ALEXANDER SPRADLIN: OK.
Good evening, everybody.
My name's Dr. Spradlin.
I'm a Clinical
Assistant Professor
in the Psych Department here
on the Pullman campus at WSU.
I teach, regularly, the courses
on motivation, on self-control,
on personality, and
psych of gender.
And I've been at WSU
for a long time now--
over eight years.
I got my master's and PhD
here before becoming faculty.
And part of that time
spent a few years teaching
through the Global Campus, so
I've done some online teaching
as well.
I just started my research
lab this semester.
My lab generally focuses
on stress and anxiety
and people's coping
strategies, how
they deal with their stress.
And that mostly builds upon
my dissertation research
on cannabis.
A lot of people use cannabis
to cope with negative affect,
to relax themselves
to deal with stress.
And I switched to that area
because of a lot of funding,
so thank you to the
state of Washington
for buying a lot of pot.
But my original
foray into research
was on the intersection between
technology and interpersonal
relationships-- so,
like, social psychology
and online technology
in particular.
That's what got me into
research in the first place.
I was in psychology
originally, planning
to go the clinical psych route,
work with veterans with PTSD.
But I really liked
the research I
got involved in as
an undergraduate,
and I managed to keep
that up, and I still
do some research on
technology today.
So the title of my talk today
is "Digital social connections,"
and I want to review a
little bit of my research
in this area, again, on
people's relationships
through technology.
There is, in general, a lot
of negative stigma surrounding
people's technology use.
I don't want to
stereotype any groups,
but it tends to come
from older adults who
fear that the technology that
kids, young adults, adolescents
are using--
that that technology's
going to rob them
of some of the
richness and the skills
of face-to-face communication.
And as we'll see here
in a little bit-- not
to talk too far ahead of myself,
but that's not necessarily
the case.
That lack of
development or going
backwards in terms
of social skills--
that doesn't necessarily happen.
I do want to get
started on my talk now.
Again, my talk's called
"Digital social connections."
And what I'd like
to cover, again,
is what led me into research
and some of the studies
that I've published
to-date on the topic
of interpersonal connections
through technology.
What we're doing right now--
so it's a really apropos topic
for this kind of setting,
and I'll come back to that a
bit later in the presentation.
But what I wanted
to start off with
is a couple examples of
how technology connects us.
I remember, personally, coming
to graduate school up here
from Southern California.
And it's really through texting,
it's through social media,
it's through a variety of
different technological tools
that I've been able to keep in
contact with a lot of my family
members, a lot of
my close friends.
I think that's one advantage of
technology, one thing that it
provides us with.
I'm sure there were
people who freaked out
when we first started sending
letters to each other.
I'm sure there were
people who freaked out
when the telephone was
invented, and people
started making voice calls.
People thinking,
oh, this is going
to ruin how we interact
with each other.
And I don't think
that's the case.
In fact, I think
technology actually
enhances our relationships
with each other.
I think it enhances our lives
and our knowledge in general
as well.
This first thing here--
I do have permission to
show this from this student.
She is currently a
graduate student in--
she was in psychology.
I think she's in the
business department now.
But here she is.
She is reading a book
with her nephew, using--
I believe she was on FaceTime.
I think this is a screen capture
from FaceTime, showing she
and her nephew keeping up.
And again, something
that wouldn't
be afforded without the
technology that we have today.
And you can see,
as well, not just
the communication between this
student, Micah, and her nephew,
but other people commenting
on this conversation.
It becomes more than just that
dyadic, two-person connection.
There are other people
providing some feedback as well.
Outside of the realm
of social media--
this is a screenshot from the
video game World of Warcraft.
And there's a lot going
on in this picture,
but there's, like, 60 people
here riding their dragons,
getting ready to attack a city.
And again, something
where people
can interact with each other,
both in team-building ways,
but also in destructive,
attacking other people kinds
of ways.
But something, again,
that technology
allows where if you are, I don't
know, a place like Pullman,
you might not even be able
to pull 60 people together
to interact at a function.
So something, again, that
I think the technology
affords us.
So where I got
started in researching
technology and psychology
was on the topic of empathy.
I got into psychology
research through one
of my undergraduate courses--
a social psych course.
And in that course I
did a research study
on what motivates people
to help other people.
And one of the major
internal processes
that provides us motivation
to help others is our empathy.
And so when I moved
into this laboratory--
that George Marsh Applied
Cognition Lab-- the GMAC lab--
as an undergrad, their
focus was on technology,
and I wanted to marry
those concepts together
with my interest
in social behavior
and the lab's focus
on technology.
So my first study
I wanted to look
at empathy, and the expression
of empathy on the internet.
And so I want to define those
terms for us pretty quickly.
Empathy's got a few
different components,
and there are some different
ways to measure it.
