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Evolutionary Cyberpsychology 2.0: Revisiting Some Old Predictions and Posting Some New Ones in the Age of Facebook

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Abstract

Human interactions are changing in far-reaching ways due to recent developments in Internet and mobile communication technologies, including widespread uptake of Facebook and other online social networks. Cyberpsychology, the study of computer-mediated communication and Internet behavior, is a rapidly developing field that has largely gone unnoticed by evolutionary psychologists. Piazza and Bering (Comput Hum Behav 25:1258–1269, 2009) published a primer aimed at applying evolutionary perspectives to cyberpsychology. We review relevant research published in the interim that bears on these predictions to see how they have fared and determine what still needs to be done to address them. We give particular attention to research on social networking software—an area of cyberpsychology that has exploded in recent years—and offer some new hypotheses that reflect this trend. The chapter is organized around six broad themes from evolutionary psychology: mating, intrasexual competition, parenting and kinship, friendship, personal information management, and trust and social exchange. We discuss the nature of each topic as it applies to Internet behavior, review relevant hypotheses and research, and offer directions for future studies.
Running head: EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0
Evolutionary Cyberpsychology 2.0:
Revisiting Some Old Predictions and Posting Some New Ones in the Age of Facebook
Jared R. Piazza*
University of Pennsylvania
and
Gordon P. D. Ingram
Bath Spa University
March 3, 2014
Word Count: 7,994
* Corresponding Author:
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania
3720 Walnut Street, Solomon Labs Bldg., Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA
Tel: +001 (215) 898-7866 Fax: +001 (215) 898-7301
Email: jpiazza@psych.upenn.edu
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 2
Author note
Jared R. Piazza, Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania; Gordon P. D.
Ingram, School of Society, Enterprise and Environment, Bath Spa University.
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 3
Abstract
Human interactions are changing in far-reaching ways due to recent developments in Internet
and mobile communication technologies, including widespread uptake of Facebook and other
online social networks. Cyberpsychology, the study of computer-mediated communication and
Internet behavior, is a rapidly developing field that has largely gone unnoticed by evolutionary
psychologists. Piazza and Bering (2009) published a primer aimed at applying evolutionary
perspectives to cyberpsychology. We review relevant research published in the interim that bears
on these predictions to see how they have fared and determine what still needs to be done to
address them. We give particular attention to research on social networking software an area of
cyberpsychology that has exploded in recent years and offer some new hypotheses that reflect
this trend. The chapter is organized around six broad themes from evolutionary psychology:
mating, intrasexual competition, parenting and kinship, friendship, personal information
management, and trust and social exchange. We discuss the nature of each topic as it applies to
Internet behavior, review relevant hypotheses and research, and offer directions for future
studies.
Keywords: Cyberpsychology, Internet, social networking, friendship, mating, parenting,
kinship, intrasexual competition, computer-mediated communication
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 4
Introduction
The past two decades have witnessed the success of evolutionary psychology (EP) as a
powerful framework for understanding and generating hypotheses about human cognition and
behavior. Yet, in 2008, one of the authors was dismayed to find a lack of EP-based applications
to one of the fastest growing areas of psychology: cyberpsychology, the study of computer-
mediated behavior. Responding to this situation, a brief primer was developed that outlined
several directions for applying evolutionary perspectives to the study of cyber-behavior (see
Piazza & Bering, 2009). At that time, there were only a handful of papers published in the more
popular cyberpsychology journals (e.g., Computer in Human Behavior) that utilized EP theory,
and five years later the situation has not much changed. Meanwhile, cyberpsychology as a
discipline has rapidly grown, partly because of the widespread success of social networking
software. In 2008, scientific interest in social networking behavior was just taking off (e.g., Boyd
& Ellison, 2007), and Facebook had just over 90 million active monthly users; by September 30,
2013, Facebook had 1.19 billion active monthly users (Facebook Newsroom, 2013). The growth
of social networking has generated a wealth of social scientific research (Wilson, Gosling, &
Graham, 2012). Indeed, reflecting the mass impact of social networking on public life, and
mounting interest among researchers, Cyberpsychology and Behavior, one of the field’s flagship
journals, at the start of 2010 re-branded itself, Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social
Networking.
The goal of the present chapter is to revisit some of the predictions of Piazza and Bering
(2009), take stock of relevant research conducted in the interim, and offer some ways forward,
with a particular eye on the topic of social networking. Our aim is to provide the field with a
roadmap of what has been done in the application of EP to cyberpsychology and to highlight
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 5
areas that deserve further attention. We have adopted the basic structure used by Piazza and
Bering, which covers five broad themes from evolutionary psychology that have direct
application for cyberpsychology, including mating, intrasexual competition, parenting and
kinship, personal information management, trust and social exchange. We have also added a
sixth theme: friendship. We hope our review will illustrate how an evolutionary approach can
help illuminate how people conduct themselves in cyberspace.
Mating and Dating
According to a recent Pew Internet report, one in 10 Americans has used an online dating
site or mobile dating app, and 5% of Americans who are currently married or in a long-term
partnership met their partner online (Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2013). Online dating
appeals to people for several reasons. First, it provides people with access to a larger pool of
potential mates than is accessible through direct channels, increasing the likelihood of finding
someone who will reciprocate interest (Valkenburg & Peter, 2007). Second, online dating
profiles provide users with substantial control over the initial impressions they make to
prospective partners (Whitty, 2007). However, online dating is not without challenges, and many
online daters report negative experiences (Pew, 2013). In addition to online dating and the
pursuit of long-term partnerships, the Internet provides virtual spaces for individuals to engage in
other sexual pursuits, including flirting (Whitty, 2003), initiating sexual interest through
“sexting” (sending sexually suggestive electronic messages; Drouin, Vogel, Surbey, & Stills,
2013), achieving sexual gratification via hot chat, cybersex, or pornography (Spink, Koricich,
Jansen, & Cole, 2004), and arranging to have sex offline (Daneback, Minsson, & Ross, 2007).
