The experimenters have seen this trend continue into May 1992,
bringing a constant
stream of new characters, and a list of players that
sometimes numbers as much as 40. The
MOO community, according to Curtis, seems to be made up mainly of undergraduate
students using the MOO as a social and creative outlet (Curtis, personal
communication).
When
questioned by the authors about Xerox's part in supporting the MOO server,
Curtis explained their role:
Xerox pays
me to do more-or-less basic research.
They are not looking for products out of what I do. They trust me to find interesting areas of
research that might perhaps open up new opportunities either for them or for
the CS community at large...Xerox has no commercial interest in LambdaMOO
whatsoever (Curtis, personal communication).
However, Curtis' own paper concerning social interaction on
LambdaMOO indicates that the MOO and similar systems may indeed have other
possibilities for use:
The MUD
model is also being extended in new ways for new audiences. For example, I am currently involved in
adapting the LambdaMOO server for use as an international teleconferencing and
image database system for astronomers.
Our plans include allowing scientists to give online presentation to
their colleagues around the world, complete with 'slides' and illustrations
automatically displayed on the participants' workstations...I expect such
specialized virtual realities to be commonplace, an accepted part of at least
the academic community (Curtis, 16, unpublished paper).
Virtual reality provides a new outlet for communication in a
business and educational realm, providing even more opportunities for nuances
and interaction than bulletin boards and e-mail.
Upon
connecting to LambdaMOO, a user usually finds him or herself in "The Coat
Closet", a room that serves as home base for any character who has not yet
built his or her own home. From here,
the character (by typing "out") can "walk" out into The
Living Room, one of the major centers on MOO for group conversation. By typing direction commands (north, south)
the player can "walk" around the house and explore the many rooms and
underground passageways that are connected to it. In addition, if a player wants to reach a room that is faraway
from where s/he is "standing", or if s/he wants to reach a room which
is not linked to the main structure of the house, the player can
"teleport" by using a @move me command.
The effect
of these many different rooms presents a mental image of the house itself,
sprawling in size with its many underground tunnels and attic hideaways, but
all interconnected in a realistic fashion.
However, the player is also presented with the image of many other rooms
and areas that form "castles in the sky" in the MOO realm, areas that
can only be reached by fantastic means such as "teleporting".
A player in
a large group conversation on LambdaMOO will find several noticeable
differences between the atmosphere of MOO rooms and that of IRC channels. First, conversations take place in actual
"rooms", whose
descriptions often affect a player's mental image of the
atmosphere: the Living Room's description consists of a cosy room with many
chairs and an open fireplace; another room, the "Makeshift Cafe",
another room for large social
gatherings, has in its description many outdoor tables at
which players can "sit"; yet another room, Hacker's Heaven, presents
the image of a busy computer workshop filled with computers, printouts, and
miscellaneous hardware. These
different descriptions affect the player's image about what
types of conversation and behavior is appropriate to these settings (Appendix
B).
Second,
players can create their characters in a much more detailed fashion than on a
medium like IRC (Appendix C). Besides
just being able to write a "character description" outlining what a
character looks like, what
he/she/it is wearing, and any other information that the
player might like to provide, players can also embellish their characters in a
variety of other ways. Characters can
be programmed to have a variety of different persona, "morphing"
between different names, genders, species, and descriptions. Characters can
also have elaborate "entrance" and "exit" messages to
announce when they have teleported into a room; these can range to arriving in
a puff of smoke, dropping in from the ceiling screaming AAAAIIIGH!, flying in
on a magic carpet, or any variation on such ideas.
In
addition, conversation itself can be richer on MOO than on an IRC-like
medium. Besides just being able to type
sentences and have them appear on the screen, characters can choose to us the
"say" command, which places "(character name) says," in
front of what a player types (BethAnne says, "hi there!") or the
"emote" command to place one's name before an action, emotional
gesture, or thought (Sylvan smiles).
These aspects add more nuances to MOO conversation since characters can
express thoughts and emotions in greater detail. Characters can also talk to other characters in a room privately
with the "whisper" command, or talk to characters in another room with
the "page" command.
In a
typical large-group conversation, a user of MOO is bound to find less chaos
than in such a conversation in IRC, partially because the average amount of
people in a large-group conversation on MOO tends to be five to ten
people. Thus,
conversational threads become less fragmented and easier to follow. At the same time, a user may have to keep
track of many conversations at once in such a setting, since two different
threads might be in progress in the room itself, while s/he might be whispering
or paging with yet another person in a private conversation. Thus, though MOO conversation is more
coherent in terms of focus, it still often forces the user to learn how to
divide attention effectively between a few conversations at the same time, a
skill not often practiced in real-life conversation.
The focus
of conversation varies from room to room, though computers and MUDding are
always popular topics, especially in "Hacker's Heaven" which is a
room intended for such discussion. In
addition, characters often interact with MOO objects in the middle of
conversations (sitting on a chair, petting a MOO dog, and so on). Humor is also popular, due to the great
potential of the MOO environment for physical and slapstick humor, such as
"bonking" people with various objects, as well as verbal humor such
as punning and general surreal statements (Appendix D). Finally, the extent to which people can
manipulate their own characters becomes more apparent in conversation; people
are constantly displaying their entrance and exit messages as they enter and
leave a room; players often comment on these messages, on other players'
descriptions, or on what other players might be "carrying" (Appendix
E). Thus,
on MOO there is a much greater sense of an actual
conversation being had by people that a user can "see", in the
boundaries of an actual room and the objects in that room with which the user
can interact. Perhaps because of this,
there is a good amount of discussion about the MOO itself, its different rooms,
its atmosphere, and its characters (Appendix E).
The many
and detailed social interactions that occur on the MOO provide rich
opportunities to further consider and study past findings on a variety of
topics mentioned earlier, such as fantasy, control, role-playing, gender
issues, and the unique psychological makeup of those who use
computer communication in general. The
LambdaMOO population is in itself revealing. According to Curtis, over 90% of
the population are students at colleges and universities, and mostly
undergraduates. From what he has seen,
he believes that no more than half of the population is involved somehow in the
computing field. Rather, he asserts
that the increasing availability of the Internet to more students at many
colleges is bringing a much more diverse population to MOO. He also theorizes that the MOO population is
most often above the norm in both educational background and economic
status. Finally, he claims that the MOO
community seems to be almost 95 percent male (Curtis, 6, unpublished paper).