But in general it's about
a feeling of closeness
or connectedness
with other people,
and it is theorized
that empathy is
one of the major reasons
why we cooperate,
and why we help other people.
It allows us to build
connections with other people.
And it includes an affective,
or an emotional component.
This is where you share
feelings with somebody else.
So if you see somebody
who is in distress,
your affective empathy might
let you share in that distress.
It's sometimes called
perspective-taking,
but it's about taking--
or, it's a part of
perspective-taking.
So there's the
affective component,
which has to do with
sharing your feelings.
The other component
is considering
the perspective of others--
putting yourself in their shoes.
And usually these two
components go together
to have an empathetic
experience.
In fact, being able to put
yourself in that person's shoes
is, we think, part
of the reason why
you're able to also
experience their emotions.
I think that makes sense
pretty conceptually.
But the key point is
empathy has a couple
of different components.
And in this first study I'm
going to talk to you about,
we looked at those
components differently
to see if they're there
differently affected
by time spent online.
As I mentioned, a lot of
people fear technology.
You can find APA magazine
articles on this.
You can find articles
on this in Newsweek.
You can see it on the news,
including the 24-hour news
channels.
And you can also find evidence
of this in some publications
by some big-name researchers.
And this was one of
the things-- and you
might find, if you're
interested in research,
that this might
come true for you.
But there are some researchers
out there and they've suggested
that spending a lot of
time using digital media--
like on Facebook, emailing,
reading websites--
that that is
potentially detrimental,
or harmful to our ability
to experience empathy.
And the first time I read about
this, I read this in a book
by a UCLA neuroscientist.
He's cited here-- Gary Small.
And he wrote about a future
where countries start bombing
each other because they're at
the United Nations and somebody
misinterprets a non-verbal
gesture because everybody's
been online all
the time, and that
leads to war between nations.
And I remember my eyes rolled
so deep back into my head
I think they went all the
way around when I read that.
But that can be really
motivating for research.
In fact, if you get more
familiar with research,
you'll find a lot of
researchers disagree
with other publications,
and that motivates them
to get started in research.
And you can even
find certain people
who clearly are going back
and forth from publication
to publication trying to
discredit each other's ideas.
And a lot of times
the reality is there's
some truth to both
sides' perspective.
And so I don't
necessarily believe
that using a lot of technology
is always going to be harmful
or it's always going
to be beneficial,
but I don't foresee
a future where
wars start, people bomb
each other because they've
used too much
online communication
and they don't know how to
interact with each other.
So that was the idea
that got me started,
was this bullet
point right here.
In my experience, especially
as an introverted person,
I've always found
that technology
has allowed me to connect
with people more easily than I
can face-to-face.
I remember when I went off
to undergraduate school
at UC Santa Barbara
and I actually
made some friends-- that was
back when Facebook was only
for college students-- actually
made some of my first friends
there online in the summer
before moving up into the dorms
through the use of
Facebook, and it
was something that enhanced my
interactions with other people,
rather than taking away.
Again, this idea
that digital media's
detrimental-- it's posited
on this statement that
using technology replaces
face-to-face time.
And that had not been
researched before I
started doing my own research.
And I don't know
that it necessarily
replaces face-to-face time.
We're going to see
whether my research agrees
with what I just said
or not here in a second.
But there's another
example of a conversation
where I saw empathy.
And this was one
of the first pieces
I used in putting together
my original study.
This is another one
of my colleagues.
When I was an undergraduate,
she wrote about her mom
having cancer surgery, and
she got a lot of comfort.
She got a lot of what
looks like empathy
to me from friends and family
members, people telling her
how much they cared, that
they were sending good wishes,
all of that stuff.
I'm not saying that people
don't say heinous things
to each other online.
They most certainly do.
But part of being behind
the screen, I think,
can go the other direction--
a helpful direction-- as well.
So the research I want to talk
to you about here tonight--
two large-scale surveys.
I administered one as an
undergraduate in 2011,
and another one in
2015 here at WSU,
and then I published
both of those surveys
and the results of those surveys
in 2015 and 2019, respectively.
So I want to go with
the first one first.
I think that makes sense.
The article is titled
"Virtual Empathy,"
and I worked on that
project with two
of my undergraduate mentors,
Dr. Carrier and Dr. Rosen,
and one of my good friends
who's a professor, now, too,
John Bunce--
Dr. Bunce.
He's down at Cal State
University, East Bay.
And again, this
first study we looked
at a lot of different things,
but our overall interest
was in tackling
some of the issues
that I brought up before.
First we wanted to test
the relationship between
self-reported time spent in
face-to-face communication,
how many hours a day people
reported interacting with
family members,
interacting with friends,
interacting with coworkers,
as well as the time they spent
online for various activities--
emailing, playing video
games, using Facebook.
And we are also looking
for sex-based differences
as well, because at least
with self-report studies,
females tend to self-report
higher empathy than males do.