With the advent of social networking sites, individuals often use the Internet as a form of
surveillance technology to monitor their romantic partner’s activity (e.g., a partner’s Facebook
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 6
contacts, posted photos, or comments they made on a contact’s “wall) for signs of relational
dissatisfaction or indiscretion (Clayton, Nagurney, & Smith, 2013; Elphinston & Noller, 2011;
Muise, Christofides, & Desmarais, 2009). Thus, there are many ways people today use the
Internet to pursue short-term and long-term sexual interests, making it a rich domain for testing
evolutionary theories of courtship and intersexual competition.
Drawing on Buss and Schmitt’s (1993) Sexual Strategies Theory, Piazza and Bering
(2009) hypothesized that men would be more likely than women to use Web-based technologies,
such as chat rooms and text-messaging, to initiate short-term sexual encounters. This would be a
consequence of women having a much greater obligatory parental investment (Trivers, 1972)
and thus having less to gain than men by pursuing a short-term mating strategy. Consistent with
this hypothesis, several studies found that men are the primary initiators of “sexting” behaviors,
such as sending a sexually suggestive text or a partially nude self-photo (Delevi & Weisskirch,
2013; Gordon-Messer, Bauermeister, Gordzinski, & Zimmerman, 2012). Sexting occurs
frequently within committed relationships, but it also occurs with some frequency within casual
and extra-pair relationships (Drouin et al., 2013). Thus, the use of sexting to signal sexual
interest or initiate offline sexual interactions may reflect men’s greater orientation to short-term
mating.
Another important sex difference stemming from differences in parental investment (and
paternity certainty) is the way that men and women react to different cues of infidelity (Buss,
1994). Converging evidence suggests that men are more distressed than women by envisioning
their current romantic partner having sex with someone else, whereas women are more distressed
than men by envisioning their partner forming a close emotional attachment to someone of the
opposite sex (Buss, Larson, Westen, & Semmelroth, 1992; Shackelford, Buss, & Bennett, 2002).
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 7
Assuming that computer-mediated activities may approximate “real” forms of infidelity (Whitty,
2005), Piazza and Bering (2009) suggested that evolutionary predictions about sex differences in
jealousy could be tested in relation to online sexual or romantic behaviors, such as men and
women engaging in cybersex versus forming an emotional attachment with someone whom they
met online. However, a study by Whitty and Quigley (2008) suggested that computer-mediated
forms of sexual conduct may only weakly approximate offline infidelity. Northern Irish college
students selected from among four scenarios which would be most distressing: their partner’s
offline sexual infidelity, online sexual infidelity (cybersex), offline emotional infidelity, or online
emotional infidelity (falling in love with a person they have only known online). The study
replicated the well-established pattern that men are more distressed by their partner’s offline
sexual infidelity while women are more distressed by their partner’s offline emotional infidelity.
No participants selected either cybersex or online emotional attachment as the most distressing
scenario. Nevertheless, since this study did not exclusively contrast cybersex and online
emotional infidelity, it remains to be seen whether the typical sex difference might emerge for
these two cases.
More recently, Muscanell, Guadagno, Rice, and Murphy (2013) had American
undergraduates imagine that they discovered on their romantic partner’s Facebook page a
photograph of their partner with someone of the opposite sex. Consistent with the notion that
women are more distressed by the thought of a budding emotional relationship between their
partner and a rival, they found that women, compared to men, experienced more feelings of
jealousy, hurt, and anger over the discovered photo, though this sex difference vanished when
the partner had set the photo to be “private” (implying he or she was attempting to conceal the
relationship). Lastly, McAndrew and Shah (2013) found that female college students were more
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 8
likely than men to report jealousy in response to their romantic partner’s Facebook activities.
The Facebook activities involved behaviors that could signal the blossoming of a new
relationship or the rekindling of an old one (e.g., partner posting pictures with a previous
partner); thus, the researchers interpreted the results as being consistent with the evolutionary
prediction that Facebook-mediated triggers of emotional jealousy are more distressing for
women than for men.
Another form of intersexual behavior that evolutionary psychology may be useful in
addressing is cyberstalking and cyber-harassment. Victims of cyberstalking tend to be female,
whereas perpetrators tend to be men who are acquaintances or ex-partners of the victims
(Drebing, Bailer, Anders, Wagner, & Gallas, 2013; Sheridan & Grant, 2007), as is the case with
offline stalking patterns. The perpetration of cyberstalking by acquainted men is consistent with
one prominent evolutionary perspective, which argues that stalking and other forms of sexual
harassment arise from an evolved male psychology that motivates feelings of proprietary sexual
jealousy, as men attempt to control a romantic partner or ex-partner’s sexual behavior (Wilson &
Daly, 1993). This perspective also makes the prediction that the main victims of cyberstalking
should be young, reproductive-age females (Daly & Wilson, 1988; Peters, Shackelford, & Buss,
2002). We are not aware of research specifically testing the possibility that rates of cyberstalking
diminish with age for women.
A robust finding in evolutionary psychology is that men consistently over-perceive the
degree to which a woman is sexually interested in them (Haselton & Buss, 2000), whereas
women tend to under-perceive sexual interest (Perilloux, Easton, & Buss, 2012). The Internet
presents a rich context in which sexual misperception biases might be studied. Signals
communicated via electronic text are ambiguous insofar as a presenter’s true intentions are
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 9
hidden and unobservable (Donath, 2008). This is also true, to some extent, of face-to-face (FTF)
communication (Silk, Kaldor, & Boyd, 2000); nevertheless, text-based computer-mediated
communication (CMC) is more ambiguous than FTF in that several modes of CMC (e.g., instant
messaging and email) typically involve only one sensory modality, whereas FTF involves a
multiplicity of sensory cues perceivers may use to help disambiguate the presenter’s intent,
including speech prosody and facial expressions (Dunbar, 2012). The deprivation of sensory cues
within various CMC media may create an environment in which perceptual biases of sexual
intent are inflated with men over-perceiving sexual interest, and women under-perceiving
sexual interest, to an even greater extent due to the ambiguity of the signals exchanged.
