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Conflicting claims have been presented in the literature about on-line management of personal relationships. The current research, carried out in a substantially descriptive design, aimed to consider psychological and social features of a particular electronic environment, the Chat room. One hundred fifty-eight participants filled out an on-line questionnaire set, designed to investigate the personality traits and the prevailing interpersonal values of those participants who set up interpersonal relationships on-line. The Web research showed that, if sampling control and validity assessment were provided, it could be a valid alternative to a more traditional paper-based procedure. The results highlighted that Chat users were not an homogenous group, but were composed of different personality types. Basically, however, this specific virtual environment proved to be crowded with rather close individuals, who were looking for independence but who needed also to be supported and encouraged. They created deep on-line relationships, but these remained limited to the virtual world.
Anolli et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
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