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Abstract
While online, some people self-disclose or act out more frequently or intensely than
they would in person. This article explores six factors that interact with each other
in creating this online disinhibition effect: dissociative anonymity, invisibility,
asynchronicity, solipsistic introjection, dissociative imagination, and minimization
of authority. Personality variables also will influence the extent of this disinhibition.
Rather than thinking of disinhibition as the revealing of an underlying "true self,"
we can conceptualize it as a shift to a constellation within self-structure, involving
clusters of affect and cognition that differ from the in-person constellation.