Human Behavior in the Virtual Environments Alexander Voiskounsky

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Human Behavior in the Virtual EnvironmentsAlexand
er Voiskounsky

• Faculty of Arts, Institute of Information Studies
  Librarianship,
• Charles U, Prague
• December 8, 2008

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Alexander Voiskounsky

• Dept. of Psychology,
• Moscow State University
• after M.V. Lomonosov
• 8/5 Mokhovaya st.,
• Moscow 103009 Russia
• E-mail
• vaemsu_at_gmail.com

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Virtual Environments are usually called Cyberspace

• On a deep psychological level, people often
  experience their computers as an extension of
  their minds personalities a space that
  reflects their tastes, attitudes, and interests
• Archetypically, we tend to experience cyberspace
  as a psychologically human space. Its visual
  auditory context resonates with our experience of
  the real world compared to books or media,
  cyberspace is much more interactive it is a
  social space filled with other people.

• Source A.Barak J.Suler, in
• PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF CYBERSPACE, Cambridge U
  Press, 2008, 1-9

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Internet development in Russia

• 1980s National Center of Automatic Exchange of
  Information (Acad. of Sciences) limited access
  of selected representatives of several
  organizations (including the MSU), with assisting
  operators.
• Late 1980 enthusiastic Unix programmers worked
  on computer telecommunications.
• August 1990 connection to fuug.fi (Helsinki).
• 19 Sept. 1990 registration of the domain .su
• 7 April 1994 registration of the domain .ru

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THEORETICAL BACKGROUND OF THE INTERNET
RESEARCH IN RUSSIA IS ASSOCIATED WITH VYGOTSKY

• Vygotsky emphasized that the higher mental
  processes (including cognition) are of social
  origin, their development is based on joint
  actions (especially within the zone of proximal
  development, in the child-adult dyad), on
  interpersonal communication, and presumably on
  mediated forms of behavior.

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Theoretical background (continued)   Investigation
of mediated forms of behavior is traditional for
the Vygotskian approach in (Russian) psychology.
The main mediating sources are, according to
Vygotsky, physical objects, signs and semiotic
systems. Having been internalized (the term
common both for J.Piaget and L.Vygotsky), the
signs and the methods of handling the material
objects form the higher psychological processes.
Thus, the individual psychic activity is
actually a transformed joint (usually
child-adult) activity. As a result, external and
internal (mental) activities have the same origin
and the same structure, as it is stressed by
A.N.Leontiev and by many other Vygotskys
followers.
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Theoretical background (continued)
Information and Communication Technologies
(ICT) originate from highly developed semiotic
(sign) systems that mediate and remediate1
almost every human practical or theoretical
activity. Thus research in the field is apt to
the paradigm of Vygotskian approach in
psychology.   The Internet and the WWW are
probably the leading social technologies within
the ICT field. Research of the Internet/WWW usage
patterns is traditional within the Vygotskian
approach in the Russian psychology.   1 For
remediation, see Cole, M. (1996). Cultural
Psychology Once and Future Discipline.
Cambridge, MA and London the Belknap Press of
Harvard U Press.

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Theoretical background (continued)
Computers and the ICT, being primarily semiotic
instruments, are externalized tools, and mediate
and/or remediate human psychic activity. Unlike
the developmental psychology approach,
externalization and not internalization is of
primary interest for anyone doing research of the
Internet-mediated forms of cognitive,
communicative, or entertaining activities.
Progress in technologies means that we should pay
much more interest in processes of
externalization.
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CURRENT STATUS OF THE CYBERPSYCHOLOGICAL
RESEARCH IN RUSSIA
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The Russian segment of the Internet audience
includes residents of diverse countries
post-Soviets born abroad. In the 20th century
there were at least four periods of massive
migration from Russia. SpyLog (www.spylog.ru)
tracker approximately 45-50 of navigations are
made from outside Russia. For example, Global
Internet Statistics (by Language) estimates the
number of Americans who regularly access the
Russian segment of the Internet is over 100,000.
The Russian segment includes Little Russia in
San Antonio, Texas (http//mars.uthsca.edu/Russian
), as well as other US/Israeli/Ukrainian/Australia
n sites, blogs, etc.
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Reasons for Joining the Russian Internet
Community (aka RuNet)

• Several ethnic_language_segments, presented on
  the Internet, may be called points of
  attraction. These are languages other than
  English.
• The Russian segment of the Internet is a PoA.
• Method discussions (F2F or mediated, but not
  formal interviews) with non-Russian residents
  (N67), held between 1994 and 2001.