I don't know that that's
the case in reality,
but the perception is
there that perhaps there's
some social desirability bias.
But anyway, there's been a
pretty consistent difference
in self-reported empathy, so
we looked at sex differences
there as well.
So first look at time spent
using technology, going online,
and how much time people
spend face-to-face.
And then we wanted to
see the link between time
spent online and the two
components of empathy
that I introduced to
you-- the cognitive side,
the perspective-taking side,
and the affective empathy side,
the emotional contagion,
or the sharing
of feelings side of things.
And what we found, first, was
that time spent going online--
both in terms of overall
online activity, but also a lot
of specific mediums
for technology use--
that time was actually
associated with increased
face-to-face communication.
So right away we
found the opposite
of what had been
hypothesized that I
shared with you on the last
slide, that using technology--
and in this case, specifically
online technology,
digital social media--
that that would replace
face-to-face communication.
Actually, the more
time people spent
going online, the more time they
spent interacting face-to-face.
So kind of the opposite
of what we would have
predicted based on
some other research.
We did see time
spent going online,
there was an impact on empathy,
but only in females, and only
with cognitive empathy-- so
only for that perspective-taking
component.
And the size of that
effect is pretty tiny.
So one of the things you
might find if you get started
in research is you're looking
for a significant effect,
and that significance
comes from a few sources .
And one of those sources is
the size of the effect itself--
so how much people's
face-to-face time
goes up based on how much
their time spent going online
goes up.
But another factor that
contributes to significance
is how many people you had
in your study to begin with.
Historically it's been a problem
of not getting enough people
to find significant results.
Nowadays, because
of mass surveys,
we actually can have
so many participants
that an effect that looks
like it's not meaningful
can actually be significant.
And so one of the
things, hopefully, you're
picking up in some
of your classes
is that it's not just
about the p-value.
It's about the size
of the effect as well.
And both of these
effects are small,
but the effect on
cognitive empathy
is much smaller than the effect
on face-to-face communication.
The other thing we
looked at, as well,
is a three-way
relationship here.
This is called mediation.
And I'm not going to go off
on that topic right now,
I promise you, but it's
a way of incorporating
additional variables.
Normally, historically
we look at two variables
at a time in an--
experimental setting--
an independent variable and
your dependent variable,
or your outcome.
But a lot of times the
link between two variables
can change, or it
can be transmitted
through another factor.
And so what we
were trying to see
is we were trying to test to
see if time spent going online
was related to empathy
through face-to-face time.
In other words, does time
spent going online lead
to more face-to-face time?
Which we did see.
And then what happens to
empathy due to that more
face-to-face time?
And what we found is that for
the people who are going online
and it's leading to
more face-to-face time,
they're actually showing
increases in their empathy--
affective and cognitive and
females, and some cognitive
empathy increases in males.
No effect on affective empathy.
So the idea there, again, is
that even though the online
time spent may be related
to some empathy deficit
in females, when that online
time predicts increased
face-to-face time--
which we also saw--
when we were accounting for all
of those variables together,
then we're actually seeing
some increases in empathy.
And the idea might be, here,
that spending more time online
might give you more
face-to-face interactions,
helps you schedule events,
helps you build relationships.
And then that increased
face-to-face time leads
to enhanced empathy.
That's the idea.
And by the way, I forgot
to mention this earlier,
but if you have questions about
what I'm talking about-- yeah,
so there's a
question right there.
How are you measuring
empathy in a survey?
As I mentioned, we're using
the self-report questionnaire.
We used-- I can't remember
the acronym right now.
I think they were called
the Basic Empathy Scales.
They're pretty
psychometrically sound, pretty
thoroughly developed.
But people do need to have
a perception of themselves
to rate how much they have
concern for other people,
how much they tend to consider
other people's perspectives.
Those types of items are
what people were asked about.
So that's how we
measured empathy.
If you continue to have any
questions as I'm going along,
specifically about the content,
feel free to raise them.
If they're more discussion
questions rather than
clarification questions, I'd ask
you save them to the end here.
But that question that was
just asked-- how are you
measuring empathy in a survey?
That's certainly one I can
address as I'm going along.
So the first study we saw, we
saw minimal impacts on empathy
from going online.
And the key thing we saw,
too, is that going online
does not replace your
face-to-face time.
In fact, we saw some evidence
that perhaps going online
actually increases your
face-to-face time instead.
The second study we did
I was interested to see
if that pattern changes.
So removing the
empathy component,
just looking at your
specifically social media,
Facebook use, and
to see if Facebook
use in particular replaces
face-to-face time,
and to see if that
link between Facebook
use and face-to-face
time changed depending
on people's personality traits.
We know that people
with different traits
use Facebook at different rates.
There are a mix of
findings in this area,
but the most consistent findings
are concerning extroversion.
Extroversion is sometimes
thought of as the more social
of the big five
personality traits.