Another possibility is that users of CMC understand the limitations of CMC, and engage in
deliberate efforts to disambiguate their true intent within these channels by using more explicit
signals. Males in particular may signal sexual interest using more explicit means of
communication with a prospective partner, to avoid missing a potential opportunity.
Lastly, sexual aspects of the Internet (e.g., pornography; Spink et al., 2004) may pose a
particular challenge to men in committed relationships, given the attentional biases men display
towards attractive mating alternatives (Becker, Kenrick, Guerin, & Maner, 2005; Duncan, Park,
Faulkner, Schaller et al., 2007). One strategy committed individuals employ to maintain their
current investment in a partner is to depreciate the attractiveness of a mating alternative (Miller
& Maner, 2010). Another strategy is to be selectively inattentive to, and/or deliberately avoid,
contexts in which attractive alternatives are present. At least one study of men’s and women’s
Facebook activity found evidence for a mate-maintenance strategy among men. McAndrew and
Jeong (2012) showed that men in committed relationships spent less time than single men
perusing and/or posting on the Facebook pages of women. Relationship status, by contrast, had
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 10
no association with women’s Facebook activities. Committed and single women were just as
likely to view men’s Facebook pages, though women were predominantly interested in viewing
the pages of other women as a means of making social comparisons or gathering information
about same-sex friends and rivalsactivities theorized to be particularly important for female
intrasexual competition (McAndew & Milenkovic, 2002).
Intrasexual Competition
Computer-mediated self-presentations, particularly those found on social networking
sites (SNSs) such as Facebook, provide an excellent testing ground for psychological theories
pertaining to intrasexual competition. Facebook, for example, offers a number of uses, including
the opportunity to keep in touch with preexisting friends and family, interact (e.g., via Facebook
chat or wall posts), initiate new social connections, and self-enhance via user pages (Raacke &
Bonds-Raacke, 2008; Tosun, 2012). In this section, we are particularly interested in the self-
enhancement function of Facebook. Piazza and Bering (2009) hypothesized that young men
more than young women would stress their skills, creativity, and resources in their personal
online profiles and homepages, whereas young women more than young men would stress their
physical appearance and prosocial reputations, reflecting general sex differences in intrasexual
competition (e.g., Geary, 1998; Hill, Rodeheffer, Griskevicius, Durante, & White, 2012). This
hypothesis should apply no less to SNS profiles. We assume that one goal people have for
creating and updating an SNS profile is to signal their desirable qualities to others. This goal
need not be explicit, but an evolutionary perspective suggests that the motivations men and
women bring to their online social networking may differ due to distinct adaptive problems faced
by ancestral males and females (Buss, 1994; Geary, 1998).
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 11
Some recent research findings may be brought to bear on these predictions. Haferkamp,
Eimler, Papadakis, and Kruck (2012) analyzed the publicly accessible profiles of 106 StudiVZ
(the German equivalent of Facebook) users. Consistent with the idea that men are more
motivated to “show off” their unique skills, while women are more motivated to highlight their
physical appearance, men spent more time editing their profile picture in creative ways, perhaps
as a means to display their technical skills, while women preferred using portrait photography,
presumably to present their physical appearance in the most attractive light. Mehdizadeh (2010)
observed a similar pattern among a sample of Facebook users. Men were more likely to share
self-promotional content in the “About Me” and “Notes” sections of their profile, while women
were more inclined to self-promote via their physical appearance (e.g., by using a professional
photograph).
Other research suggests that women are better than men at refraining from risky online
behavior, such as posting compromising images of themselves on Facebook, consistent with the
idea that sex differences in executive functioning have a basis in parental investment differences,
whereby men have more to gain than women from risk-taking (Bjorklund & Shackelford, 1999;
Campbell, 1999). For example, Peluchette and Karl (2008) found that male college students were
more likely than their female counterparts to post to their Facebook accounts pictures of their
sexual exploits, partying, and drinking behavior. One prediction that has not yet been tested but
deserves further investigation is whether men (but not women) are more likely to engage in risky
Internet behavior (e.g., posting compromising photos of themselves) when placed in a mating
mindset or when their social status is challenged.
“Cyberbullying” refers to computer-mediated forms of relational aggression, such as
forwarding private emails or posting embarrassing photos without permission. Offline relational
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aggression is a common form of aggression used by adolescents (as well as adults) to manipulate
the status and reputation of a peer competitor through indirect, social channels (e.g., spreading
rumors), as opposed to direct physical conflict (Archer, 2004). Piazza and Bering (2009)
predicted that as with offline bullying, cyberbullying would be perpetrated primarily by
adolescents and teens who tend to be high-status (or popular) within a peer group, while their
victims would tend to be relatively low-status individuals on the “fringe” of various peer groups.
They also predicted, however, that the relative invisibility and social distance of cyber-
aggression would be empowering for low-status teens, leading to greater status challenges being
made by low-status teens than would traditionally occur offline. Somewhat inconsistent with the
first hypothesis, Calvete, Orue, Estévez, Villardón, and Padilla (2010) found that levels of
perceived peer support decreased as the frequency of self-reported cyberbullying increased,
suggesting that the status of many of the cyberbullies in their sample may have been quite low.
But in line with Piazza and Bering’s (2009) hypotheses, other studies have shown that victims of
cyberbullying have low status. In a sample of 1219-year-old high-school students, Festl and
Quandt (2013) found that position in the social network was a strong predictor of cyber-
victimization. “Pure” victims reported having more friends than either perpetrators or
perpetrators/victims, yet were less often named as friends themselves, suggesting that they may
have been vulnerable because they did not belong to well-defined cliques that could support
them. Finally, a study of German secondary school pupils elucidated context as an important
moderator: falling victim to major school bullying was negatively predicted by popularity in the
classroom, while falling victim to major cyberbullying was negatively predicted by popularity in
online chatrooms (Katzer, Fetchenhauer, & Belschak, 2009).
