Often times when I wake up from a particularly brutal nightmare I feel uneasy for the rest of the day. After spending all night fighting off zombies or whatever I usually don’t feel like interacting with people. But why? I don’t really think I’m going to be attacked by zombies. Well, maybe. But probably not. Even though I know I’m not going to be attacked, I wake up with a whole slew of physiological responses which indicate that my body is prepared for the bloody monsters should they somehow escape my dreams.

In my intro to psych class (which I took many years ago, more than I care to say) we talked about this very phenomenon. After a series of studies I was too lazy to dig up, psychologists surmised that, as far as psychophysiology is concerned, the brain and central nervous system can’t distinguish between high imagination and realty. Scientists had athletes hooked up to machines which measured blood pressure, heart rate and all that, then asked them to think intently about being in the heat of the sport. I think they used basketball players but I can’t remember. They found that athletes’ heart rate increased and they actually burned calories by just imagining it. (Before you get a grand idea about some new amazing weight loss plan you should know that the caloric procession was pretty inconsequential from a weight-loss standpoint.)

What if you had an enormous network of people who were interacting with each other in a virtual space? It wouldn’t really be reality, but the mind would have a hard time telling the difference. Would people behave differently, and if so, how? We already have such a beast, called the internet, and psychologists are scrambling to come up with a paradigm which explains human behavior in it. Unfortunately, many of the early work on virtual spaces was done by psychologists who had no native understand of this big, internet-type thing all the crazy kids are into these days. It hasn’t been until fairly recently that members of the 1337 have tackled these issues.

I was prompted to write this post after reading about how Micheal Arrington is taking a break from tech crunch because of the threats on his life. This sparked a discussion on mixx about human behavior in virtual spaces. To be perfectly honest, empirical research on this subject is virtually non-existent (no pun intended . . . well, maybe a little). Not to sound too much like a jackass, but it’s going to be people like me, and others of my generation, who work on solving the great human behavioral mysteries of virtual spaces with a native understanding of the beast.

All I have at this point are my observations and beliefs about human nature and interaction in virtual spaces. Relationships tend to be more intense and shorter lived than in “real life”, or what I like to call “the meat space.” Anyone who’s been flamed or has visited the seedy underbelly of the internet knows the depths of utter ridiculousness that internet relationships can reach. People get angry, volatile and spew hatred that they would never dream of in the meat space. my friend Jay’s favorite saying is “internet audience + anonymity = asshat.” I don’t know if that’s completely true, but what is it about the internet that changes people’s behavior? And what about those people who seem to act exactly the same online as in real life, what’s different about them? Maybe someday we will know.

Ah, yet another completely unfulfilling blog post brought to you by me. Have a nice day!