Friday, September 7, 2007
Online Chat Assignment #1
As I began to interpret the world of online chat I decided to pursue an investigation into the open chat room. This is described to be open to every one of all ages over 14 and the topic is of decided amongst the members. When you sign in as a male the attention that you receive is slim to non because of the ratio of participants. Mostly everyone involved is males looking at the names with the exception of a few females. The focus of the conversation immediately turned towards sex and related topics. Most of the input came from mainly participants with names that suggested they were male so I began to stereotype the way people think in chat rooms. With this in mind, I began to think of the way males acted in public and it was no where near that of a chat room. When they are behind the screen and out of the public eye, their minds begin to develop into thinking and wanting to learn about sex and sex only. As I sat and watched the conversation continue in the downward spiral, I focused in on one participant that went by “sexysingleguy69.” He might have been serious, but more than likely pretending to be “the know it all” with all the answers to every sex question. He would always try to answer the questions no matter if they were for males or females. My impression of this man began to drift towards that of an exaggeration. The keys points that I picked up on from this man’s portrayed image was that of a hyper personal model. He would always exaggerate every answer he gave and left out most of the details pertaining to him. I believe that since he wasn’t in a face to face situation, he was under the impression that he wasn’t nearly invincible. By this I mean that he couldn’t be judged, viewed or made fun of if he didn’t act like himself. Having CMC working in his favor, he completely changed the person that he was and is in the real world and became someone that he wanted to be. Even though this new version, sexysingleguy69, was perverted and opinionated towards sex, he enjoyed stepping out of reality and into a hyper personal environment.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Being My Boyfriend (Assignment 3)
For this assignment I chose Option 1 and once again entered a synchronous space, but this time I was a male, and more specifically, my boyfriend. I was excited to be the opposite sex and interested to see how women outside of my little world talked to men when they met them online. The first shock that I should have expected when I entered the chat room was that nobody wanted to talk to me. When I entered last week as a female, I was immediately bombarded with private messages by men who wanted to "chat." As a man, nobody took interest in me and for once I had to make the effort to find someone who would want to pm. After several unsuccessful attempts, I finally got a 16 year old girl to talk to me.
At the start of the conversation, it was not hard for me to lie about my age or sex (I was a 21 year old male). Also, describing myself was not difficult because I envisioned my boyfriend and from there was able to further deceive her. As the conversation continued, I did not want to over exaggerate how testosterone driven I was because I was worried she may catch on that I was not in fact who I said I was. I found myself using self-presentational tactics such as my own self-description and attitude expressions. I wanted this girl to not only think I was an older, more intelligent guy, but also that I was cool. As the conversation progressed I found myself wanting to further impress this girl and discussed my "fraternity" affiliations, this would be seen as a social association. Throughout the conversation, however, I did find it difficult at times to give her immediate responses because I constantly had to check whether what I was saying sounded too feminine and therefore had to be conscientious with my writing. I did not want to catch myself saying the word "like" which I myself use too often or using other phrases or ways of writing that would cue her to something fishy. Eventually this girl sent me a picture of her and in turn was hoping that I would send her a picture of myself. I began to get worried because this was not a part of my plan, so I kindly excused myself from the chat.
I realized that besides the self-presentational tactics I used, I also tapped into my "multiple selves." As a guy, I would want myself to be cool, smart, well liked; all of these were a part of my "ideal (male) self" and was how I presented myself in the chat. Also, finding it impossible to not tap into my own personality in the chat, I also presented some of my "actual self" as well as "ought self" during discussion of certain topics which I personally have a strong opinion about. Overall, this experience fulfilled some of my curiosities as well as gave me insight to how easy online deception is due to the lack of the usual ftf cues.
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https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3186874989969223722&postID=5257425541769748811
At the start of the conversation, it was not hard for me to lie about my age or sex (I was a 21 year old male). Also, describing myself was not difficult because I envisioned my boyfriend and from there was able to further deceive her. As the conversation continued, I did not want to over exaggerate how testosterone driven I was because I was worried she may catch on that I was not in fact who I said I was. I found myself using self-presentational tactics such as my own self-description and attitude expressions. I wanted this girl to not only think I was an older, more intelligent guy, but also that I was cool. As the conversation progressed I found myself wanting to further impress this girl and discussed my "fraternity" affiliations, this would be seen as a social association. Throughout the conversation, however, I did find it difficult at times to give her immediate responses because I constantly had to check whether what I was saying sounded too feminine and therefore had to be conscientious with my writing. I did not want to catch myself saying the word "like" which I myself use too often or using other phrases or ways of writing that would cue her to something fishy. Eventually this girl sent me a picture of her and in turn was hoping that I would send her a picture of myself. I began to get worried because this was not a part of my plan, so I kindly excused myself from the chat.
I realized that besides the self-presentational tactics I used, I also tapped into my "multiple selves." As a guy, I would want myself to be cool, smart, well liked; all of these were a part of my "ideal (male) self" and was how I presented myself in the chat. Also, finding it impossible to not tap into my own personality in the chat, I also presented some of my "actual self" as well as "ought self" during discussion of certain topics which I personally have a strong opinion about. Overall, this experience fulfilled some of my curiosities as well as gave me insight to how easy online deception is due to the lack of the usual ftf cues.
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3186874989969223722&postID=7967724513762302062
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With Asynchronity, its easy to change the subject..
I have always been a fan of instant messaging, especially with the ability to have a semi-synchronous conversation, with the leeway of taking the time to think about what you want to say. However, I am not a very big fan of anonymity, and thus only talk to people I know. This homework assignment made me very uncomfortable at first, because I really did not want to be in a situation of having to talk to a stranger. However, after finally finding someone who was willing to have a real conversation, rather than do what most other chatters are looking for at 1 am…I really enjoyed myself. I talked to Joey, a seventeen year old from North Carolina. As we talked, our conversation turned into a discussion of the differences of the South and the North.
Joey was very open during the conversation, telling me as much as possible about his town in the deep South. At first I did not find him to be very agreeable. He kept pressuring me to go into an MSN chat (we started off in a private chat from a chatroom) and then kept trying to convince me to send a picture. At first I thought he was neurotic with all his demands, and I feared he would refuse to continue the conversation if I did not send pictures or change chat settings. Eventually he forgot about sharing pictures as we compared our hometowns, and my opinion about him changed. No longer was he persistent and demanding. Instead, he and I both exchanged lots of interesting questions to find out what these two parts of the United States thought of each other. He answered my questions very openly and became very extroverted. He teased me for not knowing about things called ‘double wides’ (some type of trailor…I still don’t get it..) and went out of his way to try to send me to links that would show me one. He was very conscientious of the questions I asked, answering in as much detail as possible.
I think the Hyperpersonal Model best describes my impression formation. Since we had a talk that basically made us talk about our stereotypes, it caused us both to selectively self present information about ourselves. If we met in real life, perhaps we would have a lot in common and get along great. But through the nature of our conversation, we only talked about the ways we were different due to our backgrounds. We selected what information we wanted about our hometowns in order to give an idea of our personalities. For example, he said that he shops at Walmart all the time and I said I have only been there three times in my whole life. He assumed that all Northerners need to have designer clothes and own nice things. In reality, there just does not happen to be a Walmart close to me, but perhaps I would shop there if one was built. I told him I liked Target, but he claimed that was much fancier to Walmart. By selecting the information we wanted to share in order to create a descriptive stereotype, I think it caused us to over attribute parts of our personality too. Joey started talking about things that most people associate with the South, such as how much he loves Nascar (he wants to be a professional racer). His comments about himself and his town caused me to over generalize what his daily life is like, and what living in the South is like. He purposely talked about attributes of his town that he knew would be different, such as how people live in trailers and how the tallest building in his downtown is only eight stories high. Perhaps I accidentally exaggerated and over generalized what people from Manhattan are like in order to represent what the North was like. Although we may have formed stereotyped opinions of one another, it was still great getting to know someone with a very different background than myself.
Joey was very open during the conversation, telling me as much as possible about his town in the deep South. At first I did not find him to be very agreeable. He kept pressuring me to go into an MSN chat (we started off in a private chat from a chatroom) and then kept trying to convince me to send a picture. At first I thought he was neurotic with all his demands, and I feared he would refuse to continue the conversation if I did not send pictures or change chat settings. Eventually he forgot about sharing pictures as we compared our hometowns, and my opinion about him changed. No longer was he persistent and demanding. Instead, he and I both exchanged lots of interesting questions to find out what these two parts of the United States thought of each other. He answered my questions very openly and became very extroverted. He teased me for not knowing about things called ‘double wides’ (some type of trailor…I still don’t get it..) and went out of his way to try to send me to links that would show me one. He was very conscientious of the questions I asked, answering in as much detail as possible.