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While more research is needed, there are some tentative signs that the status differentials
implicated in FTF bullying - which seems to be practiced more by dominant individuals with
secure friendship networks - are less of a predictor for online bullying. This is borne out by
evidence that cyberbullying, on account of its indirect and relational nature, may be more often
utilized by females than is traditional bullying (Dooley, Pyzalski, & Cross, 2009). There thus
appears to be a similar pattern with sex to that which exists for dominance: individuals who are
physically dominant or who are supported by a network of friends may be better able to bear the
risks of FTF bullying, but these risks are reduced for cyberbullying. Similarly, although girls
engage in FTF bullying less than boys because of the physical risks (Campbell, 1999),
communicating through virtual means negates these physical risks and so permits girls to engage
in more online than FTF bullying.
Parenting and Kinship
Alongside finding a mate and competing with conspecifics, successfully socializing
children into a community is a challenge facing humans everywhere. There are strong selective
pressures on parents to monitor their children’s social interactions, particularly with regards to
their choice of sexual partners. The Internet presents new challenges for parental monitoring,
partly because it vastly widens the pool of individuals with whom their children can interact, and
partly because virtual interactions may be less easily scrutinized by parents than physical
interactions (Lenhart & Madden, 2007). Evolutionary theory predicts that mothers will be more
concerned with their children’s social interactions than fathers, due to their certainty about their
maternity and their greater levels of parental care (Bjorklund & Shackelford, 1999; Geary, 1998).
Accordingly, Piazza and Bering (2009) hypothesized that “women would take a more active role
than men, overall, in monitoring their children’s online behavior” (p. 264). In a study of Dutch
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 14
parents’ mediation of their 2–12-year-old children’s Internet use, Nikken and Jansz (2012) found
that mothers were much more likely than fathers to supervise, actively intervene, and implement
restrictions on children’s Internet-based activities; somewhat more likely to co-use the Internet
with them; slightly more likely to provide specific restrictions about which websites they could
or could not visit; but not more likely to provide technical guidance to their children. Also
supporting Piazza and Bering’s hypothesis, Vasalou, Oostveen, and Joinson (2012) documented
a trend for mothers to be more likely than fathers to use a location-tracking tool to monitor their
children’s whereabouts, though this was not statistically significant. On the other hand, Wang,
Bianchi, and Raley (2005) found that fathers were more likely than mothers to check which
websites their children had been visiting, and there were no effects of parental sex in the use of
monitoring software or the promotion of rules about online activity. These findings highlight that
any sex effects in this area are likely to be contextual and dependent on the type of monitoring
that is taking place: for example, men’s particular interest in certain more technical forms of
monitoring might offset a stronger evolved tendency of women to monitor offspring.
Men who doubt their paternity feel less connected to the child in their care and as a
consequence reduce their investment in the child (Apicella & Marlowe, 2004; Burch & Gallup,
2000). Likewise, stepparents, who are certain of their non-paternity or non-maternity, invest less
in their partners offspring (Daly & Wilson, 1988; Marlowe, 1999). This suggests that,
controlling for Internet access in the home and technical acumen with computers, men who
doubt their paternity may spend less time and energy on mediating their children’s online
activitythat is, less time checking the web pages their children have visited, participating in
online activities with children, and establishing and enforcing rules about children’s Internet use.
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 15
It also suggests that stepparents will expend less effort, compared to genetic parents, mediating
stepchildren’s online activity. Neither of these predictions has been tested.
Individuals promote their own genetic fitness not only by caring for children but also by
investing in the welfare of non-dependent kin (Hamilton, 1964). People tend to provide high-cost
support to individuals they identify as close biological kin (e.g., full siblings; Pollet, 2007;
Stewart-Williams, 2007). Piazza and Bering (2009) hypothesized that due to kin investment
mechanisms, people would tend to use high-cost communications technologies (such as video
chat) to contact related individuals more than non-kin, a difference that would not be as apparent
when considering low-cost communications technologies (e.g., text-based chat or email). Part of
the logic of this argument was based on the high financial costs, at the time, of securing the
bandwidth necessary for video or audio communication. Since that article was written,
bandwidth costs have fallen dramatically, to the extent that financial costs are unlikely to be
much of a consideration when deciding whom to contact over an internet-based service.
However, video or audio communication may still be more costly in the sense of being more
time-consuming or cognitively demanding (Dunbar, 2012), and they may still be more
financially costly when taking place over a mobile phone, due to the loss of inclusive minutes or
data allowances.
Support for Piazza and Bering’s kin investment hypothesis comes from Hampton, Livio,
and Goulet (2010), who surveyed wireless Internet users in public spaces (e.g., parks, plazas, and
markets) in four major North American cities. They found that Internet-based phone calls were
mostly made with family (especially spouses), whereas communication by email and instant
messaging more often took place with friends, or with co-workers (in the case of email).
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 16
Similarly, Mok, Wellman, and Carrasco (2010) showed that their participants phoned relatives
more than friends, even intimate ones.
One unresolved question is whether spending time using virtual technology detracts from
time spent on FTF contact, and whether this might have a detrimental effect for some
relationships more than others. In a long-term longitudinal study of various forms of contact in a
Toronto neighborhood, Mok and colleagues (2010) found that frequency of FTF contact was
unchanged between the 1970s and the 2000s, even as email was introduced and the frequency of
telephone use increased. Affirming the importance of frequent contact for maintaining friends, a
study by Roberts and Dunbar (2011) tracked kin relationships and friendships over an 18-month
period and found that friendships were more susceptible than kin relationships to decreases in
emotional closeness due to failure to contact either FTF, by phone or email, or through
participation in joint social or physical activities. Thus, new technologies may be more important
in maintaining long-distance friendships, but less important for kin relationships, though people
voluntarily use these technologies to affiliate with kin. At the same time, digital technologies
may interfere with the development of new friendships by redirecting efforts into maintaining
long-distance friendships that would have otherwise naturally decayed (Dunbar, 2012).
