Monica T. Whitty

Age/Sex/Location: Uncovering the Social Cues in the Development of Online Relationships

Past research on online relationships has predominantly been concerned with how the quality of online relationships compares with offline relationships. This research has been more concerned with the medium itself than with the meanings that users construct around their interpersonal interactions within this medium. The current paper seeks to redress this imbalance by exploring the ways that available social cues are used to shape the meanings of online relationships. Sixty Internet users, ranging in age from 19-51 years, were interviewed about their online relationships. It was found that ideals that are important in traditional relationships, such as trust, honesty, and commitment are just as important in online relationships; however, the cues that signify these ideals vary.

Liar, liar! An examination of how open, supportive and honest people are in chat rooms

This research had two aims. Firstly, to examine availability of emotional support in chat rooms, and secondly, to investigate openness and dishonesty in chat rooms. Three hundred and twenty respondents (160 women and 160 men) filled out the ‘Chat Room Survey’. It was found that people who spend more time in chat rooms were more likely to be open about themselves, receive emotional support, and give emotional support. Women were more likely than men to give emotional support. Men were more likely to than women to lie, and were more likely to lie about their socio-economic status. In contrast, women were more likely than men to lie for safety reasons. This study challenges some past speculations about online relationships, and argues that future research must consider demographic details more when examining interactions on the Internet.

The realness of cybercheating: men's and women's representations of unfaithful internet relationships

This article considers the deviant behavior of Internet infidelity. Although a plethora of research has been conducted on offline infidelity and jealousy, to date, there has been very little written about Internet infidelity and jealousy associated with cyber-relationships. Given the potential problems that online infidelity might bring to a relationship, this area of research warrants some attention. This study drew from Kitzinger and Powells (1995) story completion method to explore mens and womens understandings of Internet infidelity. Two hundred thirty-four participants wrote a story to a cue relating to Internet infidelity. Although not all participants saw this as a real act of betrayal the majority did see this as not only real infidelity but as also having as serious an impact on the couple as a traditional offline affair. The most important finding here was that emotional infidelity was given as much attention as sexual infidelitywas. Moreover, similar gender differences found in studies on offline infidelity emerged in this research. These results present a way forward in our thinking about cyberaffairs.

Online recreation: The relationship between loneliness, Internet self-efficacy and the use of the Internet for entertainment purposes

In this study, 150 undergraduates answered questions about their Internet usage and completed a loneliness and an Internet self-efficacy questionnaire. A factor analysis of the Internet usage items revealed three facets of online recreation, including, using the Internet for: computer-based entertainment, to facilitate offline entertainment, and for information about the entertainment world. Those who scored higher on loneliness were more likely to use the Internet for computer-based entertainment, as well as, use the Internet to obtain information about the entertainment world. Individuals higher in Internet self-efficacy were more likely to use the Internet for computer-based entertainment and to facilitate offline entertainment. Implications for the study of the psychological influences of the Internet are discussed in this paper.

Coping and defending: Age differences in maturity of defence mechanisms and coping strategies

Previous studies have examined either coping strategies or defence mechanisms; however, few have considered both. This research examined age differences in the type of defence mechanisms and coping strategies that people employ. In addition, gender differences, personality, and environmental variables were taken into account. The three age groups used in this study included: 17-23 year olds, 40-47 year olds, and 63-70 year olds. The youngest participants used significantly less mature defence mechanisms and significantly more immature defence mechanisms than the middle-aged and the oldest group. However, there was no significant difference in maturity of defence mechanisms between the middle-aged and the oldest group. In contrast, there were no age differences revealed for effectiveness of coping strategies people employ. One further interesting finding was that people with a higher purpose in life were more likely to use mature defence mechanisms. This research concludes that when developing theories on stress, psychologists might benefit from considering both defence mechanisms and coping strategies.

Understanding Insider Threat: A Framework for Characterising Attacks

The threat that insiders pose to businesses, institutions and governmental organisations continues to be of serious concern. Recent industry surveys and academic literature provide unequivocal evidence to support the significance of this threat and its prevalence. Despite this, however, there is still no unifying framework to fully characterise insider attacks and to facilitate an understanding of the problem, its many components and how they all fit together. In this paper, we focus on this challenge and put forward a grounded framework for understanding and reflecting on the threat that insiders pose. Specifically, we propose a novel conceptualisation that is heavily grounded in insider-threat case studies, existing literature and relevant psychological theory. The framework identifies several key elements within the problem space, concentrating not only on noteworthy events and indicators- technical and behavioural- of potential attacks, but also on attackers (e.g., the motivation behind malicious threats and the human factors related to unintentional ones), and on the range of attacks being witnessed. The real value of our framework is in its emphasis on bringing together and defining clearly the various aspects of insider threat, all based on real-world cases and pertinent literature. This can therefore act as a platform for general understanding of the threat, and also for reflection, modelling past attacks and looking for useful patterns.

Netiquette within married couples: Agreement about acceptable online behavior and surveillance between partners

The internet has become an integral part of many peoples everyday lives. It is unclear what its role is in maintaining intimate offline relationships and whether the use of the internet might cause conflicts between partners about what constitutes acceptable online behavior. An online survey of 920 married couples in the UK who used the internet investigated whether partners have similar netiquettes. There were high levels of agreement between married partners about the unacceptability of online infidelities; similarly they agreed more than two random individuals about the acceptability of entertainment activities which, in excess, might be addictive. Partners further showed high correspondence in surveillance behavior. Women were more concerned about their own and their partners behavior and were more likely to monitor their partners online activities. These findings suggest that a netiquette is developed and consciously or subconsciously negotiated within intimate relationships. Nevertheless, traditional gender differences as regards risk perception still hold; women are more likely to problematies their own and their partners behaviors.

The Online Romance Scam: A Serious Cybercrime

The Online Romance Scam is a relatively new form of fraud that became apparent in about 2008. In this crime, criminals pretend to initiate a relationship through online dating sites then defraud their victims of large sums of money. This paper presents some descriptive statistics about knowledge and victimization of the online dating romance scam in Great Britain. Our study found that despite its newness, an estimated 230,000 British citizens may have fallen victim to this crime. We conclude that there needs to be some rethinking about providing avenues for victims to report the crime or at least making them more comfortable when doing so.

Emotional and Sexual Infidelity Offline and in Cyberspace

This study investigated how men and women perceive online and offline sexual and emotional infidelity. Undergraduates from a large university in Northern Ireland participated in the study. It was found that men, when forced to decide, were more upset by sexual infidelity and women by emotional infidelity. It was also found that men were more likely to believe that women have sex when in love and that women believe that men have sex even when they are not in love. It was not, however, found that either men or women believed that having cybersex implied the other was also in love or that being in love online implied they were having cybersex. These results are explained through a social-cognitive lens.

Would I lie to you? Self-serving lies and other-oriented lies told across different media

This study set out to investigate the type of media individuals are more likely to tell self-serving and other-oriented lies, and whether this varied according to the target of the lie. One hundred and fifty participants rated on a likert-point scale how likely they would tell a lie. Participants were more likely to tell self-serving lies to people not well-known to them. They were more likely to tell self-serving lies in email, followed by phone, and finally face-to-face. Participants were more likely to tell other-oriented lies to individuals they felt close to and this did not vary according to the type media. Participants were more likely to tell harsh truths to people not well-known to them via email.