PS66CH33-Gosling ARI 19 November 2014 13:50 Internet Research in Psychology Samuel D. Gosling1 and Winter Mason2 1Department of Psychology, University of Texas, Austin, Texas 78712; email:
[email protected] 2Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey 07030; email:
[email protected] Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2015. 66:877–902 Keywords First published online as a Review in Advance on Internet research, online research September 22, 2014 The Annual Review of Psychology is online at Abstract psych.annualreviews.org Today the Internet plays a role in the lives of nearly 40% of the world’s pop- This article’s doi: ulation, and it is becoming increasingly entwined in daily life. This growing 10.1146/annurev-psych-010814-015321 Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2015.66:877-902. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org presence is transforming psychological science in terms of the topics studied Access provided by University of British Columbia on 01/01/21. For personal use only. Copyright c 2015 by Annual Reviews. and the methods used. We provide an overview of the literature, consid- All rights reserved ering three broad domains of research: translational (implementing tradi- tional methods online; e.g., surveys), phenomenological (topics spawned or mediated by the Internet; e.g., cyberbullying), and novel (new ways to study existing topics; e.g., rumors). We discuss issues (e.g., sampling, ethics) that arise when doing research online and point to emerging opportunities (e.g., smartphone sensing). Psychological research on the Internet comes with new challenges, but the opportunities far outweigh the costs. By integrating the Internet, psychological research has the ability to reach large, diverse samples and collect data on actual behaviors, which will ultimately increase the impact of psychological research on society.