There's neuroticism, which is
how prone to negative emotions
and mood swings you are.
There is openness to
experiences, your creativity,
your curiosity, how willing
you are to try new things.
There's a few
others-- agreeableness
and conscientiousness-- but
then there's extroversion.
And typically an
extrovert is somebody
who is really interested
in other people.
They're interested in exploring
things in the external world.
An introvert is somebody
who's lower on extroversion.
They're going to spend
more time being quiet,
in their own head, having
their own thoughts,
and we tend to see that
in their relationships
as well-- less social
interaction, less
social relationships.
So not surprising that
the researchers pointed
to extroversion as being
one of the traits that's
related to Facebook use.
Typically what we see
with extroversion--
extroverted people--
the more extroverted somebody
is, the more Facebook friends
they have, the more time they
spend on Facebook as well.
Interestingly, on the other side
of the coin, though, shyness--
which I don't know
that I would say
it's part of the
introversion-extroversion
spectrum, but introverted people
tend to be higher on shyness.
Shyness was also found
to be related to spending
more time on Facebook, too.
So maybe people who
are really social
spend more time on Facebook.
Maybe people who would have
a hard time interacting
with people spend time
on Facebook as well.
I would argue that
Social Networking Sites,
SNSes, like Facebook--
they probably
serve different functions
for different people.
People who are higher
in extroversion,
Facebook could provide them
with social stimulation.
It can allow them to interact
with their large friendship
networks.
People who are
lower extroversion,
Facebook may actually help them
facilitate social interactions.
Not necessarily the
same level of broadness
as I would expect with
extroversion, but again,
being behind the screen
tends to disinhibit people.
They tend to feel
more comfortable.
You may have had that
experience in your classes.
I don't know if you've
taken face-to-face classes
versus online
classes, but you might
find yourself more
willing to ask questions
in an online setting
than you might
be willing to ask
questions or contribute
to a discussion in
an offline setting.
So the two ideas
here-- the first
is that the rich get richer.
People who are already pretty
social and outwardly-oriented
get to do more of that.
The second perspective is
that the poor get richer--
that, again,
Facebook allows them
to do things that they normally
wouldn't be comfortable doing.
And everybody,
for the most part,
feels a social need to
belong with other people,
to affiliate with other
people, that Facebook use might
be especially
beneficial to people
who have a harder time
engaging in behaviors
that get that need met.
So the second study
here, again, is
built on the first study I did.
So this is a follow-up
to "Virtual Empathy."
It's called "#Connected."
And I worked with some
of the same researchers.
I worked, also, with
Dr. Cutler here at WSU.
And in this study we wanted
to test the relationship
specifically between using
Facebook and face-to-face time,
instead of just online
activities in general.
So Facebook use-- test that
link to face-to-face time,
and then I wanted to test
the role of the big five
personality traits-- that
includes extroversion
and the other ones I mentioned--
as moderators of
the relationship
between Facebook and
face-to-face time.
In other words, does your
level of the big five traits--
does that make Facebook more
related to face-to-face time?
Does that flip the relationship?
Are only certain
traits involved?
And we didn't just
look at the big five.
I have the big five here,
because out of the big five,
that's where we got one of
our significant findings.
But we also looked at
attachment styles--
whether people are more
anxious in their relationships
with people, or more avoidant
in their relationships
are two of the
dimensions with somebody
who's more secure, somewhere
towards the middle in both
of those.
So again, personality
factors and how
they influence the Facebook,
face-to-face time link.
Our results-- Facebook use was
positively correlated with time
spent in face-to-face
communication.
So similar to what we saw
in the previous study,
more time spent using Facebook
was predictive of spending
more time face-to-face.
And again, these
are all self-report,
so something to keep in mind.
There are limitations
to that approach.
But these are all
self-report data,
or the data for these findings
came from self-reports surveys.
So Facebook use was related to
more time spent face-to-face.
And among the big five
personality traits--
so to see if that Facebook,
face-to-face link changes based
on people's personality, we
tested all of the big five
personality traits.
And the only one that was
a significant moderator,
or the only interaction, in
other words, that we saw,
was between extroversion
and Facebook use.
Looking at that number,
b equals negative 0.2--
that doesn't really
tell us anything.
So when you test
for an interaction,
you run some follow-up tests.
And what we really found
was that the relationship
between Facebook use
and face-to-face time
was only significant for
those in the bottom 54%
of extroversion.
So people who are about
moderate to extroversion,
all the way down to really
introverted individuals
across that whole dimension,
not the bottom half
of extroversion.
And this relationship
actually increased in strength
as extroversion decreased.
So the people that saw the
strongest positive link between
Facebook use and
face-to-face time--
they were the more
introverted people.
The more inwardly-oriented
people were,
the more their Facebook time was
related to face-to-face time.
