It's interesting from a psychological point-of-view (sorry, it's what I'm studying).

It kind of reminds me of the de-personalisation that factors in to cause road rage. Everyone drives around in their cars, sheilded from everyone else in their own little 'car worlds', so it's easy to forget there are actually other humans just like yourself driving around.

I remember reading about an interesting psychological experiment where they tested to see how many motorists would honk their horn when a long line of cars were stopped at a red light and the car in front didn't go when it turned green. They found almost 90% of the time, people second in line honked aggressively at the first car.

Then the experimenters had a pedestrian cross the street between the first and second cars before the light turned green. Still, almost 90% of cars honked. Then they put the same pedestrian on crutches and had him hobble between the two cars. He was still out of the way before the light turned green. In this condition honking went down to 57%. Why? Because it instilled a sense of empathy in the drivers.

The same thing seems to happen online.... social inhibitions, empathy, nonverbal communication which are all so important for social interaction, can easily go straight out the window when there's de-personalisation happening.

That's my two cents

Carrie

That is a very good article and very apropos!

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Bill
SmallGig.com

Thanks for finding this. I work as a communications consultant for lots of big organizations and teach organizational communications at the college level. This issue is of great concern across the business and non-profit sectors.

Sad, but true!


Russ

I believe that the answer lies in an unwillingness to punish hostile behavior in our Western society. If someone is uncivil at the head of a queue for a service or sales counter, the person behind the counter rarely refuses to deal with the offender, preferring the sale to the societal correction. Money wins.

Other societies (think the Japanese, for instance) are FAR more willing to ostracize an obnoxious person (or child, which is where it all starts) than ours. Tolerance, in the guise of 'freedom', only encourages the antisocial.

The fact that large US corporations are willing to hire poorly educated (has anyone tried to read a young person's scribble, lately?), poorly mannered slacker youth shows they have little choice.....

But, I guess if you want to wage a war AND give away huge tax cuts and corporate welfare, you are going to have to make cuts SOMEWHERE. So what if our kids get a substandard education? Our corporations would rather outsource their future jobs to foreign countries anyway, pay less wages anyway AND get a better educated worker to boot.

Who cares if our children are ill-mannered and ignorant? At least we don't get a tax hike!