Several
facets of this analysis present relevant topics for an analysis of the
MOO. First, it is apparent that the
participants in LambdaMOO are people who have affiliated themselves with the
culture of computer communication to some extent, though not necessarily
through a life commitment to the computing field but rather through personal
interests. The LambdaMOO population
thus provides a rich environment for further study of the personality correlates
of computing, studying exactly what makes people of different interests and
disciplines similar enough that they are all attracted to this particular form
of communication.
The gender
discrepancy that Curtis notes is also revealing in that, even with such a
socially-oriented medium as LambdaMOO, the MOO still shows the same kind of
gender bias as other social mediums as bulletin boards. However, the author in her personal
experience has not found this skew to be as salient, and wonders if the
communicative aspect of a medium like MOO might contribute to a breaking down
of the gender gap by attracting more women.
Confirming the existence or nonexistence of such a gender skew, and
finding reasons for its presence or absence is a topic for which MOO presents
yet another environment for further study.
Curtis also
notes that many players seem to play the opposite gender on LambdaMOO, most
often males playing females:
As I've
said before, it appears that the vast majority of players are male and the vast
majority of them choose to present themselves as such. Some males, however, taking advantages of
the relative rarity of females in MUDs, present themselves as female and thus
stand out to some degree. Some use this
distinction just for the fun of deceiving others, some of these going so far as
to try to entice male-presenting characters into sexually-explicit discussion
and interactions. Other males present themselves as female more out of
curiosity than as simply an attempt at deception; to some degree, they are
interested in seeing 'how the other half lives,' what it feels like to be
perceived as female in a community.
From what I can tell, they can be quite successful at this (Curtis,
7, unpublished paper).
Curtis' speculations on the reasons for gender-switching on
LambdaMOO are all intriguing and merit further study. In addition, this author, through conversations and personal
experience on the MOO, has found several other concerns related to
gender-switching on MOO. In a
conversation with another MOO-using student, it was suggested by this student
that people on MOO often gender-switch because they are dealing with issues of
sexuality, perhaps questioning their own sexuality, and find that switching to
the opposite gender in virtual reality is a "safe" way of flirting
with people who are (ostensibly) the same gender as them in real life (Alis
Marks, personal communication). The
author has had one such conversation on LambdaMOO which supported this theory.
In addition, the author's thesis partner has suggested that gender-switching
can serve another social function, that of learning to communicate better with
the opposite gender. A male who is shy
about approaching women, or vice-versa (though this author would speculate that
it is more the former, judging by her personal experience of LambdaMOO), might
feel more comfortable doing so in the guise of being "one of them"
(Amy Goldschlager, personal communication).
Curtis'
remarks on female MOO characters raise more questions about the effects of
gender roles on MOO interactions:
Female-presenting
characters report a number of problems.
Many of them have told me that they are frequently subject both to
harassment and to special treatment.
One reported seeing two newcomers arrive at the same time, one male-presenting
and one female-presenting. The other
players in the room struck up conversations with the putative female and
offered to show her around but completely ignored the putative male, who was
left to his own devices (Curtis, 7, unpublished paper).
This apparent phenomenon of "virtual chivalry" has
been confirmed in the author's own experience as a female character in
LambdaMOO; players, especially male players, tend to be very helpful to female
characters, attempting to gain their friendship and often helping them
extensively with learning the mechanics of the MOO. The author has discovered too the reality of Curtis' reference to
harassment; she has found that male characters tend to flirt aggressively and sometimes
to the point where it ceases to be enjoyable and resembles sexual
harassment. The medium seems to free
players to engage in this behavior with more freedom than they would most
likely do so in real life, often presenting problems for the female characters
who are left with the burden of dealing with the unwanted attention which,
though virtual, can still be disturbing.
Curtis notes that these problems often dissuade characters from
presenting themselves as female, which in itself can lead to problems:
Because of
these problems, many players who are female in real life choose to present
themselves otherwise, choosing either male, neuter, or gender-neutral
pronouns. As one might expect, the
neuter and gender-neutral presenters are still subject to demands that they
divulge their gender. Some players apparently find it difficult to interact
with those whose true gender has been called into question; since this
phenomenon is rarely manifest in real life, they have grown dependent on
'knowing where they stand', on knowing what gender roles are
'appropriate'. Some players (and not
only males) also feel that it is dishonest to present oneself as being a
different gender than in real life; they report feeling 'mad' and 'used' when
they discover the deception (Curtis, 7, unpublished paper).
These concerns about gender roles on LambdaMOO create some
interesting paradoxes that warrant study.
One the one hand, LambdaMOO provides a rich opportunity to question and
experiment with gender roles, both because its structure provides the
opportunity to do so, and because it seems to the author through her own
personal experience that the MOO community is made up of many people who tend
to be liberal as well as "quirky" in the sense that they often do not
accept more "mainstream" societal standards, including those of
gender roles. Thus, LambdaMOO is an
ideal situation in which to question the effects that gender roles have on the
way a person presents him/herself as well as the
way people react to her/him. However, the tendency noted by Curtis of characters' unease with
neutral gender roles, the negative reactions that characters who present
themselves as other than their real-life sex can provoke, and the often more
stereotypical treatment of female-presenting characters by treating them as
more needy of help and sometimes as objects of exploitation, reveals that MOO
can also be an environment for playing out or trying to maintain more
traditional dichotomies of gender. This
suggests as well that even within this non-mainstream computer subculture, members
often have trouble shedding more traditional assumptions about gender. The extent to which this correlates with the
ostensibly male-biased population of MUDs is a question for further study, as
well as the more general question of how widely the members of such a subgroup
like MUDders tend to actively or subconsciously contradict such conceptions.
