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.