M. Stocchetti – interview with Niklas Ravaja Oct 2012 - Page | 1

Niklas Ravaja Oct 9 2012

Dr. Niklas Ravaja is Professor of Social Psychology of Information and Communication Technology at the University of Helsinki and he is heading the Social Interaction and Emotion research group in Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT. He is specialized in the research on mediated and non-mediated social interaction; interaction of humans with ICT, media, and services; and affective and psychophysiological processes during message processing and decision making. Dr. Ravaja is Associate Editor of Journal of Media Psychology and a member of the Editorial Board of Media Psychology.

Matteo Stocchetti - The first question I would like to ask you… what is Internet psychology? What are the similarities and differences with other psychological sciences..?

Niklas Ravaja – There are at least two aspects worth mentioning here. One aspect is methodological: to use internet to study very many different behaviours or psychological phenomena that are not as such related to internet. Internet is here used as a tool to collect information for example on-line questionnaires and so on.In this sense, Internet is a quite convenient tool to perform surveys and so on. There are these services such as monkey survey [?] you can use for online surveys and that’s of course very convenient. In fact when we carry out laboratory studies we use these online questionnaire to collect background data from our participants.There are also services that make it very easy to carry out experimental research, recruiting of participants. One of our undergraduate student carried out experimental study on internet in meditation. Amazingly enough he had over 1000 participants in his experimental study. That’s quite a lot considering that in a laboratory you have only 40 or 50 participants.

But then the other aspect of internet psychology. The researcher is maybe interested in people’s behaviour in the internet, what kind of behavioural and psychological phenomena there occur in the internet, when people use internet - which is a different thing

MS - So if we ask what is internet psychology there are two bid dimension or identity. One is methodological in which internet is a tool which allows research in psychological science , like experimental research, to do it better. And another one which is actually an object an object of investigation. Internet is still a form of social interaction, although mediated, therefore people interact as thy would interact through a telephone, or through another medium, and the internet psychologists studies how people behaves or how the internet medium affects people behaviours, is that correct?

NR - Yes at least that is one aspect of it

MS - So the assumption, of course, is that people in the internet behaves differently but we may also want to study people without the assumption of different behaviour in internet therefore we just study how people interact in several opportunities.

NR - Right, right

MS - So what do we find out when we study internet as an object? What do we learn about people’s psychological behaviour studying the internet? This is one question maybe. And it is another question to ask if and when and in which direction people’s behaviour change when they interact through internet?

NR - One important target of investigation is this Facebook because it is so extremely popular nowadays.There are of course differences between mediated interaction e.g. in Facebook and non-mediated interaction. Nevertheless I think that many of the social psychological theories are applicable also when studying mediated interaction for example in regard to Facebook and corresponding services.How people created their profiles,what they want to show and what kind of impression they want to give,is one interesting topic - the well-known“impression formation phenomenon”, for example. The formation of social network in internet is also an interesting topic. This again relates to methodological aspects. It’s quite easy to collect huge amount of data and basically have continuous date from log file and such sources on this interaction - data that was not previously available. You can of course send questionnaires to a number of people.

MS - Do you think that, broadly speaking, the study of people’s behaviour in internet substantially confirms the main psychological and social psychological theories? Or is it too broad a statement?

NR - It is maybe too broad. But I think nevertheless that many phenomena that are present in face to face interaction are present also in the Internet. But of course behaviour may also change and be different. But in relation to your initial question, I also think that the internet or related things such as digital games enable the study of some social psychological phenomena that would be difficult or perhaps unethical to study in real life or to study without such interface.

MS - I have some idea of what you mean, for example when it comes to the morality of violence. For example there are some videogames when the player is supposed to kill, mangle, torture and even rape as I understand. But these are only games, or are they? Can we make inference on inclination to moral or immoral behaviour by studying videogames? Is there a moral issue at stake? Or isn’t maybe the case that the fictional environment, the idea that the human agent is playing a game, affects whatever claims we may come out with about moral behaviour by studying gaming behaviour?

NR - Yes. Of course it is quite obvious that the person knows the difference between killing a real human being and killing some game character in the game. This is a topic that requires more research but I nevertheless think there is some evidence that for example persons who can be expected, based on their personality scores, to like violence when they kill games character they react less negatively compared to other people. So it appears that these other people, whose personality is not so aggressive, react also with negative emotions when they kill a fictional character. Killing a character in a game is some sort of victory and therefore it elicits positive emotions in the gamer but in certain people it also elicits negative emotions. I think it relates to this moral issue that harming or killing other person is prohibited

MS - What are you saying is that different personalities react differently to violence in gaming situations, probably reflecting different moral posture – have to find the right word for that. But I wonder if the relation goes also the other way around: is it possible that internet behaviour and video gaming in particular, performs as training, therefore changing people personality, their or moral standards or their behavioural reactions in real life?

