# Flame First, Think Later: Article from New York Times **URL:** \ **Category:** Lounge\ **Created:** [February 21, 2007, 5:10am UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/flame-first-think-later-article-from-new-york-times/2140 "2007-02-21T05:10:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![AKmedic](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/pheromonetalk.com/akmedic/32/1487_2.png) [@AKmedic](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/AKmedic)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2007, 5:10am UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/flame-first-think-later-article-from-new-york-times/2140/1 "2007-02-21T05:10:24Z")
[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/20/health/psychology/20essa.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/20/health/psychology/20essa.html) February 20, 2007 Essay **Flame First, Think Later: New Clues to E-Mail (Internet) Misbehavior** By DANIEL GOLEMAN Jett Lucas, a 14-year-old friend, tells me the kids in his middle school send one other a steady stream of instant messages through the day. But there’s a problem. “Kids will say things to each other in their messages that are too embarrassing to say in person,” Jett tells me. “Then when they actually meet up, they are too shy to bring up what they said in the message. It makes things tense.” Jett’s complaint seems to be part of a larger pattern plaguing the world of virtual communications, a problem recognized since the earliest days of the Internet: flaming, or sending a message that is taken as offensive, embarrassing or downright rude. The hallmark of the flame is precisely what Jett lamented: thoughts expressed while sitting alone at the keyboard would be put more diplomatically — or go unmentioned — face to face. Flaming has a technical name, the “online disinhibition effect,” which psychologists apply to the many ways people behave with less restraint in cyberspace. **In a 2004 article in the journal CyberPsychology & Behavior, John Suler, a psychologist at Rider University in Lawrenceville, N.J., suggested that several psychological factors lead to online disinhibition:** the anonymity of a Web pseudonym; invisibility to others; the time lag between sending an e-mail message and getting feedback; the exaggerated sense of self from being alone; and the lack of any online authority figure. Dr. Suler notes that disinhibition can be either benign — when a shy person feels free to open up online — or toxic, as in flaming. The emerging field of social neuroscience, the study of what goes on in the brains and bodies of two interacting people, offers clues into the neural mechanics behind flaming. This work points to a design flaw inherent in the interface between the brain’s social circuitry and the online world. In face-to-face interaction, the brain reads a continual cascade of emotional signs and social cues, instantaneously using them to guide our next move so that the encounter goes well. Much of this social guidance occurs in circuitry centered on the orbitofrontal cortex, a center for empathy. This cortex uses that social scan to help make sure that what we do next will keep the interaction on track. Research by Jennifer Beer, a psychologist at the [University of California](http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of_california/index.html?inline=nyt-org), Davis, finds that this face-to-face guidance system inhibits impulses for actions that would upset the other person or otherwise throw the interaction off. Neurological patients with a damaged orbitofrontal cortex lose the ability to modulate the amygdala, a source of unruly impulses; like small children, they commit mortifying social gaffes like kissing a complete stranger, blithely unaware that they are doing anything untoward. Socially artful responses emerge largely in the neural chatter between the orbitofrontal cortex and emotional centers like the amygdala that generate impulsivity. But the cortex needs social information — a change in tone of voice, say — to know how to select and channel our impulses. And in e-mail there are no channels for voice, facial expression or other cues from the person who will receive what we say. True, there are those cute, if somewhat lame, emoticons that cleverly arrange punctuation marks to signify an emotion. The e-mail equivalent of a mood ring, they surely lack the neural impact of an actual smile or frown. Without the raised eyebrow that signals irony, say, or the tone of voice that signals delight, the orbitofrontal cortex has little to go on. Lacking real-time cues, we can easily misread the printed words in an e-mail message, taking them the wrong way. And if we are typing while agitated, the absence of information on how the other person is responding makes the prefrontal circuitry for discretion more likely to fail. Our emotional impulses disinhibited, we type some infelicitous message and hit “send” before a more sober second thought leads us to hit “discard.” We flame. Flaming can be induced in some people with alarming ease. Consider an experiment, reported in 2002 in The Journal of Language and Social Psychology, in which pairs of college students — strangers — were put in separate booths to get to know each other better by exchanging messages in a simulated online chat room. While coming and going into the lab, the students were well behaved. **But the experimenter was stunned to see the messages many of the students sent. About 20 percent of the e-mail conversations immediately became outrageously lewd or simply rude.** And now, the online equivalent of road rage has joined the list of Internet dangers. Last October, in what The Times of London described as “Britain’s first ‘Web rage’ attack,” a 47-year-old Londoner was convicted of assault on a man with whom he had traded insults in a chat room. He and a friend tracked down the man and attacked him with a pickax handle and a knife. One proposed solution to flaming is replacing typed messages with video. The assumption is that getting a message along with its emotional nuances might help us dampen the impulse to flame. All this reminds me of a poster on the wall of classrooms I once visited in New Haven public schools. The poster, part of a program in social development that has lowered rates of violence in schools there, shows a stoplight. It says that when students feel upset, they should remember that the red light means to stop, calm down and think before they act. The yellow light prompts them to weigh a range of responses, and their consequences. The green light urges them to try the best response. Not a bad idea. Until the day e-mail comes in video form, I may just paste one of those stoplights next to my monitor. Daniel Goleman is the author of “Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships.” ---