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Reasons for Joining the Russian Internet
community contd

• Lack/shortage of attractive web content in ethnic
  languages
• Poor command of official languages of post-Soviet
  states by ethnic Russians, residing outside
  Russia
• Poor literacy skills in their mother-tongues of
  non-Russians in the post-Soviet states they got
  formal education in Russian.
• Use of Arabic or Latin alphabets in some
  post-Soviet states, instead of a modified
  Cyrillics. A peculiar sociolinguistic situation
  different generations speaking the same language
  might soon have no common written language.
• Less populated countries few forums, sites,
  blogs in ethnic languages more diverse views and
  more valuable information may be found abroad.
  Residents of post-Soviet states are better in
  Russian than in English.

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Reasons for Joining the Russian Internet
community contd

• Nostalgia towards older times chatting from
  abroad to people someone used to know earlier, or
  to new chatters share hobbies
• 7. Media in some post-Soviet states are even less
  independent compared to the Russian media
  residents of these countries get access to less
  censured news
• 8. Politically-minded people keep group
  discussions they blame the communist regime,
  and/or the modern regimes
• 9. Creative people from outside Russia present
  their artworks to a wider audience compared to
  what is available in their states
• 10. Russian Internet experts are often advanced.
  Non-Russians subscribe to the Russian language
  newsgroups, surf reviews published on Russian
  web-sites, discuss technical issues.
• 11. Speakers of Russian residing outside the
  former USSR feel themselves missionaries
  consult in web-related issues, provide
  information (folk or avant-garde music, etc.).

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Actual Research Areas in Social Sciences

• Philosophy
• Political Science
• Education
• Culture Gender Research
• Linguistics, Literary Art Critics
• Sociology
• Applied Statistics
• Economics
• Psychology

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Culture and Gender Research

• Research on web cultures in post-Soviet
  post-communist states
• Digital divide inequality of access to the Web
• Role of non-residents in the Russian web culture
• Web-related shift in culture identities
• Gender identities on the web
• Gender attitudes toward the Internet use
• Gender differences in the web use, etc.

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Psychology (projects)

• Identity transformations
• Internet addiction
• Gender issues on the Internet
• Attitudes towards hacking, and motivation of
  hackers
• Flow in online gaming (comparative study samples
  of Russian, French, US Chinese gamers)
• IT-Giftedness
• Psychology of Cyberethics

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Cyberpsychology is neighbouring

• Clinical psychology, with themes
• Internet addiction, Internet abuse, etc.
• Internet/computer anxiety
• Treatment of stresses, PTSD, phobias using
  virtual reality systems
• Treatment rehabilitation of diseases (autism,
  post-stroke, ADHD, etc.)

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Cyberpsychology is neighbouring

• 2. Social psychology, with themes
• New distant communities (incl. social networks)
  structure, leadership, rituals
• GroupThink quality of discussions
• Roles of minorities in new communities
• Polylogues as distinct from dialogues
• Psychological experiments in virtual communities,
  etc.

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Cyberpsychology is neighbouring

• 3. Cognitive psychology, themes
• Use of external memory
• Attention span when look at monitor
• Recognition of objects, including correct
  eye-tracking
• Decision making in groups
• Information retrieval using browsers
• Construction of hypertexts
• Interfaces for disabled, etc.

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Cyberpsychology is neighbouring

• 4. Educational psychology, with themes
• Psychology of distant education
• Multimedia learning/teaching programs
• Individual vs. group education
• Education in groups of different-age students
• Etc.

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Cyberpsychology is neighbouring

• 5. Developmental psychology, themes
• Age (including both early old age) specifics in
  the usage on Internet
• Educational web-applications
• Talent giftedness in computer use
• Etc.

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Cyberpsychology is neighbouring

• 6. Cross-cultural psychology
• 7. Human-computer interaction
• 8. Psychophysics
• 9. Differential and personality psychology
• 10. Forensic psychology
• 11. Sport psychology
• 12. Media psychology
• 13. Gender psychology, etc.

