Apparently the internet age has been around long enough now for psychologists and neurologists to study behavior [subscription req'd] associated with our relatively recent and speedy forms of communication. This is a realm in which the part of our behavior designed to guide us through complex social interactions is being short-circuited - hence, flame wars.

Why? The explanation is at least partly contained in the review paper: J. S. Beer and K. N. Ochsner, 2006. Social cognition: A multi level analysis. BRAIN RESEARCH 1079:98-105.

Successful social interactions depend on a constant flow of information between the people interacting. My interpretation of the thoughts and emotions of a person I am talking to immediately affects not only what I say to that person, but the words I choose to say it, and my body language as well. But it is more complex than that - my interaction with the person is also dependent on a multitude of biases I bring to the conversation, including the memory of past events associated with that person, my opinion of the person based on what others have told me, and expectations based on my internal "golden rule," which basically is saying to me, "this is how I would react to what I am saying, so this person will react that way too."

There are two major reasons that the internet affects this interaction, the first of which is explained in the article. Without getting any feedback from a person about how what we are saying affects them, there is no external mechanism filtering what we say. I think it is safe to say that an average person feels reluctance to hurt another person's feelings, if these people are interacting face-to-face. We don't feel that same reluctance over the wires, because we don't have to see that person react. When we have no direct perception of the impact we make, our 'mirror neurons' are not going to be firing. These neurons connect our interpretation of another person's emotions with our own emotional center; i.e. they give us empathy, which is exactly what allows us to be successful as a social species. (More on empathy is discussed in a previous post, and look for more in future posts - the biology of sociality is one of my big interests, and in humans, empathy plays a huge role.)

The second reason the internet age has accelerated problems in social interaction is that it allows people from cultures all over the world to interact to an unprecedented degree. Interactions between people with different cultural behavioral norms will often cause problems when those interacting fail to acknowledge the conflicting cultural norms involved. Frankly, this happens all the time, I believe because humans naturally identify with a particular culture, so that we can properly navigate within that culture. Our brains seem to be designed to mimic the perceived cultural norms during development. Just watch how your kids imitate you, other adults, and other kids - which these days can be a real headache for parents because of the cultural mixing we have in many places, which is again due to accelerating technology, in this case, ease of transportation. I'm guessing that this same problem has a role in some incidents of road rage and other spontaneous acts of violence between otherwise average citizens. This is also one of many reasons there will never be an end to war, at the same time that most people honestly do seem to get along fine with people they know face-to-face. That is not wussy liberal mumbo-jumbo. It's simply biology.

The situation is not helped by every-day situations that encourage anti-social behavior. For example, most frequent flyers and users of health insurance know that the squeaky wheel gets the grease - the business model in some industries is clearly only to help people that literally scream the loudest, because the alternative would be to help everyone, and that would just be too expensive. And certainly Michelle Malkin knows exactly what she's doing when she writes her over-the-top posts: those that thwart societal norms of polite interaction are identified and vilified publicly by the group they offend, which translates into the well known marketing adage: There is no such thing as bad publicity. (Those that support the Malkins of the world of course are those that either offend to the same degree, or would if they didn't feel so hampered by polite social discourse.)

Of course, as discourse becomes ever more vitriolic (doesn't every generation say that?), you have to be that much more offensive to get attention. Praise Allah that we have the blogosphere to air our increasingly outrageous grievances with others. And people ask why the country (and the world?) has gotten more partisan and petty? Instead of cultural mixing, both physical and virtual, leading to a better understanding of others' points of view, it seems it gives us more opportunities to designate "us" vs. "them," whether one is talking about race, religion, politics, etc. It appears to be human nature to circle the wagons in order to protect the home group from "other" - the consequences of this behavior simply have become more global with time.

When will they ever learn? Never.

Labels: behavior, empathy, humans, sociality