NR -That’s a very important question that has been studied a lot and there are many conflicting opinions about this issue. I don’t have the final answer here, but my understanding of what existing research tells us is that violent games may negatively affect at least some people, those that are somehow vulnerable but perhaps they don’t make all people more aggressive: probably only some vulnerable individuals. It is a quite difficult topic to study and, as it is often the case, it is difficult to say which comes first. Is it so that aggressive people like to play violent games and so that violent people play more? Or is it that people who play violent games become more aggressive and violent? It is not so simple to answer this question.

MS – But when it comes to the internet this educational role is usually take very much for granted. Does Internet psychology study the educational role of the internet, which involves the possibility of changing people behaviours and attitudes?

NR - Of course different kind of digital learning environments are more or less part of the internet and when we study the effects of those and their effectiveness that’s internet psychology

MS - Can we say from available evidence that a digital environment is more effective for learning? Can we say that we learn better today because of the digital environment than before the digital revolution?

NR - Now I have to say that this learning aspect is really not my topic. I must answer that I don’t know and this is really only my personal opinion but I think that there are many things that are relevant here. One is of course the increased availability of educational material, articles and so on, that is enabled by the internet. That is one aspect that can be expected to make learning more effective. Also for my research work, before the internet it took many weeks to get an article when ordering it but now I can find it immediately from the internet. The information you need you can get it faster. Is that sense it definitely helps.

MS - This sounds as an incremental progress of the printed press. In those days only a few could have access to manuscript. Now many can have more material

NR - On the other hand, perhaps that will change when the quality of the displays will improve.For the time being I think that this [pointing to a book] is a better interface for reading. This is a more pleasant interface to read text from print media compared to digital media. Probably this has also been studied, butI would argue that if I read book chapters from paper and from the screen of my desktop I guess I learn better from reading from the print. This all relates to quite traditional textual material. But then, of course, there are theseinteractive digital environments that foster learning. For example different types of games. My understanding is that effectiveness as such as been proven but I don’t know if is it so that one could say that they are more effective that books, for example. I don’t know. It is of course quite differently and perhaps quite different things compared to e.g. printed books and it is not so easy to compare.

MS – are you now referring to content?

NR - Different content but perhaps I think the aim of some games is that the user learn some skills. It is different thing to practice some skill in a serious game compare to reading about those skills in a book. There are some fundamental differences.

MS - I can see the differences and there are some authors that argues that one of the differences between education through books and education through digital environment is actually this one. With books you can train to think while with digital learning you can teach more easily to do.

NR - That’s right, I think that’s correct!

MS - But this also has important implications. I wonder to what extent there is an ideological dimension. Are we training people more to do, more as workers than as intellectuals in our higher education? Is that a possibility embedded in this new educational technology?

NR - Perhaps, why not? But it’s of course also difficult to say how popular is this interactive learning environment will eventually be. Of course technology improves fast but it’s still the case that many of these serious games are bit clumsy. Let’s see what happens when they improve

MS - One of the advantages of digital technology seems to be that they enhance the co-construction of knowledge. Internet and other forms of use of internet are praised for taking the students out of the isolation of the teacher-student relationship – the teacher being the authority and the students being the “subjugated learner” –but it links the student with other students which opens up the opportunity to experience diversity. I find the concept of co-construction interesting. Do you see this social role of media actually relevant in education or not? There are potentialities but do younger generation get more open minded or do they get confused?

NR - Well, I think that this collaboration and co-creation of knowledge it is probably already now somehow more natural for the young generation compared to my own generation. I think so. Of course if I remember the time when I started my study there were group work but obviously it’s now more common and this learning environment facilitate group work.

MS - Another claim associated to this technology is that more and more reality becomes constructed through communicative practices. As I understand, most of your research still adopts a behaviouristic approach, if I am not mistaken…. If we considered digital technology both an object, a place where people interact with differences and similarities to the real life, and a methodology, isn’t digital technology supporting a social constructionist epistemology or approach to knowledge?Which means, for example, that whatever relationship we identify we need to look at it in both ways and everything become ambivalent. Internet has a huge educational role, we use the internet but the internet uses us, --- how do you see this dimension?

NR - The only think that perhaps need a little correction is maybe this behaviourism thing because behaviourism does not take into account cognitive interpretation but I basically agree with what you say.

MS - That digital technology and internet psychology pushes towards a social constructionist representation of reality? Also younger generation may get a feeling that they can affect reality more than we could at their age. When we were teenager, 15 or 17 years old, publication was not an option for us.

NR - Ok that’s true in many senses, it’s true that some teen ager might somehow get huge publicity in internet….

MS - …publicity for good and bad…

NR - Of course…

MS - … which brings back the moral issues. More and more people can make their views known but we have to be careful

NR - I don’t know if it is a moral issue of internet psychology but as you mentioned teenagers may get publicity for good and bad and moral issues arises. For example not so nice photos may spread in internet, or online bullying, etc….

MS - For educational purposes the internet has great potentiality but the teacher will remain relevant not much as a source of information, because there’s more information available in internet, but as educator: the person with real life experience that is able to offer guidance when it comes to values?

NR - Why not?