CYBERPSYCHOLOGY &
BEHAVIOR Volume 7, Number 3,
2004 © Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
The Online Disinhibition Effect
JOHN SULER, Ph.D.
ABSTRACT
While online, some people self-disclose or act out more frequently or intensely than they would in
person. This article explores six factors that interact with each other in creating this online
disinhibition effect: dissociative anonymity, invisibility, asynchronicity, solipsistic introjection,
dissociative imagination, and minimization of authority. Personality variables also will influence the
extent of this disinhibition. Rather than thinking of disinhibition as the revealing of an underlying
“true self,” we can conceptualize it as a shift to a constellation within self-structure, involving clusters
of affect and cognition that differ from the in-person constellation.
INTRODUCTION
never explore in the real world. We may call this toxic
disinhibition.
VERYDAY USERS on the Internet—as well as clini- Some types of benign disinhibition indicate an cians and
researchers
1–7
—have noted how peo- attempt to better understand and develop oneself,
ple say and do things in cyberspace that they
wouldn’t ordinarily say and do in the face-to-face world.
They loosen up, feel less restrained, and express
themselves more openly. So pervasive is the phenomenon
that a term has surfaced for it: the online disinhibition
effect.
This disinhibition can work in two seemingly opposing
directions. Sometimes people share very personal things
about themselves. They reveal secret emotions, fears,
wishes. They show unusual acts of kindness and
generosity, sometimes going out of their way to help
others. We may call this benign disinhibition.
However, the disinhibition is not always so salutary.
We witness rude language, harsh criticisms, anger, hatred,
even threats. Or people visit the dark underworld of the
Internet—places of pornography, crime, and violence—
territory they would to resolve interpersonal and
intrapsychic problems or explore new emotional and
experiential dimensions to one’s identity.
8
We could even
consider it a process of “working through” as
conceptualized in psychodynamic theory, or “self-
actualization” as proposed in humanistic perspectives. By
contrast, toxic disinhibition may simply be a blind
catharsis, a fruitless repetition compulsion, and an acting
out of unsavory needs without any personal growth at
all.9,10
As in all conceptual dichotomies, the distinction
between benign and toxic disinhibition will be complex
or ambiguous in some cases. For example, hostile words
in a chat encounter could be a therapeutic breakthrough
for some people. In an increasingly intimate e-mail
relationship, people may quickly reveal personal
E
Department of Psychology, Rider University, Lawrenceville, New Jersey.
321
322 SULER
information, then later regret their self-disclosures—
feeling exposed, vulnerable, or shameful. An excessively
rapid, even false intimacy may develop, which later
destroys the relationship when one or both people feel
overwhelmed, anxious, or disappointed. Also, in the very
wide variety of online subcultures, what is considered
asocial behavior in one group may be very à propos in
another. Cultural relativity as well as the complexities of
psychological dynamics will blur any simple contrasts
between disinhibition that is positive or negative.
Whether benign, toxic, or a mixture of both, what
causes this online disinhibition? What elements of
cyberspace lead to this weakening of the psychological
barriers that block hidden feelings and needs?
At least six factors are involved. For some people, one
or two of them produces the lion’s share of the
disinhibition effect. In most cases, however, these factors
intersect and interact with each other, supplement each
other, resulting in a more complex, amplified effect.
DISSOCIATIVE ANONYMITY
As people move around the Internet, others they
encounter can’t easily determine who they are.
Usernames and e-mail addresses may be visible, but this
information may not reveal much about a person,
especially if the username is contrived and the e-mail
address derives from a large Internet service provider.
Technologically savvy, motivated users may be able to
detect a computer’s IP address, but for the most part
others only know what a person tells them. If so desired,
people can hide some or all of their identity. They also
can alter their identities. As the word “anonymous”
indicates, people can have no name or at least not their
real name.
This anonymity is one of the principle factors that
creates the disinhibition effect. When people have the
opportunity to separate their actions online from their in-
person lifestyle and identity, they feel less vulnerable
about self-disclosing and acting out. Whatever they say or
do can’t be directly linked to the rest of their lives. In a
process of dissociation, they don’t have to own their
behavior by acknowledging it within the full context of an
integrated online/offline identity. The online self becomes
a compartmentalized self. In the case of expressed
hostilities or other deviant actions, the person can avert
responsibility for those behaviors, almost as if superego
restrictions and moral cognitive processes have been
temporarily suspended from the online psyche. In fact,
people might even convince themselves that those online
behaviors “aren’t me at all.”