I think the Hyperpersonal Model best describes my impression formation. Since we had a talk that basically made us talk about our stereotypes, it caused us both to selectively self present information about ourselves. If we met in real life, perhaps we would have a lot in common and get along great. But through the nature of our conversation, we only talked about the ways we were different due to our backgrounds. We selected what information we wanted about our hometowns in order to give an idea of our personalities. For example, he said that he shops at Walmart all the time and I said I have only been there three times in my whole life. He assumed that all Northerners need to have designer clothes and own nice things. In reality, there just does not happen to be a Walmart close to me, but perhaps I would shop there if one was built. I told him I liked Target, but he claimed that was much fancier to Walmart. By selecting the information we wanted to share in order to create a descriptive stereotype, I think it caused us to over attribute parts of our personality too. Joey started talking about things that most people associate with the South, such as how much he loves Nascar (he wants to be a professional racer). His comments about himself and his town caused me to over generalize what his daily life is like, and what living in the South is like. He purposely talked about attributes of his town that he knew would be different, such as how people live in trailers and how the tallest building in his downtown is only eight stories high. Perhaps I accidentally exaggerated and over generalized what people from Manhattan are like in order to represent what the North was like. Although we may have formed stereotyped opinions of one another, it was still great getting to know someone with a very different background than myself.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
ICQ chatting proves challenging.
After a short hesitation, I decided to enter the ICQ "Newbies" chatroom. I felt a little nervous to enter chatrooms as I haven't jumped into one with strangers since middle school. The room description was "For Newbies and first time chatters. Don't be afraid!" sounded friendly. I felt swarmed with more than 30 members talking. Only 4~5 people engaged in public conversations. Conversation going on was synchronous, although at times different topics surfaced. Although I privately chatted with a couple of users, xchristmasy talking publicly caught my attention.
He's a middle-age, divorced male with children, living in US. Because I missed the initial introduction, I was not able to gather more information on the user. I suspect he was known to other members previously although this room is titled newbies, because other people ended their screen names with "y's", but that may be a popular trend I am not aware of. However, many people showed some knowledge of ICQ chat program by using "action commands" which announced the user's customized actions, such as giving someone a lolly pop. I felt out of place in this space, and suspect negative opinions were influenced my judgment on xchristmasy.
On the scale for neuroticism, I scaled xchristmasy high, because I considered discussing details of divorce and childcare situation with strangers in a chat room with no specific topic, abnormal. He sounded extremely extroverted, as he addressed others friendly and responded with ease. In comparison to my view, other users found him highly agreeable. His story was met with sympathy and his actions with approval. When he decided to exit, many users "gave hugs" with cute smiley symbols. I viewed his conscientiousness low, because he was critical of his wife having visitation rights.
My experience supported Hyperpersonality Model. I also only heard about his divorce, not his positive experiences or characters. His attempt to portray himself a victim irritated me. With limited cues, his usage of a mixture of bold bright blue and regular lavender font played a role on my opinion-formation. I felt prejudiced against a middle-age male spending time on decorating his fonts instead on weekday afternoons.
He's a middle-age, divorced male with children, living in US. Because I missed the initial introduction, I was not able to gather more information on the user. I suspect he was known to other members previously although this room is titled newbies, because other people ended their screen names with "y's", but that may be a popular trend I am not aware of. However, many people showed some knowledge of ICQ chat program by using "action commands" which announced the user's customized actions, such as giving someone a lolly pop. I felt out of place in this space, and suspect negative opinions were influenced my judgment on xchristmasy.
On the scale for neuroticism, I scaled xchristmasy high, because I considered discussing details of divorce and childcare situation with strangers in a chat room with no specific topic, abnormal. He sounded extremely extroverted, as he addressed others friendly and responded with ease. In comparison to my view, other users found him highly agreeable. His story was met with sympathy and his actions with approval. When he decided to exit, many users "gave hugs" with cute smiley symbols. I viewed his conscientiousness low, because he was critical of his wife having visitation rights.
My experience supported Hyperpersonality Model. I also only heard about his divorce, not his positive experiences or characters. His attempt to portray himself a victim irritated me. With limited cues, his usage of a mixture of bold bright blue and regular lavender font played a role on my opinion-formation. I felt prejudiced against a middle-age male spending time on decorating his fonts instead on weekday afternoons.
Our other selves living in spaces.live.com
I revealed something interesting when I asked my friends about one of the services that windows offered: windows live spaces. Most of my Chinese friends used it a lot, while almost all of my American friends don’t know about it. Windows live space is like a personal blog, which can be obtained by anyone who has a windows live account. People can decorate their spaces with background music, self-design background style, photo albums, blogs entries (which mostly are used for diaries) and things alike. People who visit other’s spaces can leave comments.
Using my windows live space as my online digital diary, I am quite familiar with these special asynchronical, persistent, optionally anonymous (you can choose whether or not if your name will show up on the comments you made) psychological spaces on the net, and I decided to observe a target from this network. It’s not hard to find a person that I never know before; I quickly enter a space named: “Fang’s secret garden”, via my friends’ friend list.
The background color is black, and the music is light classic piano, which reveals a hint of sadness. This gives me an impression that the master of this “garden” is a quiet, young, Chinese (the version of this Live Space is Chinese) girl, whose name might be “Fang”. As girls are more likely to put their photos in the albums in live spaces, I find the albums and quickly proved that I am right about her gender, race, and approximate age. As one of her albums named “first day of work”, in which she is sitting in a large sofa in a meeting room, I made a quick guess that she’s class of 07, and is already an office lady now.
For blog posts, most people, like me, use them like diaries and post stories of themselves. Sometimes I doubt who will read my stupid stories and have interest in my newly bought shoes and clothes…anyways, Fang’s posts are mostly about her daily life stories and her feelings. She wants to own a cat; she thinks one of her friends is isolating her for no reason which annoyed her a lot; her sister gave birth to a baby, and she is really happy for her…
Given more time, I believe that I can picture a routine life of a normal girl, but I have to say that by “listening” to her stories, I begin to like this normal girl. All those feeling-presences give me a warm feeling about Fang, and make me feel close to her and her life, which I doubt if I can get from FtF. She is a little bit neuroticism (she is sensitive about other’s feeling towards her); she is quit open about her life and feelings; she is agreeable and supportive, she is always willing to help others…
I think my observation make more sense under hyperpersonal model. People choose the aspects that they’d like to present to others, and pay more attention to their minds, feelings and thoughts. This selective self-presentation may cause over-attribution process as people might be too concern about certain aspects of themselves. But the various resources of information in live space: background style, music, photos…may help visitors get a more complete image about this person. The comments system offers behavioral confirmation from other people… I cant tell in this case which way of communication would offer more information: In FtF, maybe we can know better about how this person smile, how her voice sounds…, but will we be aware of what is in her mind while she is smiling?
Using my windows live space as my online digital diary, I am quite familiar with these special asynchronical, persistent, optionally anonymous (you can choose whether or not if your name will show up on the comments you made) psychological spaces on the net, and I decided to observe a target from this network. It’s not hard to find a person that I never know before; I quickly enter a space named: “Fang’s secret garden”, via my friends’ friend list.
The background color is black, and the music is light classic piano, which reveals a hint of sadness. This gives me an impression that the master of this “garden” is a quiet, young, Chinese (the version of this Live Space is Chinese) girl, whose name might be “Fang”. As girls are more likely to put their photos in the albums in live spaces, I find the albums and quickly proved that I am right about her gender, race, and approximate age. As one of her albums named “first day of work”, in which she is sitting in a large sofa in a meeting room, I made a quick guess that she’s class of 07, and is already an office lady now.
For blog posts, most people, like me, use them like diaries and post stories of themselves. Sometimes I doubt who will read my stupid stories and have interest in my newly bought shoes and clothes…anyways, Fang’s posts are mostly about her daily life stories and her feelings. She wants to own a cat; she thinks one of her friends is isolating her for no reason which annoyed her a lot; her sister gave birth to a baby, and she is really happy for her…
Given more time, I believe that I can picture a routine life of a normal girl, but I have to say that by “listening” to her stories, I begin to like this normal girl. All those feeling-presences give me a warm feeling about Fang, and make me feel close to her and her life, which I doubt if I can get from FtF. She is a little bit neuroticism (she is sensitive about other’s feeling towards her); she is quit open about her life and feelings; she is agreeable and supportive, she is always willing to help others…
I think my observation make more sense under hyperpersonal model. People choose the aspects that they’d like to present to others, and pay more attention to their minds, feelings and thoughts. This selective self-presentation may cause over-attribution process as people might be too concern about certain aspects of themselves. But the various resources of information in live space: background style, music, photos…may help visitors get a more complete image about this person. The comments system offers behavioral confirmation from other people… I cant tell in this case which way of communication would offer more information: In FtF, maybe we can know better about how this person smile, how her voice sounds…, but will we be aware of what is in her mind while she is smiling?