And as I mentioned, we didn't
just look at the big five.
We also looked at people's
attachment styles.
It's another element of
people's personality,
but it specifically has to
do with their interactions
with other people.
We looked at avoidant and
anxious attachment styles,
people who tend to keep their
distance in relationships,
versus people who get very
nervous in their relationships.
And there were no significant
interactions there,
so those didn't change the
Facebook, face-to-face time
link.
Only extroversion did.
And again, that pattern was
the more introverted you were,
or the less
extroverted you were,
the more your Facebook time
predicted face-to-face time.
Where we go from here--
a lot of different directions.
One of the things I'm
doing right now with one
of my undergraduate
RA's is we're
looking at Tinder use,
which is an interesting area
to do research on.
As I mentioned,
my research now--
I try to focus on how people
deal or cope with stress,
and so we're particularly
interested in what
kinds of behaviors people engage
in through Tinder when they're
feeling stressed out, and
how well those behaviors work
to deal with stress.
So physical comfort,
someone to talk to,
someone to provide
positive feedback to you--
a lot of different ways
that Tinder can perhaps
make somebody feel better.
But we're interested
in assessing
those different Tinder use
motives, what people are
trying to get out of Tinder,
and to see how that works--
whether certain motives are
more salient when people
are stressed out,
and if there are
any good or bad
consequences from what
they do when they match
with people on Tinder.
We'll go with match with people.
So other areas, though--
one area of interest
is virtual reality.
That's particularly
relevant, again,
to that connectedness
between individuals.
Virtual reality
could potentially
provide us with an even
closer to face-to-face
experience with people.
And virtual reality has
come to the mainstream.
There are a lot of
choices out there.
But most of the hardware
that's available,
most of the technology is used
in the video gaming community,
and it's mostly used in
single-player video game
settings-- so not interacting
with other people.
There's also a lot
of gadgets that
allow people to interact with
each other that have been
developed by the sex industry.
I'm not going to talk anymore
about teledildonic butt plugs--
something I learned
about recently.
That's not my area
of interest, but it
does allow some
level of intimacy,
some level of interaction
for people who are far apart.
But those are the two main areas
where virtual reality's really
coming into the mainstream--
video gaming and sex stuff.
But there's been
a lot of research
in this area of virtual
reality going back a long time.
People have been trying
to master virtual reality.
It's pretty intensive to create
a virtual environment this way
in a lot of different ways,
but the hardware required--
you basically, with
the virtual reality,
you have to see two images.
So the computer has
to create two images
of the game at the same time,
or whatever you're doing.
But people have been trying
to master virtual reality
for a long time.
Virtual reality, in particular--
one of the applied areas
is in psychotherapy for
the treatment of phobias,
where it provides somebody with
an interaction with something
they're afraid of, but it
is a more gated interaction.
Kind of the same idea
as what we were just
talking about with introverts
and interacting online--
that there is kind of
a fence or a barrier
that can be put in place
to give people more
comfort in their interactions.
Not much done using
consumer tech--
again, outside of gaming
and the sex industry.
And in terms of research, not
much research in those areas
as well.
But we also see the emergence of
virtual reality and technology
in general more and
more in medicine--
for better or for worse.
I just read a news
article on a family.
They were told about a terminal
illness for one of their family
members by a robot that
came into the room,
and they were not really happy
with that experience of not
having a doctor there, and
having a robot communicate
that information to them.
But the technology can allow
for you to see specialists,
for example, that
you wouldn't be
able to see if you live
somewhere like Pullman, where
there is not a lot
going on out here.
And so you might be
able to talk to someone
with a specialty in a
certain kind of cancer
that you might have,
or any kind of illness.
Obviously we're all using
this for educational purposes.
I think this counts as an
educational purpose here.
More and more universities
are offering online programs.
And how those
programs work really
varies from program to
program, but especially
an emphasis on direct and
momentary interactions,
rather than just
emailing back and forth.
But getting technology to allow
the online classroom to retain
its own benefits, but also
add some of the strengths
of face-to-face
classroom where you get--
I find that I get a lot
more feedback from my class.
Even if they're not
talking, I can figure out
how they're feeling, how much
they understand something.
Some of those
feedback mechanisms
are things, again, that
are trying to be developed
more and more for education.
And there are other
areas where technology's
being implemented as well
to, again, allow people
who are far apart to do things
that they would want to do when
they're not far apart.
Here is just an image
of a virtual reality.
I'm not sure exactly which
game this is, but again,
you see here that
the technology--
when you're wearing that helmet,
you actually get two slightly
different images--
one to each eye.
And that makes it very intensive
to run these kinds of games,
but they can give you more and
more of a feeling of actually
being in the presence
of whoever you're
interacting with on the screen.
And there may come a point
where this isn't just
for gamers, where you can
interact with a loved one who
is all the way
across the country
and you might feel like
you're holding them
while you're watching--
I don't know--
World Series baseball.