INVISIBILITY
In many online environments, especially those that are
text-driven, people cannot see each other. When people
visit web sites, message boards, and even some chat
rooms, other people may not even know they are present
at all—with the possible exception of web masters and
other users who have access to software tools that can
detect traffic through the environment, assuming they
have the inclination to keep an eye on an individual
person, who is one of maybe hundreds or thousands of
users.
This invisibility gives people the courage to go places
and do things that they otherwise wouldn’t. Although this
power to be concealed overlaps with anonymity—
because anonymity is the concealment of identity—there
are some important differences. In the text
communication of e-mail, chat, instant messaging, and
blogs, people may know a great deal about each other’s
identities and lives. However, they still cannot see or hear
each other.
Even with everyone’s identity known, the opportunity
to be physically invisible amplifies the disinhibition
effect. People don’t have to worry about how they look or
sound when they type a message. They don’t have to
worry about how others look or sound in response to what
they say. Seeing a frown, a shaking head, a sigh, a bored
expression, and many other subtle and not so subtle signs
of disapproval or indifference can inhibit what people are
willing to express. According to traditional
psychoanalytic theory, the analyst sits behind the patient
in order to remain a physically ambiguous figure,
revealing no body language or facial expression, so that
the patient has free range to discuss whatever he or she
wants without feeling inhibited by how the analyst is
physically reacting. In everyday relationships, people
sometimes avert their eyes when discussing something
personal and emotional. Avoiding eye contact and face-
to-face visibility disinhibits people. Text communication
offers a builtin opportunity to keep one’s eyes averted.
ASYNCHRONICITY
In e-mail and message boards, communication is
asynchronous. People don’t interact with each other in
real time. Others may take minutes, hours, days, or even
months to reply. Not having to cope with someone’s
immediate reaction disinhibits people. In real life, the
analogy might be speaking to someone, magically
suspending time before that person can reply, and then
returning to the conversation when one is willing and able
to hear the response.
In a continuous feedback loop that reinforces some
behaviors and extinguishes others, momentby-moment
ONLINE DISINHIBITION EFFECT 323
responses from others powerfully shapes the ongoing
flow of self-disclosure and behavioral expression, usually
in the direction of conforming to social norms. In e-mail
and message boards, where there are delays in that
feedback, people’s train of thought may progress more
steadily and quickly towards deeper expressions of
benign and toxic disinhibition that avert social norms.
Some people may even experience asynchronous
communication as “running away” after posting a
message that is personal, emotional, or hostile. It feels
safe putting it “out there” where it can be left behind. In
some cases, as Kali Munro, an online psychotherapist,
aptly describes it, the person may be participating in an
“emotional hit and run” (K. Munro, unpublished
observations, 2003).
SOLIPSISTIC INTROJECTION
Absent face-to-face cues combined with text
communication can alter self-boundaries. People may feel
that their mind has merged with the mind of the online
companion. Reading another person’s message might be
experienced as a voice within one’s head, as if that
person’s psychological presence and influence have been
assimilated or introjected into one’s psyche.
Of course, one may not know what the other person’s
voice actually sounds like, so in one’s mind a voice is
assigned to that person. In fact, consciously or
unconsciously, a person may even assign a visual image
to what he or she thinks the person looks and behaves like.
The online companion then becomes a character within
one’s intrapsychic world, a character shaped partly by
how the person actually presents him or herself via text
communication, but also by one’s internal
representational system based on personal expectations,
wishes, and needs. Transference reactions encourage the
shaping of this perceived introjected character when
similarities exist between the online companion and
significant others in one’s life, and when one fills in
ambiguities in the personality of the online companion
with images of past relationships, or from novels and film.
As the introjected character becomes more elaborate and
subjectively “real,” a person may start to experience the
typed-text conversation as taking place inside one’s mind,
within the imagination, within one’s intrapsychic world—
not unlike authors typing out a play or novel.
Even when online relationships are not involved, many
people carry on these kinds of conversations in their
imagination throughout the day. People fantasize about
flirting, arguing with a boss, or honestly confronting a
friend about what they feel. In their imagination, where
it’s safe, people feel free to say and do things they would
not in reality. At that moment, reality is one’s
imagination. Online text communication can evolve into
an introjected psychological tapestry in which a person’s
mind weaves these fantasy role plays, usually
unconsciously and with considerable disinhibition.