ESPN Fantasy Football 101
A close friend, visiting from out of town, signed up for his first game of ESPN Fantasy Football. Unbeknown to me, I decided to sit and watch the all-important Draft to learn about the popular virtual sport. Sander, my friend, explained to me the basic premise: A person starts a league, becoming the League Creator, and invites friends to join their league. The team creator in this case was Allison, a friend’s sister whom Sander has never met before. After accepting the email invitation to join the “Click Clack II” league, Sander logged on to espn.com where he followed the link to the Fantasy Football page, created an account, and then created a name for his personal team, the “South Park Cows.” Each player within a Click Clack II league drafts a team of fifteen players (8 offensive, 1 defensive, and 6 backup players). The players then look at what teams are playing on a given weekend (based on actual football games) along side what players they have drafted and pick 5 players to “start”. These are the 5 players that they think will perform best during the games and who the will accrue points for that week. Each league member is given points for every good play their starting players make. At the end of the football season the league player with the most points wins the game.
Just before the scheduled Draft, Sander and his friends logged onto the website and went into a private room where they would draft available football players. Within the window is chat room where they can interact before, during, and just after the Draft. In the beginning, conversation among the players/friends is friendly and casual. While everyone personally knew at least one other player, not everyone knew everyone else. When one player made a reference to smoking marijuana, he was quickly and reprimanded by other players who knew that there was a more mature member of the league in the chat room. As the draft began the players put on their poker faces in an effort to mislead others about their top draft picks, thus creating a competitive yet still playful atmosphere. When the system started freezing and other glitches became apparent, messing up everyone’s top draft picks, the players became frustrated and anxious. Despite the frustration, there was no fighting. The Draft concluded and the players quickly logged off, saying their goodbyes and complimenting others on their draft picks.
The interaction I observed was different from any theories we’ve discussed. While there were environments outlined by Wallace such as email, synchronous chats, and asynchronous forums, the game itself was all together different from any that Wallace discussed. Because everyone in the group was considered a friend there was no lying, real fighting, sexist comments, or any behavior out of the ordinary. Even with a female present in the group there was not the slightest hint of special treatment. Sander explained that this was probably because she was both a friend’s sister and because she was the League Commissioner who has the power to veto anyone’s draft pick(s) and trades. Ultimately, a theory developed to accommodate this online space and its psychological elements is in order.
Just before the scheduled Draft, Sander and his friends logged onto the website and went into a private room where they would draft available football players. Within the window is chat room where they can interact before, during, and just after the Draft. In the beginning, conversation among the players/friends is friendly and casual. While everyone personally knew at least one other player, not everyone knew everyone else. When one player made a reference to smoking marijuana, he was quickly and reprimanded by other players who knew that there was a more mature member of the league in the chat room. As the draft began the players put on their poker faces in an effort to mislead others about their top draft picks, thus creating a competitive yet still playful atmosphere. When the system started freezing and other glitches became apparent, messing up everyone’s top draft picks, the players became frustrated and anxious. Despite the frustration, there was no fighting. The Draft concluded and the players quickly logged off, saying their goodbyes and complimenting others on their draft picks.
The interaction I observed was different from any theories we’ve discussed. While there were environments outlined by Wallace such as email, synchronous chats, and asynchronous forums, the game itself was all together different from any that Wallace discussed. Because everyone in the group was considered a friend there was no lying, real fighting, sexist comments, or any behavior out of the ordinary. Even with a female present in the group there was not the slightest hint of special treatment. Sander explained that this was probably because she was both a friend’s sister and because she was the League Commissioner who has the power to veto anyone’s draft pick(s) and trades. Ultimately, a theory developed to accommodate this online space and its psychological elements is in order.
online first impression
Synchronous online environments have never been appealing to me. After a few brief stints in AOL chats rooms with my middle school girlfriends, I decided that online chat rooms were an environment that I did not want to be a part of. While asynchronous environments (facebook, email) are an integral part of my everyday routine, they pretty much limit my social use of the Internet. So for this assignment I decided that I would return to an online chat room and see how my opinion might change. Since my knowledge of how to join and online chat room is minimal, at best, I decided to simply Google search “chat rooms” and see what I could come up with. To my surprise, it was difficult to enter a live chat! Most websites required that I put in a lot of personal information that I was unwilling to provide. One site even took me through five pages of questions (to which I generally lied) and not until the last page did it ask for credit card information (despite calling itself free-chat.com). Finally, I stumbled upon a chat room where the only required information was a desired screenname, date of birth, and email. The anonymity was important in my search for a place to meet an individual online.
I entered the college chat group on chat-avenue.com, and found myself immediately bombarded by a rapidly flowing conversation between several individuals who all seemed to understand what was going on while I had no clue. After several failed attempts to join the conversation with common introductions such as “Hi everybody, how are you all?” I finally decided to throw a somewhat lewd comment into the conversation to see what kind of response I would get. Immediately many of the obviously male screennames responded to me, and shortly thereafter I received more than 1 invitation for a private chat. I have to admit that my middle school impression of chat rooms was pretty spot on. I decided to accept a chat with Cartman, who had been responsive to my suggestions in the group chat, but not overwhelmingly inappropriate.
My initial impression of Cartman was skeptical because of the environment in which we met: Sunday night at midnight in a free Internet chat room. I suppose I wouldn’t take anybody I met in such a space seriously. However he seemed open and enthusiastic about learning about my personality. We immediately bonded over a shared knowledge of the French language, but his responses to my chat would get scarce when I asked questions about him. He was perfectly willing to learn about me, but not too willing to share about himself. In this sense, I didn’t consider him particularly open or extraverted. He was, however, very agreeable. After changing the subject when I, early in the conversation, asked for his age, he later asked for my age to which I truthfully responded 21. He immediately responded “21! Me too!” When I immediately told him I didn’t believe it, he responded “You’re right. But I am old Katie.” He certainly was trying to appease whatever I had to say. He displayed a certain level of conscientiousness once I discovered he was inappropriately chatting in a college chat room, but not before that point, when he eagerly responded to any lewd or sexual comments with enthusiasm.
Although I only spoke with Cartman for about 45 minutes, my impression of his personality was more in line with the CFO prediction than any other theoretical perspective. The very limited range of discussion and his unwillingness to honestly answer my questions didn’t anger me, but rather made be neutral to the subject, and uninterested in continuing the conversation. My overall experience was not one that I am eager to repeat. Although I do consider certain online interactions essential in my daily life, chat rooms are certainly not one of them. I truly believe that face-to-face interaction is a much more important social skill to master.
I entered the college chat group on chat-avenue.com, and found myself immediately bombarded by a rapidly flowing conversation between several individuals who all seemed to understand what was going on while I had no clue. After several failed attempts to join the conversation with common introductions such as “Hi everybody, how are you all?” I finally decided to throw a somewhat lewd comment into the conversation to see what kind of response I would get. Immediately many of the obviously male screennames responded to me, and shortly thereafter I received more than 1 invitation for a private chat. I have to admit that my middle school impression of chat rooms was pretty spot on. I decided to accept a chat with Cartman, who had been responsive to my suggestions in the group chat, but not overwhelmingly inappropriate.
My initial impression of Cartman was skeptical because of the environment in which we met: Sunday night at midnight in a free Internet chat room. I suppose I wouldn’t take anybody I met in such a space seriously. However he seemed open and enthusiastic about learning about my personality. We immediately bonded over a shared knowledge of the French language, but his responses to my chat would get scarce when I asked questions about him. He was perfectly willing to learn about me, but not too willing to share about himself. In this sense, I didn’t consider him particularly open or extraverted. He was, however, very agreeable. After changing the subject when I, early in the conversation, asked for his age, he later asked for my age to which I truthfully responded 21. He immediately responded “21! Me too!” When I immediately told him I didn’t believe it, he responded “You’re right. But I am old Katie.” He certainly was trying to appease whatever I had to say. He displayed a certain level of conscientiousness once I discovered he was inappropriately chatting in a college chat room, but not before that point, when he eagerly responded to any lewd or sexual comments with enthusiasm.
