Cyber Psychology

In the 21st century, the science of psychology begins a second century of looking at the fundamental nature of human experience--behavior, thinking, and feeling. The dazzling challenges and complexities in our daily life, has made the term “psychology” to come to a center of attention on modern-day issues, such as teen violence, multi-task learning, and online addictions, taking into consideration to the timeless concerns of all inhabitants such as relationships, group processes, hopelessness and cognition.

Cyber psychology is defined as “the study of the human mind and behavior in the context of human-technology interaction.” The increasing field of cyber psychology encompasses all psychological phenomena that are related with or exaggerated by emerging technology.

Cyber comes from the word cybernetics, the study of the operation of control and communication; whereas psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. On the other hand, mainstream research studies appear to focus on the consequence of the Internet and cyberspace on the psychology of individuals and groups.

Some of the hot topics that are included in cyber psychology are:

• online identity,
• online relationships,
• personality types in cyberspace,
• transference to computers,
• addiction to computers and Internet,
• regressive behavior in cyberspace,
• online gender-switching, etc.

Cyber psychology relates to the Internet-mediated knowledge as we are wrapped up in a new era of human information dispensation, with omnipresent information, communication, and social networking tools. Undoubtedly the range of sensation, and behavior has not magically changed with the dawning of a new Millennium.

It was approximately the turn of the millennium that inhabitants in the United States broke the 50 percent mark in Internet use, personal computer use, and cell phone use. In the midst of such a broad publicity to computers and their displays, our perceptions go ahead of the stuff and images in our natural environment.

At the same time the overlaps between the individuals and machine expand, the significance of Human-computer interaction (HCI) research within the field of cyber psychology will become more evident and essential in accepting the existing modern lifestyles of many people.

Questions:

• How mental health is both affected by, and addressed by, the internet?
• What is meant by Online Auction Addiction?