Jesse Fox

Communication, singular

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So there’s that.

Interestingly, the media have just picked up on a study published earlier this year that I ran while I was still at Stanford. Co-authored with my advisor, Dr. Jeremy Bailenson, and undergraduate research assistant Liz Tricase, the study found negative effects for women who embodied sexualized avatars in a fully immersive environment. Jeremy saw the article online at phys.org and captured this screenshot. *facepalm*PhysOrg sexualized avatars screenshot(Note the ad to the right, telling you to “Create Your Hero Now.”)

The article itself is an excellent writeup by Cynthia McKelvey. Feel free to check out the study itself here.

IARR Mini Conference in Louisville

I attended the IARR (International Association for Relationship Research) mini-conference for the second time this weekend. Yet again it proved to be my most academically fulfilling conference of the year. (Socially, I’m going to have to give ICA in London that title.)

I know a lot of people are deterred by the relatively high conference attendance fee, but if you’re an interpersonal scholar and the conference topic is relevant to your work, make the sacrifice. They foster a constructive and supportive atmosphere, and scholars present work at various levels of completion, some looking to share work and others looking to get feedback. You would think having fewer people attend your talks (compared to a larger conference) would be a bad thing, but the smaller size makes for a more lively audience. The sessions are cohesive and your audience is both curious and knowledgeable about what you study, so they ask great questions and give great feedback.

The downside to a mini-conference is that you pretty much want to attend every. single. talk. IARR does it right by keeping the talks pretty solidly divided into 20 minute timeslots, so you can move back and forth between sessions. With five grad students and three former colleagues there–not to mention all the scholars’ work I wanted to see–I was stretched a little thin, but I still caught lots of great talks. Better yet, my grads knocked their talks out of the park. My advisee Margaret Rooney and Elizabeth Jones, both doctoral candidates, co-presented a study on religion and social support. Their flow was so smooth you’d swear they hosted talk shows together on the side. Kelly Dillon gave a powerful talk about narrative building during traumatic experiences. Courtney Anderegg, a first year Ph.D., gave a talk on attachment and Facebook use, and already she sounds like an expert in the area of relational maintenance. My advisee Bridget Potocki also presented a poster relating to her research niche. It’s exciting to see grads sharing their work with a larger audience, and I’m proud to have such great students representing OSU.

Everybody’s life is better than mine…on Facebook

People have a tendency to compare themselves to others. Social networking sites like Facebook give us endless opportunities for social comparison. The problem is that we compare our everyday lives to others’ edited versions on Facebook. Seeing others’ selective self-presentation of their best selves on Facebook can make us feel dissatisfied with our own lives.

Check out my new blog post at Psychology Today on social comparison on Facebook.

Predictors of Facebook stalking your romantic partner

Social networking sites provide unprecedented access into the lives of our friends, family members, strangers, and current and former romantic partners. Much of my research investigates whether or not this is a good thing. (Spoiler alert: it’s not.)

In a recent study with Dr. Katie Warber at Wittenberg University, we explored how an individual’s attachment style and level of uncertainty about their relationship (current or recently terminated) predicted their use of Facebook to “cyberstalk” their partners. (Academically, we prefer the term “interpersonal electronic surveillance.”)

Attachment theory suggests that our adult relationships are influenced by our relationships with our parents as infants. Depending on how that bonding process went, we experience varying levels of avoidance (the degree to which we seek or avoid close relationships) and anxiety (the degree to which we are uneasy or overly concerned about our close relationships). Individuals who are low on avoidance and anxiety are considered secure in their relationships. Those who are high on avoidance and low on anxiety are dismissive. Low on avoidance and high anxiety individuals are preoccupied, and those high on both are deemed fearful. These attachment styles predict a number of behaviors within romantic relationships.

In this study, we looked at both people currently in relationships and those in recently terminated relationships. We also examined the role of uncertainty. Surprisingly, uncertainty about the relationship did not play a role in surveillance. Rather, we found that preoccupied and fearful attachment styles engaged in significantly more surveillance.

Given preoccupieds are insecure about the relationship and low on avoidance (hence, a tendency to be clingy), we expected them to have the highest levels of Facebook stalking. It is interesting that fearfuls were also higher, however, given they tend to be high on avoidance. One possible explanation is that even though they are getting information about the partner, Facebook stalking enables fearfuls to still avoid direct interaction with the partner.

There remains a lot to explore with attachment theory, romantic relationships, and social media. I hope to have some more findings in this area available soon. In the meantime, you can check out the article (linked below) or oft-snarky media coverage at Slate and Jezebel. There is also a brief writeup and interview available at United Academics.

Fox, J., & Warber, K. M. (in press). Social networking sites in romantic relationships: Attachment, uncertainty, and partner surveillance on Facebook. To appear in CyberPsychology, Behavior, & Social Networking.

Mobile phone use in romantic relationships

In case you missed it, here’s my blog for Psychology Today on creating rules in your romantic relationship for phone use.

