Internet Identifiability and Beyond: A Model of the Effects of Identifiability on Communicative Behavior

K.M. Douglas and C. McGarty (in press) demonstrated that being identifiable to an ingroup audience in a computer-mediated communication (CMC) setting leads people to describe anonymous outgroup targets in more abstract, or stereotypical ways. Based on these findings, and on the social identity model of deindividuation effects (SIDE: S.D. Reicher, R. Spears, & T. Postmes, 1995), we aimed to test a model of the effects of identifiability on communicative behavior, in and beyond CMC. Participants in three studies, one CMC and two pen/paper, were asked to write responses to controversial messages. In all three studies, communicators who were identifiable to an ingroup audience used more stereotypical language to describe anonymous outgroup targets. Although Study 1 suggested that this increase in stereotypical language use may be strategic, Studies 2 and 3 suggested instead that it may result from more subtle, or implicit communicative processes. These results are discussed in relation to the revised SIDE model and a final model is proposed