The summer before my freshman year at Carnegie Mellon (I am a transfer to Cornell), I received the contact information of my two future roommates, John and Benny. Eager to talk to the people I would be living with, I emailed them introducing myself and shared my excitement for the coming year. After one or two emails each, we all exchanged AIM screen names to make chatting easier. We talked as a group a few times to find out who was bringing what, and to share a bit more about ourselves. John and I seemed to have a lot in common; we liked similar music, were interested in the same program, and had similar high school experiences. John and I talked a lot throughout the summer, typically every other day. I didn’t think I had anything in common with Benny; he was from the
The relationship I had with John online can be characterized with the hyperpersonal model. Since we had a few shared interests and beliefs, we over-attributed each others personalities, filling in the blanks with information that wasn’t really there. Since the period of the online contact was relatively long, about three months, we had a lot of well formed impressions, even if these impressions were completely false due to the over-attribution. With Benny, our relatively short period of interaction online that transitioned to FtF can be characterized by the uncertainty reduction theory. Since we had little contact in CMC, FtF interaction reduced uncertainty.
The results of Ramirez and Wang’s study on the effects of modality switching apply to both of these relationships. With John, the modality switch ended up diminishing the communication process and social outcomes. Our well formed CMC perception of each other turned out to be blatantly incorrect; we butted heads as roommates and became involved with completely different activities. With Benny, the modality switch provided additional details about each other that we didn’t form impressions about in our short contact via CMC. I was pleasantly surprised, and although we weren’t best friends, we got along very well and still talk from time to time.
4 comments:
So in some sense this goes back to the CFO theory, where the lack of cues hides your differences, though it also helps you exaggerate your similarities with John. I guess it's our default mode to fill the blanks with similarities rather than differences.
So many things don't come out very well over CMC. It's easy to discover that you have similar taste in music, similar majors, etc. But I feel people with similar temperaments get along better than people with just similar musical taste. And temperament definitely doesn't come out very well over CMC. That's probably one of the reasons you were surprised by the way your roommates turned out in real life.
It's interesting because I had a similar situation, but it was with my teammate. A fellow teammate of mine conversed every other day during the summer. Once we got to school, our face-to-face interactions were not as I thought they would be. We actually did not even hang out and we barley talked. This confused me because he was someone that I interacted the most with before going into college.
Vaishal,
Great job on your blog post. I liked how your example included your experience with two different people so that they could be compared to each other. I think you provided a great explanation on how your expectations about both future roommates were violated and how the hyperpersonal model plays a large part in that explanation. I also think that the SIDE model can be applied to your experience. With your first roommate John, you had a negative outcome because the two of you were de-individuated from speaking online after learning that you two had many things in common. Those expectations were then violated and the relationship was dampened when you two met and became individuated by learning that you were more different than alike. On the other hand, your experience with Benny resulted in a positive outcome because you spoke to him online with the assumption that he was part of the outgroup. When you met him face to face and individuation occurred, you ended up getting along better than expected.
Great post! It's interesting how relational dynamics change with a modality switch! Your experience fits perfectly with the hyperpersonal model, it's just unfortunate that it was correct. I think Yang makes a good point, because CMC lack non-verbal cues it's hard to get a good sense of someone's temperament which is so important when connecting with someone in FtF situations. I hope that everything worked out alright in your time together as roommates!
Post a Comment