Although I only spoke with Cartman for about 45 minutes, my impression of his personality was more in line with the CFO prediction than any other theoretical perspective. The very limited range of discussion and his unwillingness to honestly answer my questions didn’t anger me, but rather made be neutral to the subject, and uninterested in continuing the conversation. My overall experience was not one that I am eager to repeat. Although I do consider certain online interactions essential in my daily life, chat rooms are certainly not one of them. I truly believe that face-to-face interaction is a much more important social skill to master.
big_mike and my strange chatting experience
I entered an online chat room, a synchronous psychological space on September 3rd, 2007. It was quite a different experience than I had ever been used to. The chat was near synchronous, as there was minimal time lag, there was little persistence (words were evanescent, and there was little record of past conversations), and a person could be completely anonymous I googled “chat” and logged in to the first chat room website I found. It was a chat room called “College Chat”, which sounded relevant enough for me to find a “target” to chat with that I would have something in common with. I used my first name as a nickname and within seconds of entering the room, I found 7 or 8 chat users private messaging me asking for “asl” or “age, sex and location”. It became apparent after a few minutes that the only person willing to have conversation besides those who only wished to exchange pictures or talk by webcam was a user by the name of big_mike, a college student in Michigan.
big_mike, presumably male, is a Caucasian 19 year old sophomore from Grand Valley State in Michigan. He grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan and liked swimming, listening to music and meeting new people. He is not religiously affiliated, but was baptized and does not identify with any particular political party or ideology. He expressed his interest in taking up crew at his university due to his 6’4” height (and the reason for his nickname).
I perceived big_mike as being warm from the outset since he was one of the first to private message me “hey” and then “i [sic] like your name.” He seemed very good- natured even as I questioned his motives of him being in the chatroom, saying “i [sic] just like to meet new people.” In terms of the Big 5 personality traits, I didn’t know much about his neuroticism by talking to him, but I assumed he must be very neurotic. The over-attribution process under the Hyperpersonal Model, lead me to believe that the lack of data (we never talked about any negative feelings or emotions) didn’t convince me he wasn’t neurotic. I over-attributed neuroticism to encompass all the people in the college chat room. Since the people in the room wanted to meet new people, and they were in college, I was confused on why they needed to talk to random people on the internet when they could step outside their room and meet many college students like themselves. This negative view was a stereotype of all the chatters who I assumed to be extremely neurotic. Since there were less cues (none of us talked about anything too deep into our personalities), this lead me to make more judgments and therefore more extreme stereotypes about the people in the room I was talking to, especially big_mike. The over-attribution theory explained many intense opinions I formed about big_mike, such as extraversion (probably not, in real life since he seemed to be in the CMC environment in order to talk and “meet new people”), and openness (if he was in the chat room environment where users were eager to exchange information about themselves, he must be pretty open). I thought he was also moderately agreeable since he had no big opinions on religion or politics, and merely liked to watch sports and listen to music. As for conscientiousness, I didn’t have enough information to make a decision on that aspect of his personality. However, when I was hesitant to disclose information about myself, he said “its okay i don’t like telling people my information too sometimes.”
In my opinion, the Hyperpersonal model, especially the over-attribution process contributed more to my attitude formation than the CFO Perspective or the SIP process. Although I did have some neutral, underdeveloped impressions of big_mike, who I perceived to be bland, introverted, neurotic, unintelligent and socially inept, the over-attribution process contributed more to this probably exaggeration of big_mike. Our conversation failed to convince me otherwise, that like many other chatters in the college chatroom, his need to “meet new people” through a CMC environment confirmed certain intense traits about his personality.
I seriosuly question the motives of those who go to the internet to talk to random people while they are at college, an environment where meeting new people involves walking out the door.
big_mike, presumably male, is a Caucasian 19 year old sophomore from Grand Valley State in Michigan. He grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan and liked swimming, listening to music and meeting new people. He is not religiously affiliated, but was baptized and does not identify with any particular political party or ideology. He expressed his interest in taking up crew at his university due to his 6’4” height (and the reason for his nickname).
I perceived big_mike as being warm from the outset since he was one of the first to private message me “hey” and then “i [sic] like your name.” He seemed very good- natured even as I questioned his motives of him being in the chatroom, saying “i [sic] just like to meet new people.” In terms of the Big 5 personality traits, I didn’t know much about his neuroticism by talking to him, but I assumed he must be very neurotic. The over-attribution process under the Hyperpersonal Model, lead me to believe that the lack of data (we never talked about any negative feelings or emotions) didn’t convince me he wasn’t neurotic. I over-attributed neuroticism to encompass all the people in the college chat room. Since the people in the room wanted to meet new people, and they were in college, I was confused on why they needed to talk to random people on the internet when they could step outside their room and meet many college students like themselves. This negative view was a stereotype of all the chatters who I assumed to be extremely neurotic. Since there were less cues (none of us talked about anything too deep into our personalities), this lead me to make more judgments and therefore more extreme stereotypes about the people in the room I was talking to, especially big_mike. The over-attribution theory explained many intense opinions I formed about big_mike, such as extraversion (probably not, in real life since he seemed to be in the CMC environment in order to talk and “meet new people”), and openness (if he was in the chat room environment where users were eager to exchange information about themselves, he must be pretty open). I thought he was also moderately agreeable since he had no big opinions on religion or politics, and merely liked to watch sports and listen to music. As for conscientiousness, I didn’t have enough information to make a decision on that aspect of his personality. However, when I was hesitant to disclose information about myself, he said “its okay i don’t like telling people my information too sometimes.”
In my opinion, the Hyperpersonal model, especially the over-attribution process contributed more to my attitude formation than the CFO Perspective or the SIP process. Although I did have some neutral, underdeveloped impressions of big_mike, who I perceived to be bland, introverted, neurotic, unintelligent and socially inept, the over-attribution process contributed more to this probably exaggeration of big_mike. Our conversation failed to convince me otherwise, that like many other chatters in the college chatroom, his need to “meet new people” through a CMC environment confirmed certain intense traits about his personality.
I seriosuly question the motives of those who go to the internet to talk to random people while they are at college, an environment where meeting new people involves walking out the door.
#2: chatroom impressions
I’m not completely new to the chatrooms, so I knew more or less how to go about meeting people and starting chats with them. Nonetheless, I am always a bit caught off guard by the blunt way people communicate in the chatrooms, especially in a private message. The most one can get is a “hello” before the other party “cuts to the chase” and pops the question “ASL?” I can understand this brusqueness a bit better now, after that this course brought to my attention that people assess the ASL? question within a fraction of a second in FtF situations. This question sets the standards for our tone and choice of topics and words in the conversation. And I always find it a bit funny that people accept the answers to this question without much thought. The “truth bias” is a key part of the mentality here: even though they know you may be supplying them with a false answer, people want to trust you anyway. Also, there is basically no way for them to verify the answer, so they can only take you as what you say you are. Such “blind trust” is unimaginable in FtF conversations, but it is the norm in online chatrooms. It’s almost a part of an implicit agreement when you enter a chatroom.
Under these circumstances, I received a private message from Rocko, a guy in his 20s from Australia. The identity part is quite useless, since it can be entirely false. But I asked anyway, because it gives the other party a chance to select their self-presentation, to pick who they want to be in this conversation. My impression of him is that he’s a fairly extraverted person, adventurous, easy-going, who doesn’t necessarily give too much thought to his conscience. That seems a harsh thing to say about a person after the initial encounter, but that’s definitely the feeling I got from him.
Which puts this pretty neatly into the Hyperpersonal model. I definitely can’t imagine clearly how he would react in a large variety of situations, but I feel I have a pretty good mental picture of him in certain aspects. He probably doesn’t care much for academic performance in school, probably has quite a few friends but doesn’t stand out much in a large crowd. Some facets of personality are very clear (intensity) while others are completely missing (breadth).
And it’s interesting how his impression of me oscillated from one extreme to the other as our conversation progressed. “Wow, that’s wild. I’ve never known a girl who liked it” when we were talking about music and “Hmm, you sound prudish” when we started talking about school. FYI, I’ve never been called prudish in my life.
Overall, it was a nice experience because it showed me the theories actually work in some cases. I was quite surprised that our impressions played out the way like one of the models predicted. And that there’s actually psychology involved when you enter a chatroom.Assignment #2: Chatrooms & Myspace!
One evening I logged onto the website meebo.com and quickly located a chatroom titled, “Chat & Everything Else!” with 36 participants. I entered the room with using my net id (jrn25) as my room name. I was rather amazed by the various features I observed. It seemed as though the 36 participants each choose to all use different font styles and colors. I made the preconceived notion that these colors and font styles somehow related to each of the individuals’ personality types, preferences, likings, etc. I was also impressed by the multiple conversations taking place. It was very confusing to keep up with all of them! Feeling the urge to be more than an observer, I decided to get involved with the conversations. I typed, “Hey guys!” just to see if I got a response. At first the participants seemed to ignore my text and continued their own conversations. But then suddenly I noticed a response in a bright green and bold font. That was when my conversation with Ryan began.
“Hello there, JRN!” was the response I receive from the handle “Sutton_Dude.” I quickly responded with a friendly “Hello!” followed by a smiley face. I was suddenly asked if I would like to join this individual in a private conversation, to which I agreed. The conversation started off with “Sutton_Dude” asking where I am located, my name, and how am I doing. After answering I asked the same. “Sutton_Dude” typed, “Here’s the link to my MySpace page… it pretty much sums me up!” After viewing the MySpace page and chatting more in the private room, I was able to form an impression of “Sutton_Dude” (who I learned is actually a 20 year old named Ryan from Sutton, TN) using the “Big 5” personality categories:
Conscientiousness: Everything Ryan had to say in the chatroom seemed very well-thought out and properly phrased. His MySpace page expressed an interest in achieving higher educational goals and striving for excellence in life.