Cyberspace may become a stage, and we are merely
players.
When reading another’s message, one might also
“hear” the online companion’s voice using one’s own
voice. People may subvocalize as they read, thereby
projecting the sound of their voice into the other person’s
text. This conversation may be experienced
unconsciously as talking to/with oneself, which
encourages disinhibition because talking with oneself
feels safer than talking with others. For some people,
talking with oneself may feel like confronting oneself,
which may unleash many powerful psychological issues.
DISSOCIATIVE IMAGINATION
If we combine the opportunity to easily escape or
dissociate from what happens online with the
psychological process of creating imaginary characters,
we get a somewhat different force that magnifies
disinhibition. Consciously or unconsciously, people may
feel that the imaginary characters they “created” exist in
a different space, that one’s online persona along with the
online others live in an make-believe dimension, separate
and apart from the demands and responsibilities of the
real world. They split or dissociate online fiction from
offline fact. Emily Finch, an author and criminal lawyer
who studies identity theft in cyberspace, has suggested
that some people see their online life as a kind of game
with rules and norms that don’t apply to everyday living
(E. Finch, unpublished observations, 2002). Once they
turn off the computer and return to their daily routine,
they believe they can leave behind that game and their
gameidentity. They relinquish their responsible for what
happens in a make-believe play world that has nothing to
do with reality.
The effect of this dissociative imagination surfaces
clearly in fantasy game environments in which a user
consciously creates an imaginary character, but it also can
influence many dimensions of online living. For people
with a predisposed difficulty in distinguishing personal
fantasy from social reality, the distinction between online
fantasy environments and online social environments
may be blurred. In our modern media-driven lifestyles,
the power of computer and video game imagination can
infiltrate reality testing.
Although anonymity amplifies the effect of
dissociative imagination, dissociative imagination and
dissociative anonymity usually differ in the complexity of
the dissociated sector of the self. Under the influence of
anonymity, the person may attempt an invisible non-
identity, resulting in a reducing, simplifying, or
compartmentalizing of self-expression. In dissociative
imagination, the expressed but split-off self may evolve
greatly in complexity.
324 SULER
MINIMIZATION OF STATUS AND
AUTHORITY
While online a person’s status in the face-to-face world
may not be known to others and may not have as much
impact. Authority figures express their status and power
in their dress, body language, and in the trappings of their
environmental settings. The absence of those cues in the
text environments of cyberspace reduces the impact of
their authority.
Even if people do know something about an authority
figure’s offline status and power, that elevated position
may have less of an effect on the person’s online presence
and influence. In many environments on the Internet,
everyone has an equal opportunity to voice him or herself.
Everyone—regardless of status, wealth, race, or gender—
starts off on a level playing field. Although one’s identity
in the outside world ultimately may shape power in
cyberspace, what mostly determines the influence on
others is one’s skill in communicating (including writing
skills), persistence, the quality of one’s ideas, and
technical know-how.
People are reluctant to say what they really think as
they stand before an authority figure. A fear of
disapproval and punishment from on high dampens the
spirit. But online, in what feels more like a peer
relationship—with the appearances of authority
minimized—people are much more willing to speak out
and misbehave.
The traditional Internet philosophy holds that everyone
is an equal, that the purpose of the net is to share ideas
and resources among peers. The net itself is designed with
no centralized control, and as it grows, with seemingly no
end to its potential for creating new environments, many
of its inhabitants see themselves as innovative,
independentminded explorers and pioneers. This
atmosphere and this philosophy contribute to the
minimizing of authority.
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES AND
PREDISPOSITIONS
The online disinhibition effect is not the only factor that
determines how much people self-disclose or act out in
cyberspace. Individual differences play an important role.
For example, the intensity of a person’s underlying
feelings, needs, and drive level affect susceptibility to
disinhibition. Personality styles also vary greatly in the
strength of defense mechanisms and tendencies towards
inhibition or expression. People with histrionic styles tend
to be very open and emotional, whereas compulsive
people are more restrained. The online disinhibition effect
will interact with these personality variables, in some
cases resulting in a small deviation from the person’s
baseline (offline) behavior, while in other cases causing
dramatic changes. Future research can focus on which
people, under what circumstances, are more predisposed
to the various elements of online disinhibition.
