It is always an interesting and dynamic experience to meet and develop a relationship online, and then move that relationship from virtuality to reality. One personal example of such an occurrence can be seen by observing the development of my relationship with my freshmen roommate, who will hereon out be referred to as Joe. Throughout this relationship, there was one major social theory that was readily reflected by this experience, which is the Hyperpersonal Model, as formulated by Walther in 1997.
My first interaction with Joe was over e-mail. He sent me a message, introducing himself and telling me those few basic facts that new acquaintances exchange in their first interaction. I sent him an e-mail back, sharing some of the same information. After this initial exchange, we decided to take our relationship to the next level, and communicate over AIM. This interaction was more revealing, and led to me develop an inflated, and negative, impression of Joe’s true personality. One of the first things he told me was which county he was from, and how it was the richest in America. He then proceeded to tell me about all his feats, which included, amongst other things, being a genius, being a world class musician and athlete, and also having the potential to be a model for Abercrombie.
Needless to say, the arrogance that I perceived him to possess, since arrogance was one of the few cues I had to work with, became incredibly inflated, as predicted by the Hyperpersonal Model, and I had immediately formed a negative impression of him. When it was time to meet face to face, I was quite nervous, and was prepared for the worst. What I found however, was pleasantly surprising. Joe was considerably less arrogant, and far more laid back, than I had expected him to be. I found, therefore, that the Hyperpersonal Model created a positive outcome for my relationship with Joe when leaving virtuality. I was expecting the worst, and since my expectations were so low, based and exaggerated upon the few cues I had, I was pleasantly surprised in my face to face meeting when I found that Joe surpassed my expectations, and was not as bad as I was prepared to accept.
As predicted by the Hyperpersonal Model, I developed an exaggerated and inflated impression of my future roommate, based on the few cues I had. Since the impression I developed was negative, however, I had a positive outcome when moving my relationship from virtuality to reality.
1 comment:
I think your post is really interesting – taking the other side where you form a negative impression online and are positively surprised ftf. It is interesting that because the CMC impression was so negative, the fact that he was more laid back in person, changed your impression of him. I was wondering how much he surpassed your expectations. While he was not as bad as you had prepared for, was he still someone you would not be friends with? I think that for some people the situation could be reversed, where if they had formed a negative impression online, they may form an even worse impression when meeting FTF because of behavioral confirmation. They may view everything that person does as fitting in with their online impression and not try to look at the person’s behavior from a different perspective.
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