The extent
to which players descriptions in general, outside of just gender, are a
function of role-playing or are just mirrors of real life is another
fascinating aspect of LambdaMOO. Curtis
notes some of these aspects of characters' descriptions:
A large
proportion of player descriptions contain a degree of wish fulfillment; I
cannot count the number of 'mysterious but unmistakably powerful' figures I
have seen wandering LambdaMOO. Many
players, it seems, are taking advantage of the MUD to emulate various
attractive characters from fiction. Given the detail and content of so many
player descriptions, one might expect to find a significant amount of
role-playing, players who adopt a coherent character with features distinct
from their real-life personalities.
Such is rarely the case, however.
Most players appear to tire of such an effort quickly and simply
interact with the others more-or-less straightforwardly, at least to the degree
one does in normal discourse. One
factor might be that the roles chosen by players are usually taken from a
particular creative work and are not particularly viable as characters outside
of the context of that work; in short; the roles don't make sense in the
context of the MUD (Curtis, 8, unpublished paper).
Given the literature cited earlier on role-playing/fantasy
games, and the extent to which players use their RPG characters to express aspects,
hidden or not, of themselves, the extent to which players role-play on
LambdaMOO or any other MUD system is essential to study in an attempt to
understand this social medium. The
author would hypothesize that mediums like LPMuds would encourage more
role-playing than a medium like LambdaMOO, because the former is closer to a
more typical RPG format. However,
role-playing does occur to a greater or lesser extent in more social MUDs like
LambdaMOO, even if just to the extent that the player has total anonymity and
the opportunity to shape his/her appearance and personality to his/her
liking. Thus, the same issues that
surround RPGs and fantasy in general surround the nature of communication in a
realm such as LambdaMOO. The ways in
which a fantasy-based, fabricated character can be used to express very real
aspects of a person's psychological makeup, as well as becoming an exemplar of
future goals, again become salient issues in such a virtual reality.
As the
author found in her personal experience with LambdaMOO, virtual characters can
also differ from real-life characters with no conscious effort on the part of
the player, simply because the MOO's emphasis on almost purely
linguistic communication forces a type of communication
different from the many non-verbal nuances apparent in real-life
conversation. Thus, the MOO environment
can often force more bluntness in conversation, forcing a player to
communicate less shyly, or with less sarcasm, or without the
verbal defenses that s/he might use in real life. This creates the interesting paradox that the MOO can both force
greater communicative honesty (if the player does indeed
want to be honest) while still creating a virtual
personality that might differ from a player's real life presentation, simply
due to the radically different nature of the two communicative media.
Issues of
communication on LambdaMOO lead to issues of the MOO's potential to create
intimacy between characters. Despite
the "virtual" nature of MUDs, the "reality" element cannot
be ignored in any social
communications. As noted earlier, MUDding can be seen as less of a game
and more of an extension of real life, since, though people play "characters,"
there are still two real people communicating on either side of their
respective computer screens. This often
leads to the formation of very complex social and emotional webs among MOO
players. Friendship and romance do
occur, as well a level of emotional and often physical intimacy bounded only by
its confinement to a linguistic level.
Though these communications are in one sense limited by their linguistic
nature, they can also encourage intimacy by encouraging people to speak
specifically and honestly. Intimacy in
a virtual realm is a subject that has been studied little, but seems to be a
crucial aspect in understanding both electronic communication and fantasy
role-playing in an electronic realm, for it incorporates the same issues of
control, introversion, isolation, gender-roles, and other issues very relevant
to understanding both mediums. However, the exact ways in which these issues
are expressed are still unclear; though many are apparent on an intuitive
level, this is an area that warrants
further study in order to better understand its dynamics.
The
author(s) have found a medium like LambdaMOO to be an ideal environment to
study the structure of conversation on an interactive electronic medium, and
its possible implications in determining the personality correlates shared by
users of such systems. We would
hypothesize that the programming aspects of LambdaMOO incorporate and attract
those types of people who share some of that the personality correlates of the
most general "computer culture" that build up around programming and
computer science fields. Secondly, the
role-playing and fantasy aspects attract those who, as well as having some
level of comfort with computing, also share some of the personality correlates
of people who are attracted to fantasy realms in general as both a means of
enjoyment and of expressing more serious psychological issues. Finally, MUDs add a new and more nuanced
dimension to the area of computer-based communication, affording us a new realm
in which social interaction will take on unique and psychologically revealing
forms.
We would
like to discover what, if any, traits are shared in common by people who use
media like MUDs. However, we also
believe that these characteristics cannot be determined without understanding
exactly how these
media are structured, and how different electronic media
might produce different types of discussion.
In analyzing the different ways in which different electronic
environments affect communication, we can then speculate on exactly what types
of people might be attracted to each of these systems, or to systems like them
in general. We hypothesize that the
issues raised in both the anecdotal literature and the research we have cited
on computing and the computer culture in general, computing and gender,
computer communication, role-playing, and fantasy will figure strongly in this
analysis by providing a basis for such extrapolations.
To get at
least a sense of the types of people that tend to be drawn to an interactive
electronic communicative medium, we picked the most complex of these media for
a pilot study. What follows is a
description of this survey,
which we posted on LambdaMOO, and some of the initial data
we have accumulated from this survey.
The researchers created a joint character on LambdaMOO, named
"Dr.Sherry" after Sherry Turkle, created an "office", left
a virtual
survey in the office, and also left notes in several other
parts of the MOO asking people to take the survey.
The
personality-oriented aspects of the survey did not produce significant or
revealing results, confirming the researchers' suspicions that there are many
more aspects of LambdaMOO and MUDS in general, such as structural and conversational
aspects, must be understood before we are able to compile psychological data on
the actual personality types of people that use MUD systems or other similar
electronic settings. Dr.Sherry also expressed a willingness to talk to other
characters interactively. Though
response to this offer has been sporadic, it did provide good insight on and
experience with the MOO, which helped us better interpret MOO conversations and
create content codes.
