Cyberpsychology

For the past few months I’ve been taking part in a chat room called the ‘Dapper Den’, founded from a shared joy of a game called Don’t Starve and a wish to chat more regularly with people who come from the game’s forum. It’s a light-hearted chat room full of discussions, soliloquies, art, songs and the occasional argument. I certainly think it’s defined my summer by quite a bit.

The Guardian website posted an article about the effect of games on the emotions and autonomy of a person; with lots of psychological terms and right up my street. The author, Cara Ellison wrote about a cyberpsychologist Berni Good who spoke about the effects of certain games on a person’s well-being and perception of reality. Good mentioned Halo and the Last of Us (a game I still need to play) and the comments that followed mentioned a host of other games that all fulfil some psychological need the player has.

Ellison went on to explain that cyberpsychology is an accepted aspect of psychology, citing the British Psychological Society’s section on their website and a book called The Psychology of Cyberspace by John Suler. The book is available online as a hypertext, free of charge.

Now, I’m only a little way into this book, but so far I’ve read about Suler’s research into an online group called The Geezer Brigade, a group dedicated to over 55s who are less monotonous and more mettlesome. 

The group sounds like great fun, so it’s a pity I’m 34 years under the age limit. Suler has qualitatively researched into this online group and made me wonder if I could do the same to my Dapper Den group.

So a checklist of the things I want to research about the Dapper Den:

1. What three words would each member use to describe the DDen?
2. What stage of group development might the DDen be in (using Tuckman’s stages)?
3. How well does it address Amy Jo Kim’s nine basic principles for establishing a successful online community?
4. Is there a way I could conduct a survey about the above?
5. What about Mike Godwin’s suggestions?

Cyberpsychology seems like a really interesting subject, however the only masters course available is at the Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology and I’ve missed the deadline for applicants by two months. Maybe next year?