**Author:** ![Nunya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ac8455/32.png) [@Nunya](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/Nunya)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2007, 12:27pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/flame-first-think-later-article-from-new-york-times/2140/2 "2007-02-21T12:27:54Z")
that’s pretty interesting. but i wonder if it’s much ado about nothing to study it? personally I find flaming hilarious to have done to me - i don’t typically flame others unless they are giving bad factual info, and even then i don’t think i actually flame. I don’t see why others take flames seriously - especially when it’s coming from a jackass who doesn’t know them. But i’ve been on the web a long long time, and I think i’ve fully developed a cyborg altar ego that is clearly defined from my regular self. So it’s hard to get offended. I don’t know - i think expecting people to play nice in cyberspace is like expecting to win the lottery. Just like any other interaction, you have to teach people how to treat you. ---
**Author:** ![Lor](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/pheromonetalk.com/lor/32/759_2.png) [@Lor](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/Lor)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2007, 2:12pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/flame-first-think-later-article-from-new-york-times/2140/3 "2007-02-21T14:12:43Z")
wow Akmedic. excellent article. i am 100% true to my offline character (disturbing,isnt it.) so its people _like me_ that i think that have the greatest impact with the flaming. while i have some psychological skills that allow me to dissasociate with alot of the flaming ( thanks to spec ed) , the fact that someone is not “themselves” online is only partially true to me. it most certainly IS them _to some degree._ maybe more so ? 😮 the cues we get from others,tempering our own reactions (taking something for what it is,rather than what it sounds like without the timing/expressions/ect.) still dont change some posts, using his redlight theory **to try to take it all ways** before reacting. > [@](#): > > This work points to a design flaw inherent in the interface between the brain’s social circuitry and the online world. In face-to-face interaction, the brain reads a continual cascade of emotional signs and social cues, instantaneously using them to guide our next move so that the encounter goes well. Much of this social guidance occurs in circuitry centered on the orbitofrontal cortex, a center for empathy. This cortex uses that social scan to help make sure that what we do next will keep the interaction on track. sometimes an insult is plainly an insult, and blatant sexual remarks or comments on character are _ **just that** _ . enjoyed the article. ---
**Author:** ![Nunya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ac8455/32.png) [@Nunya](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/Nunya)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2007, 9:44pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/flame-first-think-later-article-from-new-york-times/2140/4 "2007-02-21T21:44:10Z")
> [@Lor](#): > > while i have some psychological skills that allow me to dissasociate with alot of the flaming ( thanks to spec ed) , the fact that someone is not “themselves” online is only partially true to me. > > it most certainly IS them _to some degree._ > > maybe more so ? 😮 I don’t know if this in reference to my comments about having an altar ego, because i didn’t see anything referring to dissociating in the article above - but i do want to clarify. I don’t think i’m not myself when i’m online. I’m totally me - and i’m hard pressed to not be me, in any situation. However I do know that when people are flaming me online - it’s not a personal attack on who I am inside my skin every day. How can it be, when they can’t see, hear, smell or feel me? I’d be willign to bet money that most would either never dream of saying the same things live and in person, or have the balls to do so, if it’s soemthing insulting. it’s jsut not done in real-time, unless oyur willign to get physical, and human beings are still animals - we’d rather not fight if we don’t have to. So knowing it’s not a personal attack on who I am, it’s much easier to just let it go. Peope inevitably show you more of who they are through their attacks on you, as opposed to coming anywhere remotely close to the essence of your character. You know what I mean? ---
**Author:** ![Thalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f475e1/32.png) [@Thalion](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/Thalion)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2007, 9:49pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/flame-first-think-later-article-from-new-york-times/2140/5 "2007-02-21T21:49:17Z")
I think I go the other way. I’m normally fairly polite in real life (with a touch of sarcasm sometimes). However, I try to make sure to be especially polite on forums. I know that written words do not contain very important non-verbal cues such as facial expressions and body language. So, just because someone might post something that was meant in jest, without these nonverbal cues, it may not be taken as such. Thus, I always try to be extremely careful of what I write and how someone else may perceive it. I guess that makes me old school, but that’s the way I was brought up. ---
**Author:** ![Lor](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/pheromonetalk.com/lor/32/759_2.png) [@Lor](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/Lor)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2007, 10:28pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/flame-first-think-later-article-from-new-york-times/2140/6 "2007-02-21T22:28:03Z")
> [@](#): > > I don’t know if this in reference to my comments about having an altar ego, because i didn’t see anything referring to dissociating in the article above - but i do want to clarify. nope. i NEVER reference ANYONE without their quote attached 😉 i was only commenting on the article, _BUT_ im probably the opposite of you;im pretty damn _thick_. if someone _WAS_ referencing me, if i dont see my quote im like _duhhh…nice post_ \<– not a clue.i never assume.🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Nunya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ac8455/32.png) [@Nunya](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/Nunya)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2007, 10:49pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/flame-first-think-later-article-from-new-york-times/2140/7 "2007-02-21T22:49:03Z")
ah ok - _lol_ yeah i’m not so handy with the quote button. Sometimes when there’s a specific point, but usually i just go with the thread of the convo.