Shirin Mohammad Esmaeel*
Aims: Nowadays, cyberspace is present in different parts of human life. Various activities such as share information, exchange ideas, interaction with others, conduct business and etc. take place in cyberspace. Activity in cyberspace has caused personality disorders. Research has been done in this field that shows the relationship between cyberspace activities and personality disorders. The purpose of this systematic review article is to analyze these researches and find out this relationship.
Methods: Using the systematic literature review process, this article seeks to determine whether cyberspace activities can cause personality disorders in individuals. The literature search was based on a search for the keywords “cyberspace” and “personality disorder”. Electronic literature databases, including Emerald, ProQuest, PubMed, SAGE etc. were investigated to find the relationship between cyberspace activity and personality disorders. 24 studies were found about this subject.
Results: Our findings indicated that few studies addressed to this topic. We found out that participants with excessive use of the Internet, for example people with Internet Addiction (IA), are more likely to develop personality disorders. For instance some papers reported a significant positive association in all clusters of PD, between having IA in individuals and having personality disorders, with regard to the clusters of personality disorders.
Conclusion: The results of this study indicate the effect of cyberspace activity on personality disorders. Finally, these findings need to be interpreted with caution due to the partly few numbers of studies on this topic.