I’m publishing this whole piece by Nicholas Carr because it is such a clear challenge to any rosy thinking about the positive role of social media and a hypothetical sharing culture.
At the same time, we should note that commentators on peer production such as Yochai Benkler have always insisted that motivations are varied and multidimensional and that what counts is not any hope that humans have or are becoming better through technology, but rather that we design social systems so that individual interest coincides with collective interest. In this context, answering one of the challenges you’ll read below, we could argue that it doesn’t matter that YouTube users are not thinking about building a commons, but nevertheless, they are building one.
Nicholas Carr:
“Forget altruism. Misanthropy and egotism are the fuel of online social production. That’s the conclusion suggested by a new study of the character traits of the contributors to Wikipedia. A team of Israeli research psychologists gave personality tests to 69 Wikipedians and 70 non-Wikipedians. They discovered that, as New Scientist puts it, Wikipedians are generally “grumpy,” “disagreeable,” and “closed to new ideas.”
In their report on the results of the study, the scholars paint a picture of Wikipedians as social maladapts who “feel more comfortable expressing themselves on the net than they do off-line” and who score poorly on measures of “agreeableness and openness.” Noting that the findings seem in conflict with public perceptions, the researchers suggest that “the prosocial behavior apparent in Wikipedia is primarily connected to egocentric motives … which are not associated with high levels of agreeableness.”
The researchers also looked at gender differences among Wikipedians. They found that the women who contribute to the online encyclopedia exhibit unusually high levels of introversion. Women in particular, they suggest, “seem to use the Internet as a compensative tool” that allows them to “express themselves” in a way “they find difficult in the offline world.”
The study is consistent with other research into the motivations underlying online social production. Last year, researchers at HP Labs undertook an extensive study of why people upload videos to YouTube. They found that contributors are primarily driven by a craving for attention. If the videos they upload aren’t clicked on, they tend to quickly exit the “community.” YouTubers view their contributions not as pieces of “a digital commons” but as “private goods” that are “paid for by attention.”
Scott Caplan, a communications professor at the University of Delaware, tells New Scientist that studies of social networks generally indicate that “people who prefer online social behaviour tend to have higher levels of social anxiety and lower social skills.”
None of this is particularly surprising. But the findings do lend a darker tint to the rose-colored rhetoric that surrounds online communities. A wag might suggest that “social production” would be more accurately termed “antisocial production.”
From Ryan Lanham, via email:
Michel,
What you include below doesn’t surprise me at all; in fact, I’ve experienced it first hand several times. By the way, I think it is equally true of open source ventures where I have noted an extreme capacity for organizations to harbor the socially mal-adept, cynical, crypto-elitist and otherwise self-serving ego-driven types as an overwhelming majority. As we both have some first hand experience and since it is a obvious target, it is easy to visualize a personality profile of, say, Richard Stallman. One finds numerous deontologists, etc. in these domains and if these folks entered paradise they’d complain about the rules. In short, judgmental people are drawn to organized commons. They are contentious, combative, highly self-certain and almost always judgmental.
It doesn’t take a PhD in psychology to realize that many of these people are expressing power and control in areas where they can do so because they are maladjusted to conventional social frameworks. But it does open the question as to why altruism and selflessness do often occur–and when and where.
While I have no data to match this Israeli study, my own experience is that those most committed to public good simply act on it and don’t spend so much time debating their role, how others should act, or what the governance model is. They aren’t flamboyant about their service. They simply just do it. They are pragmatists. These are likened to “the spiritual” in faith-based terms. And then there is what I can only identify in my own views as the religious. They are all about the structure, their position, the judgment, what is a crisis and what is the solution…and not so much about the actual doing of something.
Ryan Lanham
Michael, consensus has much better press tan conflict, but there is no reason to say that one better or worst than the other
What about artists and authors who engaged more traditional forms of creativity? The description here is awfully similar to the widespread stereotype of a certain kind of artist or author closeted alone long into the night, forsaking family and friends, and who may be ornery or disreputable in public.
Without comparing with other creative activities, we have no indication of whether this result is connected to online production, social production, or to some other characteristic of the Wikipedia community (which might be specific to Wikipedia, or to the kind of cataloging work that goes on there).
There is a further question about the distinction made between members and non-Members. Aaron Swartz’s informal examination of Wikipedia edits found that most substantive contributions were by occasional or one-time contributors, while the core community focused on editorial tasks. (Has there been any formal follow-up to this?) It does not seem unlikely that these groups would exhibit different characteristics.