Agreeableness: Ryan right away came off as a very agreeable and socially pleasant person. His messages where often followed by exclamation marks and happy emoticons. He seemed to show a sincere effort in striking a strong and interesting conversation.
Neuroticism: Though it was difficult to conclude based on the chatroom text alone, Ryan’s MySpace page presented the notion that he is emotionally stable. He seemed rather upbeat and generally content. His blogs showed little sign of bothersome; they seemed to focus on the positive aspects of his life and that of those around him.
Openness: His font and text was that of bright green and his use of emoticons hinted that he was creative or imaginative. The layout of his MySpace page also seemed very colorful and cheery.
Extraversion: My first hint that Ryan was an extravert was the fact that he was the one that initiated the conversation. He showed a sense of interest in others and a liking of engaging in conversations with new people.
Using the “Big 5” traits and the chatroom/MySpace interaction, I was able to create a general impression of Ryan. I assumed him to be an open and accepting guy who likes to have fun and meet others socially. The hyperpersonal model best fits my impressions because I was able to form a strong sense of who he is and his personality without having much breadth in characteristics or details. However, my chatroom conversation also provided me with behavioral confirmation. The details on his MySpace also provided me with cues and facts about his life that I would not have been able to know via the chatroom alone. Though the cues in the chatroom were strong indicators of his personality, those cues were not enough to give hint of certain things, such as his likes & dislikes or even his sexual orientation.
After completing my “experiment” I realized that though it may not be the best form of communication, one can definitely form strong impressions of others using connectors such as chatrooms. Though these impressions may not be initially correct, there are other ways of learning more (i.e. MySpace) and confirming behavioral and personality traits!
-Joshua Navarro
“Hello there, JRN!” was the response I receive from the handle “Sutton_Dude.” I quickly responded with a friendly “Hello!” followed by a smiley face. I was suddenly asked if I would like to join this individual in a private conversation, to which I agreed. The conversation started off with “Sutton_Dude” asking where I am located, my name, and how am I doing. After answering I asked the same. “Sutton_Dude” typed, “Here’s the link to my MySpace page… it pretty much sums me up!” After viewing the MySpace page and chatting more in the private room, I was able to form an impression of “Sutton_Dude” (who I learned is actually a 20 year old named Ryan from Sutton, TN) using the “Big 5” personality categories:
Conscientiousness: Everything Ryan had to say in the chatroom seemed very well-thought out and properly phrased. His MySpace page expressed an interest in achieving higher educational goals and striving for excellence in life.
Agreeableness: Ryan right away came off as a very agreeable and socially pleasant person. His messages where often followed by exclamation marks and happy emoticons. He seemed to show a sincere effort in striking a strong and interesting conversation.
Neuroticism: Though it was difficult to conclude based on the chatroom text alone, Ryan’s MySpace page presented the notion that he is emotionally stable. He seemed rather upbeat and generally content. His blogs showed little sign of bothersome; they seemed to focus on the positive aspects of his life and that of those around him.
Openness: His font and text was that of bright green and his use of emoticons hinted that he was creative or imaginative. The layout of his MySpace page also seemed very colorful and cheery.
Extraversion: My first hint that Ryan was an extravert was the fact that he was the one that initiated the conversation. He showed a sense of interest in others and a liking of engaging in conversations with new people.
Using the “Big 5” traits and the chatroom/MySpace interaction, I was able to create a general impression of Ryan. I assumed him to be an open and accepting guy who likes to have fun and meet others socially. The hyperpersonal model best fits my impressions because I was able to form a strong sense of who he is and his personality without having much breadth in characteristics or details. However, my chatroom conversation also provided me with behavioral confirmation. The details on his MySpace also provided me with cues and facts about his life that I would not have been able to know via the chatroom alone. Though the cues in the chatroom were strong indicators of his personality, those cues were not enough to give hint of certain things, such as his likes & dislikes or even his sexual orientation.
After completing my “experiment” I realized that though it may not be the best form of communication, one can definitely form strong impressions of others using connectors such as chatrooms. Though these impressions may not be initially correct, there are other ways of learning more (i.e. MySpace) and confirming behavioral and personality traits!
-Joshua Navarro
#2 - synchronous chats
For this week’s assignment, I entered the synchronous chats as “chatsq” and received a private message from “ayseema”. The chat room itself moved incredibly quick, in accordance with Wallace’s description. Other characteristics of the environment involving synchronicity, persistence, and anonymity were as follows:
Synchronicity: highly synchronous. Often three to four discussions took place simultaneously with responses with in seconds.
Persistence: older dialogue disappeared as new responses were entered. The space was highly evanescent with high recordlessness
Anonymity: the chat was highly anonymous by default, but based on personal user discretion, the space allowed increased visibility, audibility and self-expression through the use of web cameras, profile information, avatars, and font color.
After the inital "Hello", I immediately learned my target’s Age/Sex/Location (a/s/l). He stated himself to be m/34/aussie. My impression of him immediately formed using these social categories. After further discussion, he claimed to be a mechanic originally from India now at Australia for four years. Within less than two minutes, my visual representation of him changed drastically with only information of basic social categories.
By the end of the discussion I did not have a clear idea of who “ayseema” was but had a general feeling of his big 5 traits:
Neuroticism: low. “ayseema” seemed very relaxed and apt at handling stress. He talked about working for a longer time in order to become more successful with little anxiety.
Extraversion: unknown; could not say. I was not able form a clear opinion in regards to his extraversion.
Agreeableness: high. “ayseema” wrote many complements and notes of encouragement. He responded well to jokes and responded openly to questions.
Conscientiousness: unknown. I could not form a clear opinion in this regard, though we did talk about success but was not in depth.
Openness: medium. “ayseema” seemed apt to new experiences and learning more about a variety of topics.
Based on these traits, I had a vague impression of “ayseema with a relaxed overall state. Through verbal cues, my target did not use any emoticons or symbols but used “u” for you and “kewl” for cool. Through interpersonal probes I learned his ASL which I also disclosed as well as his origins, intended career, and hobbies. It was hard to determine whether any answers he provided were indeed true, and I was on the lookout to detect deception from the start.
In terms of theory, my experience in synchronous chats included a variety of factors from several theories. I had a vague overall impression of my target that did seem more enhanced as he gave more cutes, much like the Social Presence Theory. The lack of a variety of cues through CMC did lead me to be harsher and show less etiquette when talking to “ayseema” which follows the Reduced Social Context Cues. Finally, my interaction with “ayseema” supported elements of the Hyperpersonal Theory in regards to the fact I focused on what I thought about his words, created more intense impressions when he described his origins and career, and after I revealed I was a student with the intention of becoming a banker, he began to emphasize his interest in the news and finance. More portrayal of behavioral confirmation ocurred as he labeled himself "us poor guys," and he became more condescending of his own position.
My impression was more in line with the CFO perspective: low breadth, low intensity. Most of the big five traits listed above were with little certainty and gathered from a single response. My impression of “ayseema” did not feel exaggerated.
Gay chat room
For this assignment, I, like most of the students in Comm 245, chose a chat room as my psychological space on the internet. This space was the most popular among students because of its ability to allow synchronous conversations to take place. I also chose this type of online psychological space because I felt that it would be the most effective way to form impressions of others. I decided to enter a chat room with a specific title to see if my preconceived notions about others, based on the type of chat room they were in, would affect my overall impression of those individuals. This may sound rather odd, but I made a choice to enter a gay chat room. That decision was not based on my own sexual orientation; instead, I chose a chat room in which most people assume that inappropriate sexual behavior is the only topic of discussion. What if this belief was really just an over generalized stereotype about gay men? So, although it was a bit awkward, I pushed myself to step outside of my comfort zone and enter the gay chat room.
After speaking to many people in the general chat room, I entered into a private chat with a man claiming to be from Saratoga in New York, although I am not quite sure where that is. The beginning of our conversation seemed to follow a predictable sequence. He asked my age which I said was 26 and he then revealed to me that he was 35. I was pleasantly surprised to see that not all men in gay chat rooms were looking for sex. My impression immediately changed, however, when I asked the man about his interests and he replied with a crude, sexual remark. I then wondered, had this man simply been preserving himself until he felt comfortable enough to begin “dirty talk” or was he initially expressing his true self but then altered his speech when he thought I was being “suggestive” by asking him about his interests? If the latter were the case, this would be an example of behavioral confirmation. Since it is a generalized belief that gay chat rooms are meant for sexual discussions, this man may have assumed that I was thinking along those lines and felt pressured to confirm my supposed assumption.
