Opinion Climates & Expression in the Electronic Forum
8
and disclose true feelings and thoughts (Spears and Lea 1994; McKenna & Bargh 2000)
2
.
By the same token, anonymity and the feeling of distance may loosen normative ties among
majorities. Even if convinced by minority opinions, a majority may be unwilling to
acknowledge his acceptance of minority opinions in FFC settings where others are publicly
present. The quasi-private context of CMC, however, can precipitate a majority to accept
publicly the minority position, because he cannot be explicitly identified either as the
majority or the minority. To put it in another way, the absence of normative pressures from
others and the feeling of distance may make minority influence immediate rather than
delayed.
In these contexts, Deutsch and Gerard’s (1955) replication of Asch’s experiment (1953)
supports that conformity is strong in face-to-face situation, but not in anonymous situations.
They found that subjects showed relatively more independence in anonymous setting where
subjects made judgments privately by pressing a button. Recently, McLeod et al. (1997)
also found that opinions attributed to a minority position in advance were most often
mentioned and repeated during discussion under the ‘anonymous’ CMC condition,
followed by the ‘identified’ CMC (or CMC among acquaintances) and FFC conditions.
Furthermore, anonymity in CMC attenuates the effect of self-categorization process. In
other words, anonymity may make it less likely that a majority discounts the persuasiveness
of minority opinions by attributing influence source to a minority identity. According to
Turner (1991), disagreement with others categorized as in-group members produces an
uncertainty that can be resolved though opinion change, whereas disagreement with out-
group members has minimal effect. As Wood et al.’s meta-analysis (1994) showed,
minority influence is reduced, when the source of influence is identifiable. Anonymity in
CMC, then, should not, at least, deflate minority influence by categorizing influence source
as out-group minority identity; although it may fall short of increasing minority influence
by categorizing the source as in-group members.
2
Psychotherapists thus take advantage of electronic communication technologies to diagnose patients who
otherwise avoid disclosing self (Wallace 1999).
Convention