Making “Real” Connections

Abstract

Examining the subjective aspects of online social interaction can help explain contradictory results about the consequences of such interaction. The authors posit a new theoretical construct, the perceived reality of online interactions, defined as the extent to which an individual believes online interactions are suitable for the maintenance and formation of close relationships. Higher perceived reality of online interactions is theorized to lead to more investment and effort in computer-mediated communication, thus increasing benefits such as perceived social support from online relationships. An experiment using an Amazon Mechanical Turk sample (n = 169) and undergraduate students (n = 88) found correlational evidence that perceived reality of online relationships predicted perceived social support from online sources. Additionally, patterns of correlations between perceived reality, personality traits, and general attitudes toward the Internet point at differential implications of this variable between samples.