Abstract

People sometimes behave differently depending on whether they are interacting online (by email, social media, etc.) vs. interacting in person. Four studies test the hypothesis that when an agent’s behavior is different online vs. in person, people think that the online behavior is less reflective of who the agent truly is deep down. Study 1 found that the very same behavior is regarded as less reflective of the true self when it is performed online. Study 2 showed that this effect is not merely a matter of perceived impression management. Study 3 found that there is a general tendency such that behavior is seen as more reflective of the true self when it is performed in an environment regarded as “natural.” In Study 4, a manipulation that led participants to see online behavior as more natural had a downstream effect on the degree to which this behavior was seen as reflecting the true self. Taken together, these results suggest that people’s judgments about online behavior are not simply a reflection of idiosyncratic facts about the online sphere in particular but are instead driven in part by a far more general psychological process involving perceptions of naturalness.