My interaction took place in an internet chat room. I entered the first site that came up on google, chatfamily. I then joined a singles chat room. It was a complete failure. Nobody would talk to me because I wasn’t a girl with a myspace and “hot pics.” Eventually I managed to get one woman to speak with me, but when I honestly told her I was 19, she ignored me. After an hour of frustration I managed to meet a girl named Tia, who was interested in private messaging me. We talked for a while, and I found I was making assumptions about her based on her on screen avatar. It was an attractive looking blonde. As our conversation progressed past the initial stages of asking about age, sex, and location, she became extremely flirtatious. It was clear that the anonymity factor of internet chat allowed Tia to feel comfortable saying things that would be taboo in her public life. She continued to attempt to engage me in “cybering” and respond to anything I asked her with an inviting response or sexual innuendo.
I began to develop a very intense impression of her. Our interaction clearly supported the Hyperpersonal model. As Tia was able to formulate her statements and responses online exactly as she saw fit, as well as represent herself with the virtual avatar of her choice, Tia utilized selective self-presentation in order to influence my initial impression. I found that while I did not get a very broad picture of who Tia was as a person, I did have very strong impressions as to specific character traits. She was clearly extremely extroverted, practically throwing herself at everyone in the chat room. She was also very agreeable, and not in the least bit confrontational. As I interacted with Tia, I am sure that the Over- attribution process had a large impact on my impression formation of her personality. As I was exposed to her sexual comments, I began to build my image of her as some sort of ditsy, flirtatious, blonde. However, I recognize that I was judging her entire personality based on the one encounter that we had in this one setting.
2 comments:
Hi Im Catherine Walsh. I thought you did an excellent job interpretting Tia. You seemed to get a lot of strong impressions of her through the one conversation. Its also interesting to find that the visual, avatar, made an impressiong on you as well, as this is what several theories suggest. Hyperpersonal definatly seems to have a big presence here. You didnt speak to her for that long but you could build impressions based on a couple strong statments she made. Well done!
I am glad to hear that I was not the only one who had trouble finding someone to talk to through a chat room. It could be because men spend more time in chat rooms then women. I understand that the ratio of guys to woman is very large. Anyway, about the avatar, I feel as if the avatar gives you an image of what their personality and appearance is like. I still don’t understand how people are able to feel comfortable “cybering” online with someone they have never met before. Yet, I find it interesting that when people meet face to face for the first time, they would be less likely to have such an open discussion.
After reading your comments about how she acted during the chat, I wonder if she or any one who does what she does online would do the same out in public to a person they just met? The fact that your true identity cannot be revealed unless you choose for it to be can also allow for you to be someone that you are not. I would be curious to see if people would act the same way if instead of chatting online it were a video chat where the other person could actually see you.
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