Either way, I could not help but feel as though my generalizations had been proved right from this experience. My attempt to go into a gay chat room with an open mind failed immediately when that stereotype was confirmed. Therefore, I feel that my impression was in line with the hyperpersonal model because I could not help but over generalize and form potentially exaggerated views of this man simply based on his brief, yet explicit response to my question about his interests.
After speaking to many people in the general chat room, I entered into a private chat with a man claiming to be from Saratoga in New York, although I am not quite sure where that is. The beginning of our conversation seemed to follow a predictable sequence. He asked my age which I said was 26 and he then revealed to me that he was 35. I was pleasantly surprised to see that not all men in gay chat rooms were looking for sex. My impression immediately changed, however, when I asked the man about his interests and he replied with a crude, sexual remark. I then wondered, had this man simply been preserving himself until he felt comfortable enough to begin “dirty talk” or was he initially expressing his true self but then altered his speech when he thought I was being “suggestive” by asking him about his interests? If the latter were the case, this would be an example of behavioral confirmation. Since it is a generalized belief that gay chat rooms are meant for sexual discussions, this man may have assumed that I was thinking along those lines and felt pressured to confirm my supposed assumption.
Either way, I could not help but feel as though my generalizations had been proved right from this experience. My attempt to go into a gay chat room with an open mind failed immediately when that stereotype was confirmed. Therefore, I feel that my impression was in line with the hyperpersonal model because I could not help but over generalize and form potentially exaggerated views of this man simply based on his brief, yet explicit response to my question about his interests.
Strange Convo (Assignment 2)
The best and most obvious psychological space on the Internet that offered the most convenient way of interacting with other users is probably the chatroom. As I quickly skimmed the other blogs, it seemed like others would agree. Having not chatted since junior high, I could only count on Google to provide some easy, quick chatrooms. I skipped the ones that required registration; too much of a hassle and handover of information. So I found myself on ICQ’s chat site and promptly entered the 20 somethings room (though at 20, I felt a bit young for that). Picking a simple, unrevealing name was quite important, since I wanted to give the impression that I was there for chatting and didn’t want any potential predator to gather anything from that name. In the end I chose tennisfan.
I was wrong. As soon as I entered the room and typed a quick “hi”, there were several private messages from suspicious sounding names. One person immediately asked for my ASL(actually pretty much everyone there asked that question first and foremost) and without offering any information back, invited me to roleplay. He stopped talking to me right after I asked what it was. The chatroom itself wasn’t very easy to use. In fact, it looked visually messy, with numerous people joining and leaving at a fast rate. That made it hard to communicate in the main room since reading what others type was strenuous, so probably most of the users were involved in private chats.
After browsing through the list of users, I found someone with a username that had the word “gentleman” in it so I messaged him and hoped for the best. We actually had a cordial greeting, followed by the usual “asl” asking. And then I found out he was a 30 year old man (or so he said), which was rather strange considering this room was for “20 somethings”. I would’ve discontinued the conversation if he hadn’t kept asking questions and then replying in a very mature, thoughtful manner. So I decided to let this icky factor pass and chat with him for a bit. He turned out to be a good conversationalist at least, asking about my job, hobbies, and such. Supposedly he’s currently a grad student, who looks 25 according to others, very neat, a good cook, and too busy to find that “special” someone. That was unexpected.
This person was definitely very open about his life, if he was telling the truth. He spoke about his education, his likes/dislikes, where he lived and how he lived. He even added an extra spiel about the immature people who come to chatrooms to roleplay >.> In fact, there wasn’t any question he seemed to shy away from, and he always responded in that same careful, and increasingly light-hearted way. My online impression of this “gentleman” followed the Hyperpersonal model, with a bit of SIP since if he told the truth, gradually I would know much more about him. On the other hand, there was definitely some selective self-presentation going on, since he appeared to be so perfect and the ideal guy, who was just too busy to find his Ms. Right. Behaviour confirmation was also present. For example, when I first referred to his username, his typing manner improved greatly, and he would add extra factors to his character if I complimented him. By the end, he acted so considerate that it was hard to believe that he was weird person browsing through the wrong chatroom. However, after the chat, I don’t feel like I know him well, just the numerous favourable traits that he showed me, and emphasized, so that was all that I knew him by.
I was wrong. As soon as I entered the room and typed a quick “hi”, there were several private messages from suspicious sounding names. One person immediately asked for my ASL(actually pretty much everyone there asked that question first and foremost) and without offering any information back, invited me to roleplay. He stopped talking to me right after I asked what it was. The chatroom itself wasn’t very easy to use. In fact, it looked visually messy, with numerous people joining and leaving at a fast rate. That made it hard to communicate in the main room since reading what others type was strenuous, so probably most of the users were involved in private chats.
After browsing through the list of users, I found someone with a username that had the word “gentleman” in it so I messaged him and hoped for the best. We actually had a cordial greeting, followed by the usual “asl” asking. And then I found out he was a 30 year old man (or so he said), which was rather strange considering this room was for “20 somethings”. I would’ve discontinued the conversation if he hadn’t kept asking questions and then replying in a very mature, thoughtful manner. So I decided to let this icky factor pass and chat with him for a bit. He turned out to be a good conversationalist at least, asking about my job, hobbies, and such. Supposedly he’s currently a grad student, who looks 25 according to others, very neat, a good cook, and too busy to find that “special” someone. That was unexpected.
This person was definitely very open about his life, if he was telling the truth. He spoke about his education, his likes/dislikes, where he lived and how he lived. He even added an extra spiel about the immature people who come to chatrooms to roleplay >.> In fact, there wasn’t any question he seemed to shy away from, and he always responded in that same careful, and increasingly light-hearted way. My online impression of this “gentleman” followed the Hyperpersonal model, with a bit of SIP since if he told the truth, gradually I would know much more about him. On the other hand, there was definitely some selective self-presentation going on, since he appeared to be so perfect and the ideal guy, who was just too busy to find his Ms. Right. Behaviour confirmation was also present. For example, when I first referred to his username, his typing manner improved greatly, and he would add extra factors to his character if I complimented him. By the end, he acted so considerate that it was hard to believe that he was weird person browsing through the wrong chatroom. However, after the chat, I don’t feel like I know him well, just the numerous favourable traits that he showed me, and emphasized, so that was all that I knew him by.
Talking to Tia
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.
Online chat assignment
Omitting online dating, one of the best ways to meet someone online is by talking on real time in chat rooms. Having not been in a chat room since my tween and early teen years, I was not sure what type of chat room to enter and what to talk about other than the typical age, sex, and gender. My friends and I used to go into the AOL chat rooms and find people to talk to, whether we were talking to them as ourselves or as completely different people, which is a large fear of talking to strangers online. So this is exactly what I did again; because I have not been in a chat room in about eight years, I decided to play it safe by going into a kids chat room so as to avoid any teens with problems needing to open up or singles looking for a mate. The first chat room that I entered was not age appropriate, so after searching for another site I ended up on www.kidschat.net.
When first joining in as a 13 year old girl from Chicago, the conversations were slightly dull and uneventful; however, after I started talking to a 13 year old boy, Jared, from Florida about TV and movies, I found my original impressions of online chat rooms to be different than I had expected. I expected my impressions of people to follow the Social Identification / Deindividuation model by allowing myself to make over attributions and inferences about people based on minimal information. I assumed that many of the boys in this chat room and many of the girls in this chat room would be stereotyped in the same categories based on the lack of information and communication. He turned out to be a very nice boy. We began discussing our favorite movies TV shows and books; I was even able to convince him to admit, although he was embarrassed to do so, that he loves the Harry Potter series. We talked about movies and TV and even our favorite and lease favorite subjects in school until I told him that my mother called me down for dinner.
What I found out as I kept talking to Jared is that only some aspects of him did I form impressions based on the SIDE model. I formed impressions on other aspects of Jared’s, like his views of movies and TV, based on the Social Information Processing theory. The parts of his life in which I actually took the time to talk to him about helped me develop my own social impression of him and not just use social heuristics based on the typical 13 year old boy from Florida to form an impression of him.
When first joining in as a 13 year old girl from Chicago, the conversations were slightly dull and uneventful; however, after I started talking to a 13 year old boy, Jared, from Florida about TV and movies, I found my original impressions of online chat rooms to be different than I had expected. I expected my impressions of people to follow the Social Identification / Deindividuation model by allowing myself to make over attributions and inferences about people based on minimal information. I assumed that many of the boys in this chat room and many of the girls in this chat room would be stereotyped in the same categories based on the lack of information and communication. He turned out to be a very nice boy. We began discussing our favorite movies TV shows and books; I was even able to convince him to admit, although he was embarrassed to do so, that he loves the Harry Potter series. We talked about movies and TV and even our favorite and lease favorite subjects in school until I told him that my mother called me down for dinner.