That's what's
going on right now.
Watching something
on television,
watching a movie--
something of that sort.
I think people will be
interested in that kind
of technology, but
we're not there yet.
And so there's not
a lot of research,
because there's not
a lot of technology.
So that's where I
want to leave it now.
I have some questions
I thought I could ask,
but I'd rather turn it
over to the audience
first and see if any of you
have any questions, anything
you'd like to discuss,
any comments, anything
like that before I just toss
some questions at you, things
that I'd like you
to think about.
We looked at empathy
in the first study,
and we did not look
at personality traits
in that study.
o that question is--
I don't have an answer to it.
It's a good question, but I
don't have an answer to it.
I think in general, people
with higher extroversion
tend to experience more empathy.
I wouldn't quote me on
that, because I have not
looked that up.
But that is my hunch.
But we also know that empathy is
a skill that you can cultivate.
So even if you're
more introverted,
if you get more practice, you
can experience more empathy.
Feel free to send
other questions.
Also, some thoughts on this one.
Again, think about
non-verbal cues,
because I think there's
a definite answer
to this question.
Think about your--
well, that is so the--
after the question,
was there a correlation
between extroversion
and empathy online?
The point is often that
extroversion is a skill
you can cultivate as well--
to a degree.
Now, you're not going
to flip from somebody
who is in the 10th percentile--
really low in extroversion--
you're not going to flip
up to the 50th percentile
or the 70th percentile.
Those personality traits
are pretty stable,
and that's why we even think
of them as personality traits.
You can go one
direction or another.
And we think, in particular,
early life experiences
are going to be important.
But extroversion is one of the
more heavily genetic traits
as well.
So if you have bad experiences
in your interactions,
that could push you more
to the introverted side.
We believe extroversion tends
to increase a small amount
across the lifespan.
I know agreeableness does,
or how easygoing you are.
That tends to increase
as we get older.
But the personality
traits are pretty static.
You can shift in one
direction or another,
but you tend to stay
around the same ballpark
where if you're a pretty
introverted person,
you're not going to
become an extrovert.
If you're a pretty
extroverted person,
you're not going to
become an introvert--
except maybe if, I
don't know, if you
have some major trauma, some
interpersonal trauma, and that
might cause a big shift.
But it wouldn't need to be
something really significant
in your life.
This question, do you
have any recommendations
for students who communicate
with other students
strictly online?
I'm a member of WSU Student
Government, for instance.
We hold all our meetings over
Zoom and communicate through--
now all the questions come in.
Hold on, one second.
So about student government,
Zoom meetings, communication
via email, I've
noticed that it's
easy to misconstrue
tone and/or intent
when communicating these ways.
It also seems like people
don't take us as seriously,
because we're strictly a global
campus student government.
We'll take the
first part there--
any recommendations?
That gets directly to this
question I'm asking here.
Use emoticons.
Use emojis.
I think that perhaps we
can be even more precise
with our non-verbal cues.
A lot of times they
just kind of happen
in face-to-face interactions.
Like, I didn't choose to just
look over here, but I did.
But if you are communicating
where you have the opportunity
to edit your messages
before you send them,
do so, but you really want to--
I would include Smileys
if you're being sarcastic,
or a winky face.
If you're mad use
CAPPS and redness.
Again, I think those
non-verbal cues--
I think they're present in a
lot of the ways we communicate
online, but you
have to use them.
So I would definitely
use emoticons.
The acronyms "lol--"
those kinds of things--
to, again, supplement
what you're actually
saying with some of the
non-verbal cues that
are missing.
As far as not being
taken seriously,
I tend to agree with that.
That is something-- a
lot of students come talk
to me about getting
involved in research,
and I always tell them, go to
the office hours of the person
you want to work with.
Don't just send them an email.
It's a lot easier to blow
somebody off via email
than it is when they reach
out to you face-to-face.
So that would be--
I don't know if you can
do voice calls might
be one way to get around
email in particular,
but that is a problem
that I don't necessarily
know an answer to.
I definitely can
understand that problem.
But I'm taking your
conversation outside of text,
making it a more immediate
form of communication--
you're going to lose the ability
to use those non-verbal cues as
well, but any kind of more
immediate communication,
I think, would make
that information
you're trying to transmit have
more weight or gravitas to it.
Another question here--
are Facebook and Tinder
the only social
networking platforms
you've researched so far?
Are there any other
websites/networks
you'd like to research in the
future like Instagram, YouTube
Live, Tumblr, et cetera?
Yeah.
What is kind of frustrating
about this research is
by the time your
stuff gets published,
everybody's moved to a different
platform at that time point.
So we're looking at
Tinder right now,
and I think a lot of
people are already
moving on to Bumble
and Hinge and a variety
of other dating websites.