The
LambdaMOO survey also provided data on the demographics of people who use the
MOO. Of 55 people who answered the
gender-related questions, 73% are male in real-life and 27% are female. Most play characters on MOO that are the
same as their real-life gender, though 7.5% of the males report female characters,
and 5% play neuter characters. 13% of
the females play neuter characters; none reported playing male characters. In response to the question about ownership
of a computer and Internet access, 70.9% of the 55 people who answered own a
computer, 89.7 of these computer owners have modems, and 92.7% of the total
respondents have 24-hour Internet access.
When asked how they most spend their time on MOO, 21.4% of the 56 people
who responded to this question spend the most time exploring the environment,
16.1% spend the most time programming, 60.4% spend the most time interacting,
and 1.8% could not decide. In response
to the career/major question, 55.3% of the 57 people who responded were somehow
connected to the computer science field, 7.1% to the other sciences, 17.9% to
the liberal arts, 7.1% to the social sciences, 8.9% to other disciplines, and
3.6% were as yet undecided.
Even these
preliminary percentages reveal some characteristics of LambdaMOO and MUDs in
general that would be salient in further study. First, the population of MOO-users, though definitely skewed
toward males, does not
appear to be quite as skewed as Curtis noted in his
paper. In any case, the causes and
effects of this gender bias are central in any study of MUD users. The majority
of MUD users are from the still male-biased computer science field, though the
breakdown of career and major choices, as well as the gender breakdown of
subjects within each field, is another salient topic for further study. The large majority of users who emphasized
the social aspect over the programming or exploration aspects of MOO presents
many topics for further speculation and study, including exactly how social
interaction on a MUD system operates, how it differs from real-life
conversation, and how it differs from
other forms of virtual communication. In addition, the way in which people's
social styles differ or not from their styles on a MUD is an important issue;
do people use this as a substitute for or as an addition to real-life social
interaction. Finally, it seems that the
atmosphere of any particular MUD system would affect the way in which social
interaction occurs, depending on whether the MUD was more or less role-playing
oriented and whether it could be programmed and tailored to its users.
Before any
large-scale psychological study of MUD systems could be executed, it appears
that it is first crucial to understand the actual structure and content of
conversations on MUDs. From this data,
further studies can be modelled to see exactly how the different types of
communication that take place on these systems might be indicative of the
different types of people that might use any one medium, or how different types
of electronic media affect the way its users communicate.
The
experimenters decided to compare three mediums of electronic communication to
determine differences among their conversational structure. Two of these
mediums were LambdaMOO and IRC, since the great similarities yet great
differences between the two lend themselves well to discovering exactly how the
different atmospheres of the two affect electronic communication in itself, as
well as the personality issues surrounding such communication.
The third
medium employed by the researchers differs more from the first two in
structure. The researchers decided to
also focus attention on the in-house bulletin board which runs on their own
school's VAX/VMS system,
VaxNotes. Notes is a
bulletin board with an active community of users from the researcher's own
school, a co-educational liberal arts school of about 1,200 students, as well
as from the institution's sister school, an all-female
liberal arts school of 1,200 students.. Notes will provide a good contrast to MOO
and IRC in several respects. A very
active community of students in a common educational setting and social community
uses this facility as a medium
for expression and communication. Notes itself is a non-interactive medium, unlike MOO and
IRC. In addition, Notes users post
under their own usernames and not pseudonyms, and are much more likely to know
each other in a real-life
setting. However,
there are still "conferences" like MOO rooms or IRC channels, which
can be focused on a very specific topic or be more generally oriented. On Notes, there is a
"Miscellaneous" topic which is for banter and conversation, and also
a "Computer Problems" topic which, like Hacker's Heaven on MOO and
#hack on IRC, is more focused on discussing computing. Both conferences can be used to discuss the
same types of topics that are discussed
on MOO and IRC, but without the interactive medium.
In doing
our observations of all three settings, we began with very few hypotheses, both
because we were doing the observations in a naturalistic fashion and wanted to
impose as few preconceptions as possible on the findings,
and also because there is little background information on
the differences between these three settings which would allow us to form
hypotheses. However, we had some
general sense of the settings which caused us to expect a few effects. We expected that MOO settings would contain
more paralinguistic cues in the form of facial expressions, nodding, and so on,
due to the presence of the emote function in the MOO setting and the lack of
any such function in IRC and Notes.
Though users of IRC and Notes can and do express emotion/facial
expressions/actions by utterances such as "*bonk*" or ":)",
MOO is the only system that has a preprogrammed function for expressing such
emotions or
actions. Thus, MOO
better invites such behavior.
We also
expected an effect due to gender of observer, either on flirtatious or hostile
behavior toward a female observer, the latter due to the still-prevalent notion
of computing as a male domain, and the fact that the MOO and IRC settings have
more male than female players. We
expected that conversation in a computer topic-oriented room, channel, or Notes
topic would indeed show more utterances about computing in general, the
atmosphere of the MOO and IRC, discussion of players and rooms, and perhaps be
slightly more intimidating/hostile to newcomers attempting to join the
conversation, while a less-focused setting would have a much more free-form
pattern of conversation. Otherwise, we tried to analyze the data with as little
preconceptions as possible as to the number of different types of utterances
that would be found in each setting and subsetting. Instead, we focused on creating a set of codes that would reflect
accurately the many types of utterances we had seen in our experiences with the
three mediums.
We believe
that finding out more concrete attributes of the nature of MUD conversation, as
opposed to other forms of electronic communication, is important for several
reasons. First, the increasing
sophistication and widespread nature of MUD systems is an aspect of computer
communication that can no longer being ignored, for it appears to be a medium
which is creating an entirely new subculture, with its own language, customs,
and aralinguistic
means of communication.
Second, considering the possible uses of such media for the scientific
or business communities, as settings in
which to generate and debate ideas, a study of how this type of problem-solving
communication occurs would address the question of how this medium will affect
the creative and communicative process among such groups. Finally, such a study would address the even
more general issue of the implications of virtual reality, as it increases in
complexity and its ability to simulate an intricate and compelling environment
and social medium. As more people begin
to explore these environments and use them as mediums for self-expression,
socialization, and relationships, the nature and implications of such
communication is a crucial issue for psychology and all related disciplines.