Friendship
Friendships differ from kin relationships in that they are not based on the emotional
bonds that form between a parent and child, the sharing of a mutual caregiver early in life,
phenotype matching, or other kin-identification mechanisms. Rather, friendships usual form
around shared interests (homophily) or shared experiences (Schneider, 2000). Intimacy
(emotional closeness), loyalty, exclusivity, and tolerance are the core features of friendship that
distinguish it from the casual, cordial, low-tolerance relationships we have with other nonkin
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 17
individuals in our social spheres (Amichai-Hamburger, Kingsbury, & Schneider, 2013; DeScioli
& Kurzban, 2009; Silk, 2003). Recent work suggests that friendships are distinct from kin
relationships in that the intimacy and loyalty that defines friendships require a great deal of
social interaction to maintain (Roberts & Dunbar, 2011). Furthermore, friends may be
distinguished from acquaintances in that people are much more tolerant of short-term
asymmetries (imbalances) in the giving and receiving of services with friends, due to the longer
horizon of interaction that friendships entail (Xue & Silk, 2012). Finally, friendships are defined
by a high degree of loyalty and exclusivity (DeScioli & Kurzban, 2009), whereby the perception
of a stronger tie between a close friend and another person, relative to the strength of the tie
between that friend and the self, may evoke feelings of betrayal, jealousy, or disappointment
(Piazza & DeScioli, 2012).
Traditionally, friendships are maintained through direct forms of “social grooming,” such
as FTF communication or joint activities (Roberts & Dunbar, 2011). Social media and
communication technology may offer the potential for friendships to persist that would have
otherwise faded in the absence of direct contact (Armichai-Hamburger et al., 2013; Dunbar,
2012). This may be particularly the case for women who, according to one study, rely more
heavily on communication, as opposed to joint activity (e.g., playing sports), for friendship
maintenance (Roberts & Dunbar, 2011). Nevertheless, multiplayer online games, such as World
of Warcraft, offer at least one channel by which activity-based grooming might occur in the
virtual world (Barnett & Coulson, 2010). CMC technologies, such as video chat via Skype, offer
sensory-rich mediums for creating a sense of co-presence and real-time social feedback, and as a
result are comparably effective as FTF communication for sustaining levels of intimacy among
geographically distant friends (Vlahovic, Roberts, & Dunbar, 2012). The benefits of other, less-
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 18
rich CMC media, such as SNSs or IM, for sustaining friendships are less clear. Some research
suggests that friendships benefit from these technologies, for example, by allowing friends to
monitor and track each other’s weekly activities, update one another about important events, and
share photos, gossip, and express opinions (e.g., Tosun, 2012). Other research suggests that
social networking in particular can have a negative effect on preexisting relationships by
promoting relational jealousy, betrayal, and disappointment (Muise et al., 2009). Indeed,
Tokunaga (2011) uncovered ten different kinds of “negative events” that users of SNSs report,
including being denied friend requests, being “unfriended”, disparities in perceived friend
rankings on “Top Friends” applications, deletion of messages, ignored questions or remarks, and
disparaging remarks posted on message boards.
Steijn and Schouten (2013) found that personal information sharing on SNSs (Facebook
or Hyves) had both positive and negative interpersonal outcomes. Many participants reported
greater benefits than costs of engaging in public posts on a weak-tie friend’s SNS profile.
However, more participants reported negative outcomes than positive resulting from making
public posts on the profile of “close friends.” These authors did not examine the content of what
was shared within the public posts, thus it is not entirely clear what the cause of the conflict was
between close friends. One possibility is that SNS use might erode a close friendship as a direct
result of disclosure-based violations of perceived friendship rank (Piazza & DeScioli, 2012). For
example, if a person posts positive news or personal information to their public wall prior to
sharing the news with a close friend, this might cause hurt feelings if it is interpreted by the
friend as a violation of their perceived friendship rank, which serves as an indicator of the kinds
of privileges and services a person is entitled to within a friendship (DeScioli & Kurzban, 2009).
Any activity that might be construed as a violation of these “rules of privilege should be
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 19
distressing, as it may signal a potential re-organization (e.g., demotion) of the friendship
hierarchy.
One form of rank reversal that is likely to occur often on SNSs is disclosure-based rank
reversal (Piazza & DeScioli, 2012). This happens when a piece of privileged social information
is communicated to a person of lower friendship rank prior to reception by a person of higher
friendship rank. Rank reversals of this sort are probably common among SNS users insofar as
communications within SNSs are often one-to-many (Chiou, Chen, & Liao, 2013), and therefore
obscure the sequential flow of one-to-one communication; for example, when a person posts a
message on their Facebook wall, this is a one-to-many communication, as any “friend” logged
into Facebook and monitoring that person’s wall is a potential recipient. Depending on the
newsworthiness of the post, a close friend who first learns of the news via the person’s wall, as
opposed to some one-to-one channel, may feel betrayed or hurt by the oversight.
Studies by Piazza and DeScioli (2012) found some evidence for the disruptive effects of
disclosure-based rank reversals within friendships. In one study participants imagined a situation
in which they received a privileged piece of information from a friend (information about a
friend’s secret affair). They learned that a third person also received the same information either
before or after them. Among participants who received the secret after another person, those who
experienced a downward rank reversal (i.e., who were higher rank than the other person) felt less
close to the friend and significantly more negative emotion than participants who were of lower
friendship rank. Among those who received the secret before another person, those who
experienced an upward rank reversal (i.e., who were lower rank than the other person) felt closer
to the friend than participants who were of higher friendship rank.