I have not done research
on those other mediums
that you've mentioned, like
Instagram and YouTube Live.
If you're interested in
Instagram in particular,
Dr. Chris Barry in the
Psych Department here--
he does research on
narcissism and selfies.
So I think they've done
analysis of Instagram content
and looked at the relationship
with some other personality
traits--
some more negative personality
traits than the ones
I've looked into.
But I would like to do
research on Instagram.
I used to be a Facebook user.
I actually quit a few years ago.
I found that I would wake up and
be checking for notifications
before I even decided
to do so, and I didn't
like that compulsive behavior.
I moved to Instagram.
I liked it a lot better.
I don't get people's
political opinions.
Get pictures to look at
instead, and I like that better.
But I think those mediums--
they emphasize different things.
YouTube is going to emphasize
video content, live streaming.
Instagram's going to
emphasize your pictures.
Facebook kind of lets
you let you do it all.
Twitter's got limits on
how much information you
can share per tweet at a time.
Those are all different
ways people communicate,
and I'm interested
in those areas,
but I don't don't
know much about them.
I haven't done any
direct research there.
Got a comment.
I think tech allows us to
communicate much easier,
but yeah, emotion
is a little harder
to pick up in text, emojis,
I think help, and video.
Yeah, again-- every time
my phone gets an update,
there are new
emoticons on there.
You can be so specific
with what kind of emotion
you're trying to convey,
what facial expression
you're using, in
essence, that I think
you can really communicate
exactly what you mean.
I always find written
communication to be--
more clarity, and perhaps
you might be picking that up.
But I have more clarity in
my written communication
than in my verbal
communication, and that's
one of the things I think
benefits introverts like I am
through the use of technology.
Question here-- I think this is
specifically research-focused.
What if we can't attend
office hours in person?
I live on the East Coast,
so that's not really
an option for me.
I mean, reaching out in
general is a good thing
to do, but my
recommendation, again,
when I see students is find a
way to connect with that person
you're trying to do
research with in the moment.
Usually faculty's
phone numbers are
posted on the Faculty web page.
Like, for our
Psych Department, I
believe you can find everybody's
phone number, in addition
to their email address.
So you might try to
call their office.
A lot of us are in
and out of our offices
quite a bit throughout
the day, but even just
having a voice that they hear--
something more personal
than the text of an email--
I think that's something that
might be in your benefit.
It's something you all,
as online students,
have to put more work into
because of the medium,
because of the barrier
that you're behind.
But if you can
find a phone number
for the person you're
trying to work with,
that is something I
would recommend using.
And if you can't do
that, send an email.
That's fine to do.
But in my experience,
again, it is just easier
to put an email off
than it is someone
swinging by your office, or
your phone actually ringing.
And one of the things
I recommend, too--
I'm not sure about what other
departments have research
programs for undergraduates.
Here, face-to-face
in Pullman, I often
tell students who are looking
for research participation
to get involved in a lab,
to check out sociology,
to check out human
development too.
Just because you really
want to go into psychology
doesn't mean you have to be in
a psych undergraduate research
lab setting.
Sociologists study group
interactions, group behavior.
Human development studies
of psychology concepts.
So those are other
areas that you
might start trying to get
involved with, as well,
outside of psychology.
HD is a good one,
and sociology is too.
Another question-- do you find
different generations prefer
online communication as
opposed to face-to-face?
I'm not a big fan of
generation research,
and I say that coming from
an undergraduate lab where
the focus of one of my advisors
was on generation differences.
Age is what we would call
a continuous variable.
So you're not young or old.
You have a number, and it's
dispersed along a spectrum.
And what the generations
do, in my opinion--
they're arbitrary distinctions.
They do create distinctions
between different age groups,
but the line between
those groups--
somebody's decided
what that line is.
And I would argue that--
I don't know the generation
numbers off the top of my head,
but say you are a
Millennial, and we'll
say you were born in 1984--
so at the start of the
Millennial generation.
You're going to be
lumped in with people
who were born in
the '90s, and you're
going to be assumed
to be similar to them,
or treated as though you're
similar to them statistically.
Where, as I would believe
if you were born in 1984,
you're probably a lot more
similar to someone born in 1983
than you are to someone
born in the '90s.
But because of where that
arbitrary line is placed,
you're lumped in with
a different category.
So I'm not a big believer in
the utility of breaking things
down that way.
The same problem comes up if
we're looking at extroversion
and we just put people
into an introvert
or an extrovert category.
If, let's say, extroversion is
scored on a 100-point scale,
if you score a 49, that would
put you on the introvert side,
and that was lump you in with
someone who scored, like, a 1
on introversion or
on extroversion.
And if you scored a
51, that would lump you
in on the extrovert
side-- even though you
might be a lot more
similar to the 49
than you would be
someone in the '90s.
So that's one of the things
I kind of talk about in some
of my classes--
is dichotomizing variables--
continuous variables.