Method
The
subjects were participants in three communicative settings: MOO, IRC, and
Notes. Sample sessions were recorded
from each of the three mediums, such that the number of subjects in any given
session varied. For our two MOO logs,
the number of people in the Living Room setting were five (all apparently male)
and eight (six apparently male, two guests with indeterminable gender),
respectively, and the number of people in the Hacker's Heaven setting were both
nine (in both cases, 8 apparently male, 1 apparently female) respectively. For our two IRC logs the number of people in
the #hottub setting were 22 (18 apparently male, 4 apparently female) and 25
(23 apparently male, 2 apparently female), and the number of people in the
#hack setting were 9 (all apparently male) and 13 (again, all apparently male). For the Notes logs, the number of people in
the Computer Problems log were five (four male and one female), and the number
of people in the Miscellaneous log were seven (four male and three female).
Since all
the players on MOO and IRC use pseudonyms, it is difficult to determine the
actual sex or age of the players.
However, through our pilot survey on MOO and our own experience with MOO
and IRC, we can make some assumptions as to the demographics of the subjects. Both MOO and IRC users tend to be fairly
young, ranging in age from about 16 to 25, though we have met a range of people
from pre-teen age to late thirties. The
survey on MOO
indicated that the MOO population tends to be skewed toward
males; this also appears to be true of IRC judging from the experimenters'
interactions there. Most of the players are students, since it is mainly
students that have access to the Internet through a school-based accounts. Younger people may use their parent's
account or a hacked connection; older people may have an account as a grad student
or connected to their work in the computer field. The MOO survey also indicates that over half of MOO users work or
plan to work in computer related fields; experiences with IRC do not present a
clear picture of whether this is true of the IRC population.
Notes
users, on the other hand, can be more accurately described. They are students at the experimenters'
school or its sister school, two liberal arts colleges of about 1,200 students
each, one of them an all-women school and
the other co-ed. They
are mostly all of college students' age, 18 through 22, except for the
occasional faculty member or alum that may post to or read the bulletin
board. Despite the gender-skewed
population that the association of a co-ed and all female school produces, Notes
appears to be about half male and half female.
The MOO and
IRC logs consisted of sessions of 20 minutes each, ten minutes spent in each of
two subsettings, the MOO Living Room/IRC #hottub channel or the MOO Hacker's
Heaven/IRC #hack channel. Two logs from
each system were obtained, each with a female and male observer, named BethAnne
and Sylvan. The experimenters would
move the character into the room or channel, say hello, and simply watch, only
responding to direct questioning. After
10 minutes were up in the first subsetting, the experimenters would move the
character to the other subsetting and repeat the process.
The Notes
logs were made up of a selection from the Miscellaneous topic (corresponding
roughly to the Living Room on MOO and #hottub on IRC) and a selection from the
Computer Problems topic (corresponding to Hacker's Heaven and #hack). A fairly general, conversational log was
chosen from Miscellaneous, rather than one with a very focused topic; the log
from Computer Problems was taken from the same time period as the Misc log was
posted.
The
utterances in each log were coded according to a coding scheme devised by the
experimenters. The codes (Appendix F),
revised on the basis of practice with earlier sample transcripts of LambdaMOO,
encompassed the many
types of behavior the researchers had noticed in their
experiences with MOO, IRC, and Notes.
Throughout this refinement process, if it was found that there were two
or more codes that were ambiguous in their correct application to similar types
of statements, these codes were collapsed, though collapsing two types of
behavior into one code might have at first seemed counterintiuitive. The codes
encompassed greetings, biographical information, gestures that keep
conversation going ("nudges"), expressions of
affection, humor, and hostility, physical action, interaction with system code,
talking about computers and programming, discussing rooms, topics, or channels
in general, discussing individual's behavior and characters, and an
"other" category for uncodable statements.
The
experimenters decided to code only the first forty utterances of each
subsetting, since this was the size of the smallest subsetting transcript. In
order to get a better sense of how individual players contribute to such
conversations, the utterances were tallied by player, according to the number
of each type of utterance each player had made in the course of the first forty
statements. Each player's setting, subsetting,
and sex of observer present was noted, and then the number of utterances of
each code-type made by each player were tallied.
The
experimenters derived the percentage of their reliability for their coding of
each setting/subsetting; the average of these reliability percentages was 82.9
percent. After coding separately and
figuring out this reliability
percentage, the experimenters discussed their differences in
coding and agreed on which codes should be used for the utterances on which
they had initial coding disagreements.
Though the reliability percentage was less than the
experimenters had hoped, they also realize that it is almost
impossible to refine the codes to the extent that reliability would be greater,
due to the extremely subjective nature of interpreting MOO, IRC, and Notes conversations,
especially IRC due to its much less structured nature of conversation.
The
utterances were tallied according to player, noting the player's setting (MOO,
IRC, or Notes) subsetting (Living Room/#hottub/Miscellaneous or Hacker's Heaven/#hack/Computer
Problems), gender of observer (neutral for
Notes), and the number of each type of utterance they made
(codes A through M). Multiple regression analyses were performed on the
data. We discovered no significant
effect of observer gender, so did not include this variable in further
analysis. These results are summarized
in Tables 1-16.
A multiple
regression analysis of the mean number of greetings in each setting and
subsetting reveal a significant main effect for both setting (p < .001) and
subsetting (p < .001), and a significant interaction effect (p <
.003). Post-hoc t-tests of the means
reveal that there are significantly more greetings on MOO than on IRC (p <
.009), and that there are more greetings in the Living Room/#hottub subsettings
than in the Hacker's Heaven/#hack subsettings.
The interaction effect suggests that the difference between the number
of greetings in the two subsettings on MOO is much greater than that of IRC. There are no significant effects of VaxNotes
for this type of utterance. The
analysis of the mean numbers of biographical information statements reveal a
significant main effect for setting (p < .017). Post-hoc t-tests show a significantly greater number of
biographical information utterances in IRC
than in MOO (p < .032).
There are more bioinfo utterances on Notes than on MOO, though this
difference only approaches significance (p < .054), and there is not a
significant difference between the number of bioinfo statements in
Notes and IRC.
