authenticity anonymous

does being anonymous online make you more authentic?

I think my best X posts are in my drafts. I hear this all the time.

There is a view that your real thoughts are the ones you do not feel comfortable sharing. The snarky thoughts. The things you do not want your employer or potential dates to know. Or at least not without getting to know the real you.

People make “anon” accounts on X and ask uncomfortable questions on Reddit behind a no-name username. While it makes sense that most of us are afraid of being truly ourselves, it’s not clear that posting anonymously online creates the right incentives to be authentic.

It is difficult to determine when someone is authentic but perhaps let’s approach this by ruling out when someone is not authentic.

Malcolm Gladwell explores the topic of the real self in his book Talking to Strangers. In an extreme example, he talks about a teenage guy that committed a crime while blackout. The guy had a pristine record otherwise and had very little memory of the experience. Was he a criminal deep down? Did he do it intentionally on some level? His subconscious and conscious motivations were explored in a drawn out court case.

Gladwell concludes that alcohol impacted his mind and shut off his rational thinking brain. Actions done in this state should not be considered intentional or a reflection of his true self. This leads to an interesting point: without rational thinking, you cannot be authentically yourself. In extremes, intoxication leads to inauthenticity.

If you post anonymously, are you behaving as rationally as you would if you were not anonymous? Or is it akin to being intoxicated?

There is a story called the “Myth of Gyges” in Plato’s Republic. A man receives a ring that makes him invisible. He is a decent man but given the ring, he commits horrendous acts. The moral is that many people would commit acts of evil if they could get away with them. However, this is not necessarily less logical. It makes rational sense that we behave differently with certain consequences vs. others.

Being anonymous, then, may not make us less rational but it likely does change our behavior. Without consequences, humans tend to act differently. Posting anonymously online is arguably similar to wearing the “Ring of Gyges.” You are invisible to your social environment - family, friends, colleagues. You can be whoever you want to be.

Does anonymity always lead to negative actions though? There was a 1969 Stanford study showing a link between anonymity and abusive behavior. In Zimbardo’s study, female participants were dressed in lab coats and either hoods or no hoods. Each was told to give an electric shock to an individual. Those in hooded lab coats were 2x as more likely to comply.¹

A body of scientific study on anonymity showcases a “tendency for many people to act rudely, aggressively, or illegally” under anonymity. In another 2016 study at Gettysburg College, college students that were anonymous were more likely to engage in cyberbullying behavior or approving of it in others.²

When people behave rudely online under an anon account, does it count? Going back to the criminal law example, if someone commits a crime under the influence, the law focuses on “recklessness” or whether the crime was impulsive enough to offset an intoxicated state. Perhaps, a similar test can be applied to internet anons. Are these individuals behaving in a “reckless” manner that it does not matter they are anon?

On the flip side, there has also been support showing how anonymity enables people to be more honest. From anonymous surveys to whistleblower regimes, anonymity reduces the consequences of societal pressures for honest disclosure. Anonymity on the internet offers opportunities to support others around sensitive topics i.e. abuse. Anonymity can make people unusually “forthcoming and helpful.”³

There is also another angle to anonymity which is group anonymity. One study shows that when primed with positive information, anonymity allowed individuals to be more helpful in a group situation. However, the studies around negative group behavior are the most disturbing. They range from aggressive driving when people have windows tinted to unethical behavior in anonymous chatrooms. ⁴

A stark and painful but well known study on this is the Stanford Prison Experiment. In this experiment, a group of the most amiable guys were chosen to do an experiment. They were separated into prisoners and guards. The crimes were so bad and unethical the experiment, expected to go on for 2 weeks, ended in 6 days.⁵

What does this all mean for anonymity online? It is not surprising the same group dynamics that happen in life happen online, but under the cover of even greater disassociation. It is possible that some authentically kind people behave even better under anonymity. There could be positive social spirals from good deeds online. However, the potential for aggressive and unethical behavior is scary.

The theory that anonymity leads to more authentic behavior is - on the whole - hard to defend. Research suggests anonymity creates a lot of perverse incentives for behavior and it is impossible to disassociate the positive from the negative. Anonymity online in groups is especially risky.

Is it fair to conclude that given the results of anonymity experiments, people on average, are authentically more unkind or aggressive? It’s hard to really say. A big part of who we are is a part of a society or community. Perhaps, the deeper conclusion is that, in life or online, authenticity is dependent on social norms and our individual identity.

Being authentic online is similar to being authentic in person - with its limitations and challenges. There is no easy way to being yourself.

1. https://achology.com/psychology/the-dark-side-of-human-behavior-the-impact-of-the-zimbardo-deindividuation-study/

2. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/who-is-that-the-study-of-anonymity-and-behavior

3. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/who-is-that-the-study-of-anonymity-and-behavior

4. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/who-is-that-the-study-of-anonymity-and-behavior

5. https://exhibits.stanford.edu/spe/