What I found out as I kept talking to Jared is that only some aspects of him did I form impressions based on the SIDE model. I formed impressions on other aspects of Jared’s, like his views of movies and TV, based on the Social Information Processing theory. The parts of his life in which I actually took the time to talk to him about helped me develop my own social impression of him and not just use social heuristics based on the typical 13 year old boy from Florida to form an impression of him.
Assignment 2
While I was wasting time on Sunday afternoon, I came across a message board specifically targeted to men. It’s a place where users come to interact in an environment catered to issues regarding men’s health. For example, there is a sub-forum entitled “Fitness” where guys talk about their workout routines and what protein shakes they are drinking. Another is called “Sexual Health” where guys can talk about that weird bump that won’t go away or how to last longer in bed.
Specifically, I was reading a thread in the “Love and Life” section. This is where guys come to talk and receive advice about their relationships or career problems. This thread was titled “my marriage is on the rocks” and was about a husband (his handle was YumyDub, I will call him YD) who suspected his wife of cheating on him with the neighbor. In this thread, he gave many details of how he would come home from work and find the neighbor and his wife platonically sitting on their porch talking. YD explained, over the course of a month he would increasingly find the two together with apparently innocent excuses. At first he was not worried, but now as he was posting online, he was getting suspicious.
The thread was a few weeks old and thus had many replies by the time I got to it. By the responses YD gave, I could tell he was an open and honest person. He was on an anonymous forum seeking advice about his marriage signaled that he was mature and was legitimately trying to save his marriage. Relating my impression of YD to the 5 personality traits: YD was fairly conscientious and agreeable. He was polite and replied to everyone and typed in complete sentences. He listened to everyone's opinions and tried to make rational choices. He is slightly neurotic because he over-analyzes every detail of his interactions with his wife trying to find hidden clues about her affair. He is not very extroverted because he did not uncover too many details in his postings but needed fellow users to probe him.
Ultimately, I feel like my impression of YD is highly intense because I learned a lot of personal details of his marriage, but do not know his age, profession, etc limiting the breadth of my experience. I feel as though my experience with YD had elements of Social Information Processing Theory and the Hyperpersonal Model because although my observation was only through the thread, over the many pages of responses I felt like I got to know who YD was. However, over-attribution process says that since we only talked about his marriage problems, I cannot really know how he may act in other situations. This could lead to the selective self-presentation by portraying YD as the victim evoking empathy from his readers.
Overall, my experience on the forum was positive and I felt like I got to know YD on a personal level through solely forum posts.
Specifically, I was reading a thread in the “Love and Life” section. This is where guys come to talk and receive advice about their relationships or career problems. This thread was titled “my marriage is on the rocks” and was about a husband (his handle was YumyDub, I will call him YD) who suspected his wife of cheating on him with the neighbor. In this thread, he gave many details of how he would come home from work and find the neighbor and his wife platonically sitting on their porch talking. YD explained, over the course of a month he would increasingly find the two together with apparently innocent excuses. At first he was not worried, but now as he was posting online, he was getting suspicious.
The thread was a few weeks old and thus had many replies by the time I got to it. By the responses YD gave, I could tell he was an open and honest person. He was on an anonymous forum seeking advice about his marriage signaled that he was mature and was legitimately trying to save his marriage. Relating my impression of YD to the 5 personality traits: YD was fairly conscientious and agreeable. He was polite and replied to everyone and typed in complete sentences. He listened to everyone's opinions and tried to make rational choices. He is slightly neurotic because he over-analyzes every detail of his interactions with his wife trying to find hidden clues about her affair. He is not very extroverted because he did not uncover too many details in his postings but needed fellow users to probe him.
Ultimately, I feel like my impression of YD is highly intense because I learned a lot of personal details of his marriage, but do not know his age, profession, etc limiting the breadth of my experience. I feel as though my experience with YD had elements of Social Information Processing Theory and the Hyperpersonal Model because although my observation was only through the thread, over the many pages of responses I felt like I got to know who YD was. However, over-attribution process says that since we only talked about his marriage problems, I cannot really know how he may act in other situations. This could lead to the selective self-presentation by portraying YD as the victim evoking empathy from his readers.
Overall, my experience on the forum was positive and I felt like I got to know YD on a personal level through solely forum posts.
Monday, September 3, 2007
Hyper Wins
There was nothing special to the chat room I went into. It was like the 3rd choice down for a search on Google for "chat". I had initially started with another, but it sorted chat rooms into categories, and I didn't want to go in with a preconceived notion of who the person was. The first 6-10 people I contacted were unfortunately, completely uninterested in talking with me, they just wanted to do role play, or sex via chat or something. I finally gave up and went into a chat room that was called "bored-but not horny" hoping I could get somewhere with it. In this chat room I came across a person with a nickname that essentially said that TV is not good for people. I said hello, and got a very excited response, a big two lined, funny pronunciation hello back. I asked if it was a normal greeting for them, and they said no, everyone gets something special. We ended up just talking and trying to get to know each other a little bit. We found some common interests, track and field and cross country; and from there just talked about random things.
The impression I got of this person was an overall warm impression, and of the "big 5" traits, here's what I say:
Conscientiousness - definitely a very disciplined person compared to most "high schoolers" they kept mentioning that they were worried that XC (cross-country) was going to take up as much time as track and they weren't going to do as well as they wanted in school.
Agreeableness - relatively agreeable, had no issues talking with me about track and field and our opinions in politics.
Neuroticism - By the things they were involved with, and the very calm but warm vibe I got, I'd say that they weren't neurotic at all
Openness - Nada, I have no idea on this one
Extroversion - Judging by the excited response to my greeting I'd say they were decently extroverted, but then I did not get a lot more after that.
So all in all I think my impressions do not at all follow the CFO theories. I didn't receive a lot of information about them, but from the limited information I received, I was able to make a pretty strong and positive impression, regardless of its accuracy. As for the SIP Theory, I can imagine that the more we talked, the more I would be able to create a more accurate impression of them. SIP would not have changed the strength much, but the breadth would increase, and likely increase the accuracy. Hyperpersonal theory was the closest theory to match the impression I got. I know I over-attributed a lot, because I made some guesses to personality based off of stereotypes, athlete, distance runner, interest in academics, etc. Selective Self-presentation definitely must have played a role; we talked about mostly things we had in common, and didn't delve into other aspects as much. I think that has something to do with the development aspect of the Hyperpersonal model, because initial interactions don't have enough time not to use selective self-presentation. I'll be honest, the only reallocation of cognitive resources I did, was to remember what other things I had to do. I feel like there was not enough time or interaction to make judgment on the behavior confirmation part of the Hyperpersonal Theory.
ICQ and soccer_babe25
I decided to use ICQ.com and join a chat room. Having barely any previous experience in a chat room, I decided to join a room specified by age. Being 19, I chose the teens group. Immediately I was thrown into an ongoing conversation that seemingly made no sense. To the right side of the dialogue box I saw a list of the screen names of people in the teens room. Scrolling through, I found the screen name soccer_babe25 and, liking soccer myself, began a private conversation.
I began by asking her simple questions, such as her name, location and age. She told me she is fifteen years old from Massachusetts, named Keiyara. She then asked my age and I lied, telling her I was only 17. This is when I realized I had made a mistake by choosing teens instead of 20’s and began to quickly feel like a pedophile. Nevertheless, I continued the conversation.
We began to talk about soccer. Keiyara told me she plays right fullback and had just ended practice a few hours ago. According to Keiyara, her team practices every day, including Sunday. After a few minutes of soccer discussion, our chat quickly died and I told her I had to leave. She didn’t seem too hurt.
My immediate impression of Keiyara was not good. She began the conversation with short and meaningless lines, which I attributed as her being a cold person. In terms of the Big 5 Traits, she was certainly not neurotic- never during our conversation did she seem anxious or nervous. With her noticeable lack of interest in me and lack of adding to the conversation (other than answering my questions), I do not feel she is an extravert or very open. She was agreeable to talk to me however and conscientious of the fact that I was interested (or so she thought) in her, so she continued to answer my questions.
I believe our conversation is best described by the Hyperpersonal Theory. In the beginning, my over-attribution is very apparent as I immediately felt that Keiyara was dumb, due to her continuous spelling errors. Additionally, as our conversation developed, I felt Keiyara was giving only a selective self-presentation. Although she told me she plays fullback on a good soccer team, she failed to tell me that she was a good soccer player. Perhaps she was only giving me information that made her sound better, and the reality may be quite different.
Overall, I learned never to talk in a teen chat room.
I began by asking her simple questions, such as her name, location and age. She told me she is fifteen years old from Massachusetts, named Keiyara. She then asked my age and I lied, telling her I was only 17. This is when I realized I had made a mistake by choosing teens instead of 20’s and began to quickly feel like a pedophile. Nevertheless, I continued the conversation.