The
analysis of the mean numbers of code statements (statements showing a player's
interaction with system code) show a significant main effect for setting (p
< .002), subsetting (p < .041) and a significant interaction effect (p
< .045). Post-hoc t-tests show a
significantly greater amount of code statements in the MOO setting than the IRC
setting (p < .034), and that there are more code statements in the Living
Room/#hack setting than in the Hacker's Heaven/#hack setting. The interaction effects that there is a much
greater difference in the number of code statements between the two settings on
MOO than there is between the two settings on IRC. There was no such significant effect for VaxNotes.
The
analysis of the mean number of humor statements per person show a significant
main effect for both setting (p < .006) and subsetting (p < .06), and a
significant interaction effect (p < .02).
However, no two pairs of means
differed significantly, according to t-tests, though the cell means do indicate
that Notes has the most expression of humor.
The
analysis of the mean number of "technobabble" (talking about
computers) statements per person reveals that there is a significant main
effect for setting (p < .001), subsetting (p < .003) and a significant
interaction effect (p < .001).
Post-hoc t-tests show that there is a significant difference between MOO
and IRC (p < .027), with MOO having a greater number of technobabble
statements per person, and that there are more technobabble statements made in
hacking settings than living-room type settings. No such significant effect was found for VaxNotes, but the
interaction effect suggests that there is a great difference in Notes between
the amount of technobabble statements made in
miscellaneous and Computer Problems, while there is little difference
between the amount of such statements made in the analogous settings in MOO and
IRC.
Analysis of
the mean number of affectionate statements per person shows a significant main
effect for subsetting (p < .037).
This is due to the fact that there are no expressions of affection that
took place in hacking settings in our
transcripts. MOO had more such
expressions, but only to an extent that approaches significance as a main
effect for setting (p < .053).
The
analysis of the mean number of physical action statements per person shows a
significant main effect for subsetting (p < .034). The cell means show no physical action in the MOO or IRC living
room/#hottub subsettings, no physical action in either of the notes
subsettings, and none in the IRC #hack subsettings. The only subsetting that shows any physical action at all in our
data is MOO Hacker's Heaven.
The
analysis of the mean number of statements coded "other" reveal a
significant main effect for setting (p < .004). The cell means for statements show that many more of the Notes
statements were coded as "other" than the MOO or IRC statements.
A second
analysis was performed on the data, this time to simply tally the mean number
of each type of utterance made in each setting and subsetting overall, instead
of per person (Figures 1 and 2). Few
meaningful significant effects were found for this analysis. This is most likely due to the fact that this
analysis is less suited to elucidate the differences in conversational structure,
because of its insensitivity to the number of statements made by
each individual person.
The
meaningful significant finding illustrates how the difference between tallying
types of statements per person produces more specific results than tallying statements
overall. There was a significant main
effect for greeting statements for setting (p < .009) and subsetting (p <
.009). Looking at the cell means, it
can be found that there are more greetings overall on IRC than MOO, which seems
to contradict the finding that there are more greetings per person on MOO than
IRC. However, in the context of the two
settings this finding makes sense. In
IRC, there are more greetings overall due to the larger number of people, but
less per person, apparently since MOO is an environment in which people tend to
be more inclusive of new people in conversations. Thus, there is less greeting going on overall in MOO settings,
but each individual is much more likely to make more greeting statements than
an individual player on IRC.
According
to the data, MOO had significantly greater amounts of greetings, interactions
with code, technobabble, and physical action, as well as a trend toward more
affectionate statements. Notes had more
biographical information, "other" statements, and a trend towards
more humorous statements. The Living Room/#hottub setting (though not the Notes
Miscellaneous setting) had significantly more greetings, while Hacker's Heaven
and #hack (though not the Notes Computer Problems setting) had more statements
indicating interaction with code as well as more technobabble.
The absence
of any effect of observer gender does not support the anecdotal evidence that
females at least in the MOO setting encounter more flirtatious, and often more
hostile, behavior toward them. However,
the lack of a significant result for this factor does not mean that this effect
does not exist, for the experimenter's own experiences on MOO and IRC fully
support the anecdotal evidence. The
lack of effect of observer gender could be partially caused in the MOO setting
by the fact that BethAnne was a new character, and this author found in her own
experience with her regular female character (TamLin) that she did not
encounter much flirtatious behavior until she was a few weeks old on MOO and
thus more comfortable interacting with the community, talking to more players
in a more comfortable fashion, and known as a female name. On both IRC, the lack of effect could have
also been due to the fact that we did not code private messages to BethAnne, or
utterances made by one player to another that only the two of them can
hear. In the IRC log, we had two (male)
people page us acting in an extremely friendly, forward fashion, even though
nobody in the room did so publicly. We
suspect that if we had gathered several more logs of each kind, and coded
private messages in MOO and IRC, we would have encountered more flirtatious
behavior toward BethAnne in the MOO and IRC settings.
The results
for greetings support the experimenter's experiences on MOO and IRC. On MOO, the conversations in Hacker's Heaven
tend to be the more focused, with people actively discussing the MOO, players,
programming, trying out objects, and making jokes, than those of the Living
Room, which often just seem to be more players "hanging out" with no
real topic of conversation in mind (though intense and active conversations do
occur; they just seem rarer in this
setting according to the experimenter's experience). Thus, there is much more attention focused on greetings in the
Living Room, since new arrivals do not disrupt the flow of conversation quite
as much, than in Hacker's Heaven, where people might be too focused on their
topic of conversation or figuring out their programming work to greet each new
arrival. In IRC, both the #hottub and
#hack settings are very active conversations, though #hack like Hacker's Heaven
is more structurally focused on one topic.
IRC is composed of more
greetings per conversation, but only due to the large crowd
of people; on MOO a player is much more likely to get a greeting from any
individual person. This supports the
experimenter's experience that less attention overall is paid to new arrivals
on an IRC channel than new arrivals to a MOO room, and that the MOO is a much
friendlier atmosphere than IRC. In
addition, the greater number of greetings in the Living Room/#hottub
subsettings supports the notion that
both of these subsettings are less focused than the Hacker's
Heaven/#hottub settings, which are more oriented toward discussing topics
specifically related to computing rather than just small talk.
