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What men and women want out of online friendships
By Celebrity Trollop | October 20, 2007
Have you ever visited the Daedalus Project? It’s run by a researcher at Stanford University named Nick Yee. Nick runs online surveys about behavior patterns exhibited by players of massively-multiplayer online games. It’s generally more focused on games like World or Warcarft, but from time to time, Second Life creeps into a survey or two.
I know from my reader survey that almost 90% of my visitors are female in RL, and I thought Nick’s recent post about the similarities and differences between men and women in forming and keeping online friendships made very interesting reading. The conventional wisdom is that women socialize more and make friends more readily in online spaces than men, but Nick’s research doesn’t support that conclusion. The difference, he writes, is in what men and women want from online friendships.
He starts his article this way:
Earlier research had shown that men and women socialize about the same amount in MMOs - in terms of chatting and catching up with friends. What is very different among men and women is what they want out of those relationships. Women are more likely to want to form relationships where they can discuss their RL personal issues and can count on those friends for support. Men, on the other hand, are less likely to use the MMO space to form a support network (or probably in general).
Nick presents a series of graphs which show how likely men and women are to discuss RL current events/news, RL personal problems, and in-game issues. The most surprising thing to me was the final graph in the article which shows that women are about three-times more likely to answer yes to the statement, “I met my best friend in an online game.”
Nick concludes:
Where men and women do differ is the kind of relationship they want. It appears that men are more likely to draw harder boundaries between their physical and virtual spaces; men are less likely to talk about personal issues with friends they have met online. On the other hand, women see a softer boundary between the physical and virtual spaces and are more willing to share personal issues with friends they make online.
Definitely an interesting article. Does it match with your experiences in Second Life? Leave a comment and say why or why not.
I also set up a new poll question about this topic.
Loading ...Topics: External Resources, Opinion, Polls |
Thank you so much for writing such an interesting post! I am going to check out the research once I post this comment. Men (IMHO) are so much better at compartmentalizing things in general in RL, of course that skill spills over into SL, too. Makes so much sense. I have pondered how that will play out in my own SL relationships - with both friendships and a “SL romantic relationship” in which I am involved. Thank you again!
Posted by: Tymmerie Thorne on October 20th, 2007 at 2:34 pmInteresting! I didn’t meet my best friend on Second Life, but I did meet them (there are two) via another online game - text based - and then brought them to Second Life with me.
Posted by: Sera Galbraith on October 20th, 2007 at 5:21 pmThis reminds of a story you referenced about a year ago (at least I believe it was you Celebrity, but I couldn’t find what I was looking for in the archives). It was about the way that women relate to their avatars versus men. The article suggested that women tend identify heavily with their avatars, seeing her (usually) as an extension of her RL self. Women were said to be more likely to feel bad if their avatars “die” while playing video games; and all of this was said to be completely distinct from men, whom are more likely to view their avatars more objectively. With that being the case, it makes perfect sense to me that women would identify as having much deeper relationships in MMORPGs. Though I must say, for as much as I missed all of my friends in SL during the months I was away, my husband, was outright mournful when his best friend in WoW (whom he only knows through the game and has no contact with outside of that world) decided he didn’t want to play any more.
Posted by: Choice Sliter on October 20th, 2007 at 11:45 pmI found this fascinating. I have noticed differences between the sexes as i have played along in SL for over a year. It’s difficult to generalise, as i have met guys who seem so desperate to share their RL (maybe the wife in RL ‘doesn’t understand me’). I think some guys do want to share RL problems with a woman who is prepared to listen and not judge. This would tend to be the more ‘mature’ woman (yes…i speak from experience, ha ha ). Whereas, the younger ladies might laugh at the guy pouring his heart out.
Posted by: Tina Jowisz on November 21st, 2007 at 6:16 amI don’t know ANY guys who hang with other guys as mates as often as i see females hanging together, sharing homes, shopping together etc. So maybe us girlies treat the friendships that we make a little more seriously than our male friends do.
I met up Rl with a couple of girls i made friends with online. I am also planning to do so with another female friend. I have spent more time with my online friends and shared more secrets with them than i ever do , or have done with my RL friends. I feel that we think we can trust people on a level that we can’t in rl. But i guess we are all in for a shock sometimes as that can come back at you and bite you in the…………. ))