Back to school: Comm tech syllabi

As I was raised by schoolteachers, I have been conditioned with a fine blend of excitement and dread when the calendar turns to August. The first time I see Crayola markers and Mead notebooks and Elmer’s glue on the front of the Target circular, I get a little giddy. Now that I’m on the tenure track, that giddiness is a delectable frosting atop a dense, caked panic about how I’mnotreadyI’mnotreadyI’mnotready. I look at my summer to-do list and drag my eyes across the names of a dozen unwritten papers and untouched datasets that were supposed to be blackened with the stroke of a Sharpie by now.

Rather than muse about what’s undone, though, I’m going to reframe to think about what will get done in the next couple of weeks: course syllabi. Somehow, dropping that final version off for copies makes it feel like I’ve done all the teaching prep I need to do until school starts. (Lies.) So, if you’re out there plugging away at a comm tech syllabus, perhaps you’ll find these useful (and of course, while you’re there, check out the professors’ research). I’ve divided them by general topics and made a note if they’re graduate level. If you’ve got one to share, please email me and I’d be happy to link to it.

General

Introduction to Communication Technologies (Henry Jenkins, U. of Southern California)

Communication Technology (grad survey course) (me)

Comm Tech & Society

Digital Media & Society (Fred Turner, Stanford)

Digital Media & Society (Kennedy School @ Harvard)

Social Media

Social Media (me)

Social Media & Society (Jessica Vitak, U. of Maryland)

Video Games/Virtual Environments

Video Games & the Individual (me)

Video Game Effects (grad) (Mike Schmierbach, Penn State U)

Digital Games: Theory and Research (grad) (Mia Consalvo, Concordia U.)

Cheating, Games, and the Ethics of Play (Mia Consalvo, Concordia U.)

HCI

Principles of Human-Computer Interaction (me)

 Computer Interfaces and Human Identity (J. Roselyn Lee, Ohio State U)

Organizational Communication

Information Technology and Organizational Communication (Axel Westerwick, Ohio State U)

Health Communication

Health Communication and New Media (David DeAndrea, Ohio State U)

Visual Communication

Media Aesthetics (Danielle Stern, Christopher Newport U)

Sexism in online video games

I was a tomboy as a child and was always looking for ways to invade boys’ spaces because that’s where I wanted to be. While the other girls played hopscotch and jumped rope at recess, I crashed the boys’ soccer games. I maintained the most enviable baseball card collection in the neighborhood.

Of course, this was at the age where boys hadn’t been socialized to sexually harass just yet; girls were just icky. And, if I met with any protest, I could just issue a good whooping and earn boys’ respect or have them cower in fear. As I grew up, however, I realized it was becoming more and more difficult to be a part of male spaces. After all, I wasn’t allowed to join Boy Scouts or the baseball team. Boys evolved from being my friends to having their own groups, their own birthday parties, their own shared experiences and secrets and rituals that no longer included me.

Nowadays, those exclusive spaces have changed to include online video games, as Taylor (2006), Yee (2006), Gray (2012), and Salter and Blodgett (2012) have established. In online VGs, however, there are additional factors, notably deindividuation (in part through anonymity) and the lack of punishment. Although some have pushed back against the idea of anonymity, the social identity model of deindividuation effects (SIDE) makes an argument for its role in the part of harassment although it is not required. Essentially, SIDE argues that due to the lack of individualized cues in computer-mediated communication (CMC), we defer to group identities. Additionally, social identity theory suggests that we elevate our own ingroup at the expense of the outgroup. In the gaming world, masculinity is valued and thus men promote this salient aspect of their identity. Elevating the masculine identity means demoting and demeaning outgroups, particularly anyone that can be stereotyped as unmasculine (e.g., women, non-hetero men).

Following several publicized incidents of harassment of female game players, graduate student Wai Yen Tang (check out his blog here) approached me to discuss the nature of masculinity in gaming spaces. He was awash in study ideas, and after launching an experiment, he was interested in gathering survey data from a broad sample of gamers.

With the help of several game players and scholars, we developed a list of sexist beliefs and stereotypes about women who play video games. For example, many players don’t believe women have the skills to play at a high level, so they insist that women have had their boyfriends level up characters for them or have exchanged sexual favors for game currency. Others believe that women only play video games to socialize or to make pretty avatars rather than to dominate, kill things, or earn achievements.

In our survey, we asked participants to complete a number of items relating to game play and personality traits. What we discovered is that the amount of game play and even the respondent’s sex was irrelevant to the degree to which they endorsed sexist beliefs about female game players. Rather, the respondent’s social dominance orientation (i.e., how much they believe that some groups are superior and others are inferior) and level of conformity to some types of masculine norms (the desire for power over women and the need for heterosexual self-presentation) predicted video game sexism.

The Video Game Sexism Scale is available in the article.

Fox, J., & Tang, W. Y. (2013). Sexism in online video games: The role of conformity to masculine norms and social dominance orientation. Computers in Human Behavior.

 

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