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 20
The implications of this study for CMC are clear: technologies such as Facebook that
enable disclosure-based rank reversals may be causing undue strain on existing friendships. At
the same time, public posting on SNSs may help enhance weak-tie relationships, as weak ties
may benefit more from one-to-many communications (Steijn & Schouten, 2013). Thus, a related
(and much debated) question is whether social media and other Internet technologies are helping
people forge new, meaningful friendships (Boase, Horrigan, Wellman, & Rainie, 2006).
Research by Pollet, Roberts, and Dunbar (2011) suggests that this may not be the case. These
authors highlight the inherent cognitive constraints that present a ceiling on how many intimates
a person can maintain at high or “strong-tie” levels. Pollet et al. (2011) surveyed 117 Europeans
about their offline and online relationships, their use of SNS and IM technology, how often they
contacted them, and their emotional closeness to each contact. They found absolutely no
relationship between time spent using IM or SNS and either the size of participants’ offline
networks, or the emotional closeness of their offline relationships. In other words, CMC did not
provide any social gain that could not be achieved simply via traditional communication
channels. Similar null findings are reported by Dunbar (2012).
Although Internet use may not translate into larger networks or stronger ties, other
research has shown that relationships formed on the Internet can be as deep and lasting as offline
relationships (McKenna, Green, & Gleason, 2002). Despite these findings, people continue to
voice skepticism about the benefits of their online interactions, doubting the quality of these
computer-mediated experiences (Schiffrin, Edelman, Falkenstern, & Stewart, 2010). Thus, only
time will tell whether emerging technologies will enable friendships forged online to have the
same depth and staying power as those managed through traditional means. While social
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 21
technologies do keep friends connected over geographical distances, it remains unclear whether
these technologies can match the social-bonding power of actual physical contact.
Personal Information Management
The decision to disclose negative personal information poses a dilemma: whilst negative
self-disclosure can bring with it helpful insights (Kelly, Klusas, von Weiss, & Kenny, 2001) and
increase relational intimacy (Altman & Taylor, 1973), it can also lead to relational conflict,
negative gossip, reputational damages, and stigmatization (Kelly & McKillop, 1996; Piazza &
Bering, 2010). An evolutionary approach to personal information management highlights the
target-specific consequences of decisions to self-disclose personal information that could impact
negatively on a long-term relationship, especially a romantic partner or close friend, who unlike
kin have no investment in one’s inclusive fitness (Bering & Shackelford, 2004; Piazza & Bering,
2010). From this perspective, people should be sensitive to the content of their personal
information, take care to track which individuals in their network are in possession of this
information, and engage in counter-measures (e.g., deliberate secrecy, selective disclosure) to
interrupt or forestall the transmission of such information to those targets that would be most
impacted or distressed by the news. This might involve the recruitment of allies or kin who are
not directly affected by the information as conspirators (co-secret-keepers), or as
intermediaries to help manage any conflict that ensues when the secret is revealed. A
complementary perspective on human friendship (DeScioli & Kurzban, 2009) suggests that close
friends are those one perceives as having a stronger allegiance with oneself than with others.
Thus, selective disclosure of negative secrets to close friends may be a crucial strategy in
garnering support in the event that the secret reaches its target.
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 22
On the basis of this evolutionary approach, Piazza and Bering (2009) hypothesized that
most people would not disclose “personal secrets” (i.e., negative personal information) online
even under fairly anonymous conditions. This hypothesis was guided by the assumption that
people would be skeptical of the allegedly private or “anonymous” nature of CMC, and mindful
of the archival and retrievable nature of Internet-based communications (Solove, 2007), despite
the reduced sensory nature of CMC technology, which might provide users with a temporary
sense of invisibility. How then do we reconcile this prediction with recurrent findings that CMC
technology often enhances levels of self-disclosure between individuals, compared to FTF
communication, as a result of the reduced social-presence cues and controllable features of text-
based communication (Joinson, 2001; Tidwell & Walther, 2002; Valkenburg & Peter, 2009)?
First, we should point out that a recent meta-analysis of research looking into the online
disinhibition effect found that the actual size of the effect may be overstated (Nguyen, Bin, &
Campbell, 2012). That is, people may not self-disclose on the Internet as much as some theorists
have suggested. Second, it is unclear whether any gain in self-disclosure that may occur via
CMC technology involves the disclosure of negative self-content. Our suspicion is that most of
the personal content Internet users are presenting to the cyberworld is positive, self-promotional
content, while much less is negative content that a person has a stake in concealing. Indeed,
SNSs in particular encourage positive self-disclosures (Ljepava, Orr, Locke, & Ross, 2013;
Toma & Hancock, 2013). By contrast, Internet users do not use CMC for discussing personal
information such as “personal habits, fears, and relationships” (Schiffrin et al., 2010, p. 302), but
prefer to discuss such sensitive topics FTF. Consistent with Piazza and Bering’s prediction, Frye
and Dornisch (2010) reported a negative correlation between amount of online self-disclosure
and the level of “intimacy” of the information (most of the non-shared “intimate” content in their
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 23
study largely had to do with private sexual matters). Thus, while some researchers find that the
apparent invisibility of CMC helps foster self-disclosure, which in turn can foster relational
intimacy, it seems likely that the majority of this online self-disclosure is positive or neutral in
content.
Another possibility is that disclosure of potentially stigmatizing personal secrets does
occur over the Internet but only within select cyber-environments where individuals perceive
they are communicating with trusted allies only, where privacy concerns are highly satisfied (i.e.,
the disclosing party trusts the website to maintain the anonymity of its users and the content
exchanged between its users), and there is control over the target audience (Joinson, Paine,
Buchanan, & Reips, 2010). Researchers have long noticed the level of self-disclosure that occurs
on personal blogs (Hollenbaugh, 2010; Viegas, 2005). Despite the publicly accessible nature of
blogs, research suggests that most bloggers are concerned about privacy (Viegas, 2005) and
write with a particular audience in mindoften, friends and family (Stefanone & Jang, 2007).
