Online disinhibition effect

Overview

The online disinhibition effect is a concept that psychologist John Suler laid out systematically in 2004. He explained why people behave differently on the internet than they do face to face through six factors: dissociative anonymity, invisibility, asynchronicity, solipsistic introjection (feeling the other person's voice is inside your head), dissociative imagination (treating online life as a separate game), and minimization of status and authority.

Benign and toxic disinhibition

Suler divided this effect into benign and toxic types. In benign disinhibition, people open up about true feelings they normally can't say, or share deeply about themselves. In toxic disinhibition, abuse and aggressive behavior appear. Anonymity is an amplifier, and it amplifies both good intentions and bad ones.

A question box is one of the places where both sides show up most clearly. A question that begins with "I've actually wanted to ask this for a while" is a product of the benign side, and an aggressive question is a product of the toxic side.

Steering it through the setting

The mood of a space can be one of the things that decides which direction disinhibition takes. When the person answering keeps giving polite, thoughtful answers, senders match that tone. Not reacting to aggressive questions is one way to take away the motive for toxic disinhibition.