When I decided to defer for a year and spend it in Israel, I wanted have a completely unique experience and therefore decided to try my luck by going potluck to pick a roommate. During July, I found out that my roommate was going to be a German girl two years older than me named Anna. I decided to begin emailing her in the summer in order to have a familiar person to look forward to seeing when I moved half way around the world. We emailed back and forth throughout the rest of the summer and through the cliché icebreakers and “getting-to-know-you” questions, we discovered that we shared a lot of common ground and it appeared that we were a perfect match. I was only too excited to meet her and when I arrived in Israel, I was told that she would be arriving a week later, which only built up my anticipation of finally meeting her.
However, after meeting, we quickly discovered that our common ground was only pertinent to the online world. We learned that we had extremely different interests, lifestyles and groups of friends. I felt that many of the personality traits on which I felt that we based our connection on never surfaced. By the end of two months living together, our interactions were cordial but not at all warm and were typically to superficial conversations that included statements like “Do you want me to turn the light off now?”
My experience was strongly affected by the Hyperpersonal model as I based my impression of Anna on personality traits affected by the over-attribution process as well as selective self-presentation. For example, Anna recounted a story that led me to assume that she was typically a loud, lively girl only and after meeting her it became apparent this story atypical of her behavior. My initial impression of meeting her in person was negative which is consistent with the Hyperpersonal model as it predicts a negative outcome for when an interaction transitions from virtuality to in-person.
I also found that my experience was consistent with Ramirez & Wang’s Expectancy Violation Theory as meeting Anna was quite a disappointing experience. I had built up my expectation of meeting her because I assumed that it would go off without a hitch and that I would find a roommate I could actually bond with. In fact, I was a bit anxious the rest of the year because I found living with her to be an awkward experience and when she went to Germany for two weeks, I found myself hoping that she wouldn’t return.Ramirez & Wang attribute this negative outcome to the fact that we spent a few weeks chatting each other up before we met. Perhaps if we only had FtF interactions, it wouldn’t have been such a disappointment to meet her.
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4 comments:
I really enjoyed this post. I think that your experience was interesting, and applies well with what we talked about in class. I agree, that the Hyperpersonal Model seems to be the main theory coming into play in this situation. Online you grasped onto aspects of each others personalities that were similar, which eventually become exaggerated and intensified. When you met face to face, however, you realized that these similarities were insignificant relative to other traits that you possessed, which was directly the result of the Hyperpersonal Model. I agree, that it would be very interesting to see if your relationship would have played out differently if you had only talked FtF, and went in with no expectations. Great job!
Hannah,
I think that you provided a great example of an online relationship that left virtuality. It was very interesting to hear about your experience with your roommate. I have always had fears of coming to college and being placed with a horrible roommate so I have always opted against the idea of rooming random. You did a great job in explaining how your experience could be explained using the hyperpersonal model and specifically the over attribution component. I also think that perhaps selective self-presentation may have contributed to this experience because your roommate only chose to share certain aspects of herself to present herself in a positive way. This, in turn, led to a violation of expectations upon meeting her, leading to a negative outcome for your relationship.
Hannah,
I also wrote about my disappointing experience meeting a future roommate after interacting online and I found my experience very similar to yours. After picturing my roommate as this flawless girl it was quite a disappointment to meet quite a different girl in person.
I think you provided a great example of selective self presentation. Telling a person an unusual story about yourself when they have limited other information can build an exaggerated portrait of your true personality.
How do you think your experience would have changed if you started chatting to her the day before you two were going to be roommates? Would it be consistent with Ramirez & Wang's study?
Overall great, interesting post!
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