SHIFTS AMONG INTRAPSYCHIC
CONSTELLATIONS
We may be tempted to conclude that the disinhibition
effect releases deeper aspects of intrapsychic structure,
that it unlocks the true needs, emotions, and self attributes
that dwell beneath surface personality presentations. A
man with repressed anger unleashes his hostility online,
thereby showing others how he really feels. A shy woman
openly expresses her hidden affection for her cyberspace
companion. The fact that some people report being more
like their “true self” while online reinforces this
conceptual temptation. Inspired by Freud’s archeological
model of the mind, these ideas rest on the assumption that
personality structure is constructed in layers, that a core,
true self exists beneath various layers of defenses and the
more superficial roles of everyday social interactions.
However, personal and cultural values determine what
are considered the “true” aspects of one’s personality.
People more readily accept as true those traits that are
regarded as positive and productive. However, self-
centered sexual and aggressive tendencies, as Freud
noted, also are basic components of personality dynamics,
as are the array of psychological defenses designed to
control them. Similarly, the seeming superficial social
roles of everyday living are necessary for functioning,
thereby serving a fundamental purpose in the psychology
of the individual. They are stable, valuable aspects of
identity.
The concept of disinhibition can lead us astray, into
thinking that what is disinhibited is a more “true” aspect
of identity than the processes of inhibiting and
disinhibiting. But who or what is it that does the inhibiting
and disinhibiting? It is a part or process within personality
dynamics no less real or important than other parts or
processes. This is why many psychoanalytic clinicians
believe that working with defenses and resistance—the
inhibitors of the personality structure—is so crucial to the
success of the therapy. Even when therapy reduces the
intensity of these defenses, remnants of them remain
within the personality structure, serving an important
regulatory function and sometimes evolving into
productive aspects of one’s personality independent of the
affect or conflict originally defended against.
The self does not exist separate from the environment
in which that self is expressed. If someone contains his
aggression in face-to-face living, but expresses that
aggression online, both behaviors reflect aspects of self:
the self that acts nonaggressively under certain
conditions, the self that acts aggressively under other
conditions. When a person is shy in person while
ONLINE DISINHIBITION EFFECT 325
outgoing online, neither self-presentation is more true.
They are two dimensions of that person, each revealed
within a different situational context. Sometimes, as Jung
noted, these different sides of the person operate in a
dynamic polarity relative to each other. They are two
sides of the same personality dimension.
Instead of regarding the internal psychological world as
constructed in layers and juxtaposed with an external
environment, we can conceptualize it, following
traditional associationist theory, as an intrapsychic field
containing clusters or constellations of emotion, memory,
and thinking that are interconnected with certain
environments. Some constellations overlap, others are
more dissociated from each other, with environmental
variables influencing those levels of integration and
dissociation. Personality dynamics involve the complex
interactions among these facets of self and environmental
contexts.
The disinhibition effect can then be understood as the
person shifting, while online, to an intrapsychic
constellation that may be, in varying degrees, dissociated
from the in-person constellation, with inhibiting guilt,
anxiety, and related affects as features of the in-person
self but not as part of that online self. This constellations
model—which is consistent with current clinical theories
regarding dissociation and information processing—
helps explain the disinhibition effect as well as other
online phenomena, like identity experimentation, role
playing, multitasking, and other more subtle shifts in
personality expression as someone moves from one
online environment to another. In fact, a single
disinhibited “online self” probably does not exist at all,
but rather a collection of slightly different constellations
of affect, memory, and thought that surface in and interact
with different types of online environments.
Different modalities of online communication (e.g., e-
mail, chat, video) and different environments (e.g., social,
vocational, fantasy) may facilitate diverse expressions of
self. Each setting allows us to see a different perspective
on identity. Neither one is necessarily more true than
another. Based on a multidimensional analysis of the
various psychological features of online settings, a
comprehensive theory on the psychotherapeutics of
cyberspace can explore how computer-mediated
environments can be designed to express, develop, and if
necessary, restrain different constellations of self-
structure.
11,12
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Address reprint requests to: John
Suler, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology
Rider University
Lawrenceville, NJ 08648
E-mail: suler@mindspring.com
Samblackman.org