It's kind of a big no, no.
But the person I learned
that from actually
does generational research,
so keep that in mind.
I do think, in
general, younger people
have more comfort using
different communication
modalities.
I would imagine
some people probably
like email a whole lot.
As they get younger,
they're probably
more and more into texting.
And even the youngest
people-- they might not even
text anymore.
They might do their
communication through things
like tweeting at
people, for example.
So there are some
age-related patterns,
and typically the
younger somebody
is, the more they're going to
be doing something other than,
or interested in something other
than face-to-face communication
or using other mediums.
But I don't know if I would
break it down by generations.
But I understand the question.
I understand what
you're getting at there.
Generally, again,
younger groups like
to use the more
modern technology
for their communication.
But as we saw with my
research, those studies
were in college student samples.
And even among those
college students,
people who were typically
18 to 22 at the time they
completed the survey--
those people still saw
higher face-to-face time
when they were using
more technology
to interact with other people.
How much do you
incorporate social media
in your class work?
Any benefits of doing so?
I wouldn't say I use
social media, per se,
but what I do use
in my larger classes
is I do online discussions.
And I do those probably pretty
similarly to how a lot of you
all do your online
discussions for your classes.
For example, in my
personality class,
they've got till midnight
tonight to get their posts in.
They're taking an online big
five personality questionnaire,
and they're going to
report back their scores
on all of the big five
traits like extroversion.
They're going to tell me
whether their scores are
different or similar
to how they imagined.
They're going to tell me about
some situational things that
could have impacted
their score as well.
But I like to use the online
discussions for a few reasons.
I do think a lot
of people are more
comfortable engaging
online than they
are in a classroom setting.
I have students who will
come into office hours
and who will start
crying in front of me.
People are intimidated
by their professors.
And for those people
in particular,
I like to do the
online discussions.
People can certainly
share in class,
but I force them to
interact with each other
through those
online discussions.
And again, I think
that barrier allows
people to open up
a little bit more
and to share their
personal connection
with the material more than they
might in a classroom setting.
It's also not really
feasible, when
I've got 186 people
in a lecture hall,
to have us break
out into discussions
and for me to hear about
everybody's personality scores.
So the online environment--
I don't use social media,
but that online environment
through Blackboard provides
for a lot of communication.
And I do require my students to
regularly do discussion posts.
I mentioned personality.
In my gender class,
I have the students
write about some
fictional character
they identified with as a child.
I use Batman as my own example.
But how that character, quote
unquote, "matched" gender
stereotypes, how they challenge
gender stereotypes, what
the students think
they learned, what
they took from that character.
Those are the kinds of
things I have students
discuss in an online setting.
I'm going to put up my
email address here--
on a slide here--
in case you have
additional questions,
if you want to follow up.
Me being the
introvert that I am,
I'd prefer that you'd
not call my office.
I don't like phone
calls very much.
But feel free, if
you want to call,
or if you want to email me.
Email, again, is the
best route, because I
get a lot of comments,
questions, that kind of stuff
on a day-to-day basis, so it
gives me a little bit more time
to be thoughtful with
a response and to fit
that response into my schedule.
So my email address
is a.spradlin@wsu.edu,
and I am going to--
yeah so.
There's my email
address right there.
And again, if you've got
any follow-up questions,
if you are interested
in the research
that I've talked about, you
can find me on ResearchGate.
If you haven't used that
before, that's, like,
the nerdiest social network--
ResearchGate.net, I believe.
But it's where researchers
post their research.
Researchers can ask
questions and get answers
from the community.
It tracks things like citations
and reads of your articles.
And not all of my
articles are on there.
Some of them are
not open source.
In other words, the journal
says I can't share them
except for private use.
But if there's any research
that you're interested in,
you can find more info on
that research on ResearchGate.
You can also email me about it.
And I'm also happy to-- again,
if you have asked a question
and I haven't answered
it fully here,
if you have a
question you didn't
want to ask in front of the
group, feel free to shoot me
an email.
I'm happy to talk
to you about it.
Thank you all for attending.
I appreciate your
interest in this topic.
I think it's relevant to
all of us societally as we--
I think the internet
is pretty open.
It allows us to do some good
things and some really bad
things, but I really
like what it provides us
in terms of our technology
for our relationships,
our communication.
It's a great source
of knowledge, too.
You just have to evaluate that
knowledge-- which you should
be doing if it comes from a
journal or a book or anything
else anyway.
But I like the connectedness
that technology provides us
with.
I love all my gadgets
and stuff, too.
So I appreciate you coming here.
I think this talk is
really relevant for you
all who are using technology
to get your education
and to advance your
general knowledge, probably
your self-knowledge, to advance
your career in a lot of ways,
too.
And again, feel free
to email me if you
have any questions
about anything,
or any further topics
for discussion.