SNSs provide public, one-to-many modes of communication through wall posts, where users
have little control over the flow of information once it is posted. Although Facebook offers users
some modes of private communication (e.g., private chat) and various privacy settings, anyone
with a Facebook account and who has viewer privileges has access to one’s online profile and
public comments (Christofides, Muise, & Desmarais, 2009). By contrast, private online chat
rooms and online groups or “communities” provide greater privacy and audience controls, which
may foster the disclosure of personal secrets over the long term, once a deep, trusting
relationship is formed. Many online groups are devoted to a specific topic or issue, which enable
Internet users to easily locate individuals who may possess similar stigmatizing secrets, thus
creating an environment of nonjudgment and trust (McKenna & Bargh, 1998). Thus, the extent
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 24
to which a given CMC technology is thought to provide sufficient levels of privacy and audience
control is probably an important moderator on the hypothesis originally proposed by Piazza and
Bering.
Some extant research may be brought to bear on this qualified hypothesis. According to a
study by Christofides et al. (2009) of Canadian college students, Facebook users reported being
concerned about privacy and were likely to use a variety of privacy settings to manage the
consumption of their personal information. They also reported being very unlikely to post
pictures of themselves or their friends doing something illegal, or photos of themselves naked or
partially nude. We might infer from the general lack of negative personal information being
posted to Facebook that the communication of personal secrets to SNSs is either uncommon, or
that the possession of negative personal secrets is uncommon. Given the high rates of offline
secret-keeping reported in past research (Kelly et al., 2001; Piazza & Bering, 2010), we think the
former is more likely.
Importantly, an evolutionary perspective on personal information management also
makes the prediction that complete secrecy (i.e., total concealment of personal information from
everyone) is often not the best policy, as secrets often involve at least one other person, who may
not be trusted to maintain the secret, particularly when their interests oppose one’s own. For this
reason, we might expect natural selection to have favored psychological mechanisms for
promoting secrets disclosure (i.e., “confessions”) to trusted kin and allies as a means of pre-
empting inevitable conflict that would ensue from the secret’s public revelation (Bering &
Shackelford, 2004). Extant research suggests that negative personal secrets are often shared to at
least one other person (Piazza & Bering, 2010), and that “secondary disclosures” (secrets passed
on to unintended third parties) occur with some frequency despite the best intentions of the
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 25
receiver (Christophe & Rimé, 1997). Secrets are often provocative and newsworthy they stir
emotions, such as surprise or outrage, within the recipient, which makes them salient, accessible,
and difficult to forget, and as a consequence, the vast majority of personal secrets are passed
along. Because secrets are newsworthy, secrets also represent a tradable good. This presents the
confidant with a dilemma whereby they might receive some benefit by sharing the secret, while
at the cost of damaging a relationship.
The ecology of secret sharing suggests that the human mind has not evolved for total
secrecy, but to selectively reveal negative personal secrets to loyal kin and allies who may be
counted on to defend the self against retaliations from offended parties. Thus, while natural
selection likely favored mechanisms for controlling the transmission of negative personal
information (e.g., conscious concealment from select targets), total secrecy may not be an
adaptive strategy insofar as (i) most secrets are likely to be inadvertently revealed through
various channels outside the secret-keeper’s control and (ii) revealing secrets to close allies and
kin may serve to hasten their support in anticipation of the negative reverberations of the secret’s
eventual revelation. This perspective thus suggests that selective disclosure of secrets is likely to
occur in online contexts where a secret-keeper encounters sufficient cues indicating that the
receiving party may be trusted to remain loyal to the discloser over and above any conflicting
loyalties that person may have to the secret’s target. This implies that contacts made online, for
example, within private online groups, who have non-overlapping social networks with the
secret-keeper, may make ideal confidants for distressing secrets, more so than individuals with
overlapping social networks.
Trust and Social Exchange
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 26
Despite initial and persistent concerns about electronic shopping, e-commerce continues
to grow (Horrigan, 2008). In 2008 Amazon had around 88 million active registered customers
worldwide; by 2012 that number was 200 million (Statista, 2013). eBay, one of the largest online
marketplaces/ auction sites, has a global customer base of 233 million (eBay Worldwide, 2013).
Anxieties about online shopping revolve mainly around issues of trust (e.g., that a seller can be
trusted to accurately represent the nature or quality of a product and honor their end of an online
transaction), privacy (e.g., concerns about online companies sharing users personal information
to third-parties), and consumer satisfaction (e.g., that the purchased item will not be defective;
Chen, Chien, Wu, & Tsai, 2010; Yang & Lester, 2004). The risks associated with purchasing
goods and sharing personal information over the Internet include loss of money and resources
(e.g., paying for something that never gets sent, identity theft), loss of time (e.g., time spent
bidding on an item in an auction or browsing for an item in an online market), and loss of control
(e.g., having personal information circulated against one’s wishes), among others. Online
transactions often occur between anonymous or pseudo-anonymous strangers where buyers and
sellers know little about each other and the likelihood of future interaction is uncertain (Resnick
& Zeckhauser, 2002), thus prompting the question: Why has e-commerce been so successful?
What mechanisms have enabled online shoppers to trust e-vendors whom they encounter online?
