In order to complete this assignment, I decided to enter a chat room for the first time. As a novice chatter, I was unsure where to begin. I Googled the phrase “chat rooms” and stumbled upon www.chat-avenue.com. It was the first site I could find that did not require me to register, and so I entered “college chat” under the alias “dancer33”. There were about forty other users in the room and keeping track of conversations was nearly impossible. Instead of joining the group discussion, I scanned the list of users for a normal sounding name – or at least something not sexually explicit – and thus messaged “Eric”. Shortly after we began chatting, I received about five or six private invitations from other users. I accepted all of them, but all were immediately revoked when the inviter realized I wasn’t interested in cyber-sex.

Eric, like everyone I interacted with in the chat room, asked me my age, sex, and location first. He is 25, male, and lives in New York City where he attends a CUNY school. He wasn’t very conversational at first, so I asked him questions and prompted answers by offering bits of information about myself too. He admitted he didn’t like to talk about himself very much. As a result, much of our conversation was a vie for control through questioning. The more questions I asked him in an attempt to form an impression, the more questions he asked me in an attempt to turn the tables back around. Without realizing it, I was already forming a distinct impression of Eric’s character. He seemed apprehensive or distrusting, yet eager to learn about me before passing judgment. From this and other aspects of our interaction, I determined that he was probably a frequent user of chat rooms and the following about his personality:

Neuroticism: Eric did not seem neurotic at all, though I do not really know enough to say for certain.

Extraversion: I consider Eric to be an extravert because he was looking to chat, full of questions, willing to comment on the things I said, and secure in the things he said.

Openness: Despite his willingness to learn about me, Eric seemed pretty closed down when it came to revealing information about himself – particularly at first.

Agreeableness: After chatting for almost an hour, I found Eric to be very agreeable. In fact, I found myself really enjoying our conversation despite the fact that I’d only known him for such a short time (and only through CMC).

Conscientiousness: Eric seemed very cautious and slightly serious. I got the definite impression that he was quite conscientious.

My experience chatting with Eric matched the Hyperpersonal model extremely well. Although I had very little to base them on, my impressions were in fact extreme and consistent with over-attribution. His personality seemed a lot stronger than I expected to observe via computer mediated communication, and by the end of the conversation I really liked Eric. Additionally, we were able to focus our conversation on only topics we felt compelled to discuss by asking specific questions. In this sense, we were both practicing selective self-presentation and re-allocation of cognitive resources. Lastly, I found myself reaffirming his remarks about me, just as the model predicts through the behavior confirmation process. When he told me I was nice, for example, I attempted to make my comments and questions even nicer. Of course it was only after our conversation was completed that I realized how much of my impression formation experience could be predicted by the Hyperpersonal model. On the other hand, I am almost certain that my impression would mold and change significantly over time if I continued to chat with Eric.