The greater
amount of biographical information on IRC supports the hypothesis that IRC is
less of a fantasy realm than MOO; that people are less playing characters and
more just there to talk as "themselves" simply under pseudonyms. This is not to imply that MOO characters are
simply playing a role, but that there might be more subtle or unsubtle
role-playing and actual development of a character personality (which may or
may not be related to the player's real life personality) occurring on MOO than
IRC. The fact that the Notes data does
not have significantly more biographical information statements than MOO is
difficult to understand, since it would seem that Notes is somewhat closer to the non-virtual realm,
with users using their real life names and often talking about college life and
one another. However, the lack of
significance could just be a function of the small data pool; this conclusion
is especially supported by the fact that the trend of more bioinfo statements
on Notes than MOO does approach
significance.
The
findings for the number of "code statements" made in each setting and
subsetting for MOO and IRC bears out well the experimenter's experience with
the mediums. MOO should have more
interactions with the system since it
is highly programmable, and thus invites more interaction
with code than does IRC. Though it
initially seems that the hacking settings should have more code interactions than
the living room/hottub settings, this is not true, since our code statements
included people's entrance and exit messages to a room or channel, and many
more people tend to pop in and out of the living room settings than the hacking
settings, which are less chaotic in this manner.
The
experimenters are unsure how to interpret the humor data. Though there is an overall effect for humor,
there is no significant difference between the pairs of cell means. There seems to be no obvious reason why any
of the three settings would have more humor statements than any other one,
except perhaps that MOO has a greater capacity for surreal behavior due to the
fact that it is the one closest to a "virtual reality" of the three
mediums. Why Notes would have the most humor, whether significantly so or not,
is unclear to this experimenter. A
possible explanation is the non-interactive quality of Notes, which requires
that participants make more novel and attention-getting statements to keep
other participants' attention (Doug Davis, personal communication). This would not be as necessary on MOO or
IRC, due to the fact that the interactive nature of the medium forces players
to keep attention regardless of the type of statement.
The effects
for technobabble are consistent with MOO and IRC just as the effects for code
statements are consistent. MOO is a
more programmable system, which would account for more technobabble in all
subsettings as
characters learn how to interact with the system, while IRC
technobabble seems to be more confined to the channels set aside for talking
about computing. Of course, subsettings
focusing on computing on either setting should have more
computer-related statements, which is reflected in the
data. The lack of significant effects
for subsetting in Notes may have been due to the small data pool, since the
cell means indicated that there was a good deal of technobabble happening in
Computer Problems while none was happening in Miscellaneous. However, for
setting, the data most likely indicates that Notes users spend much less time
talking about computing than IRC and MOO users.
It appears
from the data on affection that hacking settings have much less affection than
living room/hottub type settings, which supports the experimenter's insight
that hacking settings are often more aloof, intimidating, or hostile in
atmosphere.
It would
seem that MOO is much more conducive to physical action than IRC, due to the
presence of the emote key in MOO, and that Notes is not applicable to this code
at all. However, the lack of a
significant main effect for setting may just be due to the small data
pool. There seems to be no apparent
reason why there would be more physical action in MOO Hacker's Heaven.
The
significantly greater number of "other" statements in MOO simply
indicates the experimenter's assumption that MOO is a less comparable medium to
MOO than is IRC, and this cannot be coded as well according to the codes
originally constructed in accordance with the MOO setting.
From this
data, it can be concluded that MOO is a friendlier atmosphere, more conducive
to interaction with the system, and more conducive to physical action in the
virtual sense. It can also be concluded
that hacking settings in all cases tend to be less friendly toward newcomers,
as well as lending themselves more to both talking about computing, and, in the MOO's case, actual
programming in the midst of conversation.
The
findings of the study suggest avenues of further research both in the area of
conversational structure as well as of personality analysis. It is obvious that another study of
conversational structure is necessary to better understand electronic
communication, and to confirm that the nonsignificant trends in the data are
actually significant differences between the systems. A study with differently structured or more generalized codes, or
with more detailed ways of coding each utterance (such as coding for tone and
content, or for line length) would most likely lead to a greater number of
significant results.
Despite the
need for more detailed data on conversational structure in electronic mediums,
the initial data and personal experience we have does present some indications
as to the type of people that might be attracted to such systems, thus
presenting suggestions for further research in the area of personality
psychology.
The issues
presented by the first formation of a "computer culture" are still
relevant to those who choose to communicate through electronic media, even
though such media are more widely available and used. Bulletin boards,
IRC, and MUDs (the latter especially) are fairly new media;
though their use is growing, they are still not in use by a large segment of
the population. Thus, those who use
these media do form a somewhat exclusive group, just as the original devotees
of the computer culture formed their own exclusive group. Like the latter
group, the electronic communication subculture should be expected to form its
own set of jargon, etiquette, expectations, and other such rules. This trend is already occurring, evident in
such phenomenon as new abbreviations (for example, IMHO, meaning "In my
humble opinion," is common on bulletin boards; the terms brb, meaning
"be right back," and IRL, meaning "in real life," are
common terminologies on interactive systems) and new, often unclear rules of
etiquette (is it appropriate to make harsh personal attacks on a bulletin
board? is it appropriate to use MOO
programming skills to "spy" on a person in another room? is the use of obscenity on IRC justification
for being "kicked" off a channel?).
Since this new language and set of rules is so new, they are constantly
in flux; even the experienced user can come across new jargon, and there are
constant disagreements over appropriate behavior on all of these systems. However, this phenomenon contributes to the
exclusivity of the electronic communication world, since it constitutes the
existence of a subculture which can only be understood from within.
Judging by
the greater number of code statements, or on MOO, it can be inferred that to
fully appreciate the MOO system it is necessary to know more about its workings
and how to interact with it. This
indicates that even less people will discover and use this new type of system,
since it is more complex and harder to learn.
