Cyber psychology and the Problematic of Experimentation Between the Real World and the Virtual World
Benaissa ZARHBOUChH · 2023
Communication technology has evolved and created a new environment that affects the individual’s personality and relationships. To understand this new reality, alongside the real world or within it, cyberpsychology has evolved with its methodological and technical specificities to study the processes of thinking, action and communication, both individual and collective. It aims to understand the patterns of behavioral, cognitive and emotional interactions between humans and computers, and between humans mediated by computers. When the classical experimental research relied on examining how an independent variable affects a dependent variable, directly or through intermediate variables, in a natural environment or in a laboratory, the virtual world has become a third environment that imposes itself in the experiment. If the classical problematic in psychology is to understand the effects of nature and the environment on individual behavior, then with the development of the virtual world, the environment has become two: realistic and virtual. Thus, the duality of nature and environment has become a subject of epistemological questioning in its cognitive and methodological dimensions. Based on that, we ask about the appropriate research methods to study human behavior in a technically and digitally connected environment. We also question the objectivity of measurement tools and experimental results between the real and virtual worlds, especially with the absence of time, space and gravity in the virtual world, and the presence of avatars as a fundamental element. What are the limits of conducting experimental studies in a virtual environment? What are its methodological and technical characteristics? Will the subject respond in these studies as an avatar or as a realistic person? Can the results be generalized to both environments?