7 (opt. 2): WOW…one e-mail can certainly say a lot.

My Uncle’s wife recently sent an e-mail to my mother about an event that occurred while my parents were visiting them in Florida. She was attempting to apologize and explain her side of the story. The Brunswikian lens model determines how we take information about someone and use it to make judgments about their personality. Her use of CMC to have more control over her own impression on my mother, similar to the control we would have in a social network, is what makes her personality more interesting to analyze via the Brunswikian model. There are four different types of environmental cues that allow us to make inferences about an individual’s personality. I will use these clues as a means of digging deeper into her personality

A large part of her description involved differences in culture between herself and my family, and how that may have impacted the event that had prompted her to right the e-mail. These statements were clearly “other-directed identity claims” according to the Brunswikian Lens Model, in that they she was directing information about herself to another. She wrote about her customs in comparison to ours, and how that must have been the reason for the difference in opinion that had occurred. This helped me learn more about openness to experience, and interest in other cultures. She used “self-directed identity claims,” or cues that are inwardly oriented, yet done purposely by the individual in her final sentence of the e-mail. She wrote a sentence in Spanish, knowing very well that my mother does not know any Spanish. Therefore, one could only assume that this was more directed toward herself as my mother would not be able to understand it. However, this does give us information about her personality, whether it was meant to or not.

The concept of behavioral residue is one that I find most interesting in that these are those little cues we pick up on about people when they do not mean for them to be there. It gives us information about the person without the person purposely or physically putting it out there. “Interior behavioral residue:” is information that we learn about a person within the online space being used, so in this case, within the e-mail. What I first noticed when my mother sent me this e-mail was that the subject line was entitled, “cute.” I thought to myself, I would not describe this e-mail as “cute.” However, as I read further down, I realized that she had previously written her an e-mail about something funny she found on Youtube, and thus was writing this e-mail as a response as opposed to beginning a new e-mail thread. This told me that my mother and Uncle’s wife had actually had very positive contact previously via CMC. Something from their past relationship had unintentionally given me a clue about her personality within this limited environment. “Exterior behavioral residue,” on the other hand, is something that we learn about someone entirely outside of the internet environment. She mentioned how she would be going to dinner with friends this weekend at a very nice restaurant in New York City this upcoming weekend. This both allowed me to judge her based on restaurant choice as well as these friends, leading to the context effects of association. Since we constantly characterize people based on who they are with, her use of a friend’s name gave me further insight into her personality. Additionally, I could infer that she was pretty extraverted in her tendency to socialize with others. I had more difficulty rating her on consciousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism, but I think with more time and information I could have developed a better framework for her personality. We do not even realize the things we are telling people, as a judgment can be made based on our every remark and action, especially in CMC when this is all we have to go by.

http://comm245purple.blogspot.com/2007/10/assignment-7-option-1greek.html

http://comm245purple.blogspot.com/2007/10/looking-through-lens-limited.html