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Positive psychology

• The concept of FLOW,
• introduced by
• Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi
• (American, first in Chicago, now in California
  originally Hungarian)

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Flow Experience
Loss of sense of time
Concent- ration on the task
Balance between skill and task
Flow experience
Objectives become clear
Worth of doing for its own sake
High level of control
Loss of self- conscio- usness
Full satisfaction
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Csikszentmihalyi flow may be expected when and
if the available skills balance (tightly match)
the task challenges a person chooses, provided
that both the challenges and tasks are close to
the persons utmost. Flow is placed at the
cutting edge of person's skills, and it is a
moving target. An increase of acquired skills
leads to an appropriate extension of challenges,
in case the precise matching and the concomitant
enjoyment has to be saved reciprocally, any
choice of greater challenges demands an update
of the available skills.
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Main antecedent of flow precise matching
between skills and challenges
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Psychology Projects (contd)

• The next slide will be illustrative of the
  development of computer hackers intrinsic
  motivation, namely the flow motivation.
• It is illustrated as a balance/counterbalance of
  the available skills of task challenges.

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Cyberethics Meets Developmental Psychology

• Open-ended questions on moral judgments show
• Adolescents/kids often fail to transfer
  well-known moral norms to less known, e.g.
  virtual environments.
• In the Cyberspace they lack ethical
  sensitivity, that is, the ability to distinguish
  moral/immoral behavior.

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What is needed, world-wide

• research of Web-related moral views judgments
  of children/adolescents
• education program to be worked out taught, to
  update Web-related moral values of K-12 students
• teach globe-wide, every language Cyberspace
  is global indeed.

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References

• Voiskounsky A. Current problems of moral research
  and education in the IT environment. Human
  Perspectives in the Internet Society Culture,
  Psychology and Gender. K.Morgan, C.A.Brebbia,
  J.Sanchez, A.Voiskounsky (eds.). WIT Press
  Southampton, Boston, 2004, pp. 33-41.
• Voiskounsky A.E. Virtual Environments the need
  of advanced moral education. Ethics of New
  Information Technology. Proceedings of the 6th
  Internation?l Conference of Computer Ethics
  Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE2005). Ed. by Ph.
  Brey, F. Grodzinsky, L. Introna. Enshede, the
  Netherlands CTIT Publ., 2005, pp. 389-395.

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References (contd)

• Babaeva J.D., Voiskounsky A.E. (2002).
  IT-Giftedness in Children and Adolescents.
  Educational Technology Society, vol. 5(1),
  154-162.
• Voiskounsky A.E., Smyslova O.V. (2003).
  Flow-Based Model of Computer Hackers Motivation.
  CyberPsychology Behavior, Vol. 6, ? 3,
  171-180.
• Voiskounsky A., Smyslova O. (2003). Flow in
  computer hacking A model. Lecture Notes in
  Computer Science, v. 2713.Springer, 176-186.

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References (contd)

• Voiskounsky A.E. (2008). Flow Experience in
  Cyberspace Current Studies and Perspectives.
  Psychological Aspects of Cyberspace Theory,
  Research, Applications. (Ed. A. Barak). N.Y.
  Cambridge University Press, 70-101.
• Voiskounsky A.E. (2008). Cyberpsychology and
  Computer-mediated Communication in Russia Past,
  Present and Future. Russian Journal of
  Communication, V. 1, ? 1, 78-94.

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References (contd)

• Arestova, O., Babanin, L., Voiskounsky, A.
  (1999). Psychological Research of
  Computer-Mediated Communication in Russia.
  Behaviour and Information Technology, 18 (2),
  141-147.
• Voiskounsky A. (1998). Investigation of Relcom
  Network Users. F.Sudweeks et al. (eds.). Network
  and Netplay Virtual Groups on the Internet. AAAI
  Press/The MIT Press, 113-126.
• Voiskounsky A.E., Babaeva J.D., Smyslova O.V.
  (2000). Attitudes towards computer hacking in
  Russia. Cybercrime Law Enforcement, Security and
  Surveillance in the Information Age. Ed. by
  D.Thomas B.Loader. Routledge, 56-84.

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THE END(for today)