A number of evolutionary perspectives suggest that cooperation among strangers is an
unnatural or unusual occurrence, since for most of human history humans have cooperated with
members of their own tribe or community who they interacted with on a recurrent basis and face-
to-face, and thus had a larger stake in reciprocating contributions over time (as opposed to
defecting on a stranger one is unlikely to see again; Piazza & Bering, 2009). Still, trade between
groups probably occurred often enough that high-risk cooperation under conditions of low-
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 27
frequency interaction (and thus minimal reputational information) was not unheard of in the
ancestral past among neighboring groups (Fehr & Henrich, 2003). Expectations about future
interaction, even if these interactions are spread out over time and sporadic, may be helpful to
induce cooperation between strangers. Indeed, behavioral economists have shown that humans
are more inclined to cooperate with individuals they know little or nothing about if they expect
frequent future interactions than if future interactions are unlikely (e.g., Gächter & Falk, 2002).
Thus, one mechanism that may be driving the success of e-commerce is for online sellers to
capitalize on a well-established offline reputation. Consistent with this idea, research by Chen et
al. (2010) has shown that online shoppers are more inclined to trust e-vendors that have
cultivated a brand name image, and which buyers have had past experiences with, and so they
can be expected to stick around, to invest in the quality of their products and the reputation of the
company.
Another mechanism that evolutionary game theorists have highlighted as essential to
human cooperation among non-relatives and non-friends is reputation-based partner choice, also
referred to as “competitive altruism” (Barclay, 2004; Roberts, 1998; Sylwester & Roberts, 2013).
Competitive altruism occurs when individuals compete with one another for the most lucrative
partnerships via the reputations they acquire through their previous interactions. Online
marketplaces, such as Amazon, and auction sites, such as eBay, exploit the principles of
reputation-based partner choice through the institution of electronic “feedback” mechanisms, or
reputation systems, such as eBay’s Feedback Forum (Resnick, Zeckhauser, Swanson, &
Lockwood, 2006). Online feedback mechanisms collect, aggregate, and distribute feedback about
buyers and sellers’ past experiences within the marketplace. Buyers and sellers rate each other
and leave comments upon completion of an online transaction. A feedback profile is
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 28
automatically generated for registered sellers, which displays the net ratings they receive across
their various transactions for a given period of time (e.g., eBay currently has a 12-month cap on
their feedback system). Buyers may also leave comments and sometimes sellers are allowed to
leave comments in turn.
Leaving feedback about a seller imposes a minimal cost on buyers (e.g., the time required
to rate and comment about a completed transaction); thus, it remains a puzzle why buyers would
ever leave feedback, given the costs entailed. (Although we could not find any official statistics
on buyer feedback percentages, discussions about the low levels of buyer feedback are quite
common on Amazon Seller Forums.) One possibility is that individuals who experience strong
emotions, such as gratitude or outrage, on account of unanticipated transaction outcomes (i.e.,
unusually positive or negative experiences), may be more inclined to leave feedback than buyers
whose expectations are simply met by the seller. If this is the case then we might expect buyer
feedback to be skewed towards larger end tails with overall fewer middle ratings. We find this
outcome unlikely. Another possibility is that buyers who leave feedback are invested in the
reputation they imagine they receive for leaving feedback. Buyer feedback is a public good in
that feedback about prospective sellers is available to all buyers and maintained through
voluntary contributions. As such, the feedback system is vulnerable to exploitation by free riders
who freely benefit from the feedback of other buyers without themselves contributing to the
system. Online feedback systems help solve this public goods dilemma by allowing buyers
leaving feedback to identify themselves (e.g., by name) and thus cultivate a reputation for
providing useful feedback within the system. Amazon’s feedback system also allows buyers to
rate the usefulness of other buyers’ feedback when making purchasing decisions within the
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 29
marketplacewhich provides buyers reputational incentives to provide high-quality feedback to
other buyers, despite the minimal costs of time and effort required to contribute quality feedback.
As far as we are aware no systematic investigation of buyers’ motivations to leave
feedback has been undertaken; thus, the question of what exactly motivates buyers to leave
feedback remains an interesting direction for future research. One testable prediction which
stems from the above discussion is that online feedback systems which capitalize on the ability
for users to develop a reputation for making positive contributions to the system, and that offers
benefits to users for leaving helpful feedback (e.g., in the form of user ratings, discounts, or
monetary rewards), will thrive in relation to systems that do not provide these reputational
incentives (e.g., systems that overly conceal the identities of buyers who leave feedback).
One additional aspect of online trust and exchange has to do with the reliability of
information people encounter, whether from sellers making claims about a given product, buyers
leaving feedback about their transactions with sellers, or Facebook users posting assertions to a
public wall. Perspectives from EP can help illuminate the decisions people make regarding
whether to trust the veracity of information they receive online. Hess and Hagen (2006) have
argued that humans evolved psychological adaptations for assessing the veracity of gossip they
encountered in order to counteract deceptive communication. One strategy in particular that
people consistently use to counteract deceptive communications is to doubt statements made by
single and interdependent sources (Hess & Hagen, 2006). Over the Internet this might play out in
e-shoppers seeking out feedback information from multiple, independent sources before making
a final purchasing decision or auction bid, or discounting feedback submitted by a single buyer,
as hypothesized by Piazza and Bering (2009). Although we are unaware of any research to date
that has directly tested these predictions, Walther, Van Der Heide, Hamel, and Shulman (2009)
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 30
recently showed that Internet users tend to be skeptical of self-disclosures posted on Facebook
that are not confirmed by independent parties, which is consistent with Piazza and Bering’s
hypothesis. Apparently, there is a great deal more work that needs to be done on this topic.
Conclusion
Improvements to digital media occur year-round as developers seek to provide users with
satisfying experiences. An evolutionary perspective suggests that for emerging technologies to
be most effective they must consider the fundamental motives humans have as a vestige of their
evolutionary history, and not just their idiosyncratic tastes and interests. Humans have evolved to
behave in adaptive ways as a function of the species-typical conditions they find themselves
living in. This implies a degree of regularity to human motivation, and the cyberworld is no
exception to this rule. Real improvements to computer technology may only occur when
developers hone in on these fundamental motives and engineer new ways for users to satisfy
them.
EVOLUTIONARY CYBERPSYCHOLOGY 2.0 31
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