Thus, a topic for further research is whether the MUDding community is
indeed the most exclusive, and if so, how this affects both the type of person
that uses MUD systems. In addition, the
extent to which this exclusivity affects the development of the subculture
itself can be researched. For instance, do MUD systems tend to have a greater
amount of jargon and more
disputes over appropriate behavior than the other two
mediums? Finding such an effect would
suggest that MUD culture is more exclusive and separate from the real-life
realm, and thus richer and more detailed as a culture in itself.
The issue
of computing being a realm in which a participant can have strict control over
self and actions is also very relevant both to our findings and to further
study. Since we found that more
biographical information tends to be discussed on Notes, it makes sense that a
person who is shy and wanted to have the control of remaining anonymous would be even more attracted to an
IRC or MUD system than s/he would be to a school-based bulletin board where
his/her identity could be easily discovered.
In addition, in the MOO setting, a participant could have the most
control over the creation of a character, even one of very different looks,
personality, or even gender than the participant's real-life identity. It appears that MOO, both because of its
anonymity and potential for detailed character description/role-playing, is the
best medium in which to study issues of control. However, all three mediums seem relevant to these issues.
Further
research must be done on the effect of observer gender on electronic
communication. Though the researchers
obtained no significant effect of gender on the communicative structure of
conversations, it seems unlikely that the gender of a player would have little
impact on his or her experiences with these media. Based on prior studies of gender and computing, it appears that
women might be less likely to become involved in such media. This is supported both by the gender skew of MOO
noted by both our pilot study and Curtis', the skew toward males in our IRC and
MOO subject pools, and the fact that Notes is only half-female in a community
made up of three times as
many females as males.
Even when
becoming involved in such systems, the communicative structures and norms of
the systems many often be affected by their presence, or have an effect on
their comfort level with the use of such systems. On IRC, though no significant observer effect was noted in the
data, the researchers' BethAnne character received some hostile remarks after
joining the #hack channel, suggesting that many of the players felt a female
character had no business participating in a discussion of computing. No such effects were noted on MOO, though it
could be argued that the greater amount of technobabble in the Hackers' Heaven
setting (as well at the #hack setting on IRC) is more likely to become
intimidating to women, who tend to generally have less experience with
computers and programming. However,
electronic communication is likely to bring more women into computing in
general, since it defies the
stereotype of computing as a solitary, competitive
activity. In any case, both the effect
of observer gender on the type of communication that takes place on electronic
systems, as well as the effect of the systems on what gender is most
likely to use them, must be further studied.
Our data
also indicates that MOO is the most detailed of these environments, both in its
capacity for character and room description and, judging by the number of code
statements in MOO, its capacity for programming and manipulation of the
system. This aspect of MOO brings into
question an aspect of electronic communication noted by Hellerstein in her
study, that of addictiveness. As noted
earlier, she quotes students in her study who warn against the addictiveness of
the bulletin board environment, sometimes to the point of causing its users to
ignore other real-life concerns.
Considering that our data indicates that IRC and MOO have a much greater
potential for creating a "realistic" atmosphere, both because of
their interactive natures and, in MOO's case, the ability to create a detailed
and interactive virtual environment, the issue of addiction becomes an even
greater concern. MOO addiction was a
topic discussed with us at many points in our conversations with MOO
participants, but was not an issue we had the capacity to look at in our
study. However, the reasons for the
seemingly addictive nature of electronic communication, as well as the extent
of addiction that different environments can produce, is a crucial topic for
further study, especially as more people use such systems and become prone to becoming
affected by this issue.
Many other
aspects of computing and its personality correlates are discussed in the
literature, but the data does not present enough information to make
assumptions about their relevance to the systems we studied. For instance, the issue of intimacy in
virtual settings cannot be addressed well by the data. The greater number of biographical
statements made by people in Notes may lead a reader to think that participants
in Notes are the most self-revelatory, but this negates the fact that, from the
researchers' experience, most personal conversations on MOO and IRC take place
on private channels/rooms, not in the common channels or rooms.
It might
seem that the role-playing aspect of MOO or even IRC, which allow the capacity
for gender-switching or for presenting a different personality, might detract
from the potential for intimacy in such systems. However, some of the data and
the inherent characteristics of both MOO and IRC contradict this notion. The greeting data indicates that MOO is a
fairly friendly environment, with participants who are very willing to draw
people into conversations. It can be
inferred that this atmosphere would tend to make people very comfortable with
the MOO environment, and thus encourage them to talk more with people. Also, due simply to the anonymity of MOO and
IRC,
people often feel safe to say things they would not say to a
person face-to-face, or even virtually if their real name was being used. Finally, the text-based nature of all three
mediums force people to be very detailed and specific in their
self-expressions. When discussion
emotional or biographical issues, this form of communication can prove to be
very self-revealing. In any case, the
ways in which the conversational structure of electronic communication might
affect issues of intimacy between participants deserves further study.
Other
issues in the literature, such as the relationship of Rhue and Lynn's concept
of fantasy-proneness to involvement in computing, or the aspects of electronic
communication contributing to Kiesler's finding that it takes
longer to reach consensus by electronic means, cannot be
addressed by our findings. However,
these are issues that can be addressed once the structure of electronic
communication is better understood, since this knowledge will allow researchers
to better determine what types of people become involved in these structures.
Through our
research, we have gained some insight into the ways that different electronic
mediums can affect conversations taking place on them. Through analyzing this
data, it is obvious that this is a new and broadening field which deserves much
more detailed research. More
information on this subject will provide insight into the way participants
interact with these systems, allowing psychologists to better understand the
personality correlates of those attracted to electronic media, the
psychological effects of such systems, and how the interaction of the human
mind with computer-based systems can produce new and revealing psychological
phenomena.
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(Credit should be given to several MOO players in helping
with our background information, notably Pavel Curtis (Haakon/Lambda) and Judy
Anderson (yduJ/Nosredna) of Xerox PARC, as well as the programming and implementation of the survey, notably Judy
Anderson as well as Dan Burford (Gilmore), West Virginia University '95. Thanks is also due to all the participants
in LambdaMOO who took the survey and/or spoke to us about the issues involved
in this project.)