We began to talk about soccer. Keiyara told me she plays right fullback and had just ended practice a few hours ago. According to Keiyara, her team practices every day, including Sunday. After a few minutes of soccer discussion, our chat quickly died and I told her I had to leave. She didn’t seem too hurt.
My immediate impression of Keiyara was not good. She began the conversation with short and meaningless lines, which I attributed as her being a cold person. In terms of the Big 5 Traits, she was certainly not neurotic- never during our conversation did she seem anxious or nervous. With her noticeable lack of interest in me and lack of adding to the conversation (other than answering my questions), I do not feel she is an extravert or very open. She was agreeable to talk to me however and conscientious of the fact that I was interested (or so she thought) in her, so she continued to answer my questions.
I believe our conversation is best described by the Hyperpersonal Theory. In the beginning, my over-attribution is very apparent as I immediately felt that Keiyara was dumb, due to her continuous spelling errors. Additionally, as our conversation developed, I felt Keiyara was giving only a selective self-presentation. Although she told me she plays fullback on a good soccer team, she failed to tell me that she was a good soccer player. Perhaps she was only giving me information that made her sound better, and the reality may be quite different.
Overall, I learned never to talk in a teen chat room.
A new experience
In a previous class I took at Cornell, we touched upon the subject of internet communities that were created by and for people with Autism and Asperger’s syndromes, which involves deficits in social interaction, to communicate and develop personal connections with other people similar to themselves. I questioned the ethics of going into one of these discussion forums because I did not want to misrepresent myself in any way or pretend that I was something I am not. For this reason, I went into a chatroom for people with Asperger syndrome and simply observed a conversation among the people there. I focused specifically on a woman who introduced herself as being twenty four years old and from
I found this woman to be extremely honest, though she did not want to divulge her name to anyone. She seemed to have a very clear understanding of her abilities and disabilities, and what it is about this syndrome that makes her who she is. She talked about her intelligence and the ease through which she went through school, but when it came to physical attractiveness, she was unable to see any beauty in herself. However, even with her confidence in her studies, she was constantly questioning herself in the amount she raised her hand in class, in the way her family treated her at home, and in the way her peers viewed her. To me, this was a sign of an extremely conscientious person, diligent in her studies, yet questioning her every move almost to the point of neuroticism, most explicit in the negative emotions she expressed about her physical appearance. The other members of the site seemed to view her as a source of support, asking her how to deal with school and she had a great way of calming others down, which led me to rate her highly on both extraversion and agreeableness. She talked people through their problems with great compassion and a much more positive attitude than she had toward herself. In terms of openness to experience, I found it difficult to rate her, as she was more concerned with helping others than talking about herself.
Since this disorder is characterized by difficulties in social communication and interpersonal interaction, I think that the aspects of the CMC environment that one may consider limiting such as the lack of visual cues are what make these chat rooms so advantageous for people with Asperger’s syndrome. In a face to face interpersonal exchange, one would probably be unable to see this woman’s true personality. Online space, however, without that face to face interaction, allows her to express herself fully, with the various processes of the hyperpersonal model, that led me to rate her more intensely on the five big personality traits than I would have been able to in person.
My experience definitely followed the hyperpersonal model on most aspects, specifically in the way that the different processes of the model lead into one another. Although this woman did not seem to be holding back any specific information about her, it was clear that she wanted to present herself as intelligent and warm because she felt she was unattractive in a face-to-face setting. As a result of her selective self-presentation, others tended to over-attribute her intelligence and ability to help them with their problems, as more and more people began directing questions about their lives toward her, making comments like, “Lisa1436 is nice.” As a result of behavioral confirmation, she will present herself even further as this type of helpful, maternal woman.
Chat Room Assignment
With little experience in the chat room realm, I entered a chat room for “college students” and just watched. Conversation was flying among the 20 or so people in the chat room and it seemed as though these people knew each other quite well. They were asking where “Mike” was this morning and how “Samantha” was dealing with her breakup. I was amazed at the setting’s fast-paced and intimate appearance.
I hesitantly typed “hi” and many replied “hi” back but continued the previous conversations. So, I singled out “Greek Boy” and started a private conversation. Based this conversation, I felt that on a scale of warm to cold, he was in the middle, closer to warm. He was agreeable, more than willing to have a conversation with me, and pleasant throughout, but his comments were short and to the point. While he was not rude, I felt that the short responses indicated lack of interest. He was open with answering my questions, but our conversation did not get very personal. I’m not sure how open he would have been had the conversation gone deeper. He seemed extroverted, asking me questions, answering my questions, and introducing new topics. It was difficult to judge neuroticism and conscientiousness. I think the conversation was too short to get a good impression of these two traits. This is similar to the Hancock and Dunham study where participants found it more difficult to make judgments of neuroticism in CMC than in FTF.
I believe that my overall impression and experience fits with the Cues Filtered Out Perspective – the lack of cues in CMC leads to neutral, undeveloped impressions. I think that a large part of this has to do with the length of the conversation. I do not believe that I formed a good impression of “Greek Boy” because of the short and basic conversation about age, location, school, job, travel plans, and activities. While the Hancock and Dunham study found that the hyperpersonal model fits impressions formed in text better than CFO, I have to disagree in relation to my experience. I felt that the lack of cues and the lack of depth in the conversation did not allow me to make intense or exaggerated impressions. Rather than intense, my impression was average, falling more in the middle than the extremes. Looking back on the conversation, I did not concentrate much on personality because again we did not go in depth about ourselves and the one word responses did not give me many clues. While I can see how the hyperpersonal model fits better for CMC, I think that in my one experience, CFO better describes the impression (or lack of one) that I formed.
I hesitantly typed “hi” and many replied “hi” back but continued the previous conversations. So, I singled out “Greek Boy” and started a private conversation. Based this conversation, I felt that on a scale of warm to cold, he was in the middle, closer to warm. He was agreeable, more than willing to have a conversation with me, and pleasant throughout, but his comments were short and to the point. While he was not rude, I felt that the short responses indicated lack of interest. He was open with answering my questions, but our conversation did not get very personal. I’m not sure how open he would have been had the conversation gone deeper. He seemed extroverted, asking me questions, answering my questions, and introducing new topics. It was difficult to judge neuroticism and conscientiousness. I think the conversation was too short to get a good impression of these two traits. This is similar to the Hancock and Dunham study where participants found it more difficult to make judgments of neuroticism in CMC than in FTF.
I believe that my overall impression and experience fits with the Cues Filtered Out Perspective – the lack of cues in CMC leads to neutral, undeveloped impressions. I think that a large part of this has to do with the length of the conversation. I do not believe that I formed a good impression of “Greek Boy” because of the short and basic conversation about age, location, school, job, travel plans, and activities. While the Hancock and Dunham study found that the hyperpersonal model fits impressions formed in text better than CFO, I have to disagree in relation to my experience. I felt that the lack of cues and the lack of depth in the conversation did not allow me to make intense or exaggerated impressions. Rather than intense, my impression was average, falling more in the middle than the extremes. Looking back on the conversation, I did not concentrate much on personality because again we did not go in depth about ourselves and the one word responses did not give me many clues. While I can see how the hyperpersonal model fits better for CMC, I think that in my one experience, CFO better describes the impression (or lack of one) that I formed.
In most chat rooms, it is not difficult to convince people to engage in a private chat as long as my "nick" contains some reference to my gender. I considered using a name that was a little more suggestive and sexually inviting in order to bait a target more easily, but I decided that it wasn’t worth the few seconds I would save with a more neutral name; I would waste just as much time fighting off several windows with variations of “Hey, babe…wanna cyber?” Still high off the University of Georgia’s defeat of Oklahoma State this past Saturday, I finally chose the nickname “DawgGirl300.”
At last, I got a response from a male called “Normul Purson.” I asked him, “ASL?” and from his answer, I instantly decided that he was most likely a little bit socially awkward. “23/m/Republic of Alaska,” he answered. Over the next few minutes, he tried to change his age to 19, then 31. He argued with me when I insisted that Alaska is in fact a state, not a Communist nation, as he claimed it to be. He claimed to be a heart surgeon, and he started throwing (what would be in a face to face situation) very insulting names and adjectives my way when I challenged that very few twenty three-year-olds have completed the right training to become surgeons. His argumentative nature and constant expression of his opinions suggested to me that he is very extroverted, and somewhat neurotic. He carried on his Alaska argument in a manner that suggested to me that he was actually trying to be disagreeable, even after I gave him countless facts about Alaska’s statehood. The fact that he kept changing his age, and later that he refused to describe himself, pointed to a lack of openness. I wondered why he refused to have any type of conversation about his appearance when it was so easy to lie. For instance, I claimed to be a 5’9 redhead with green eyes. In reality, I’m 5’4, dirty blonde (if not light brunette), and my eyes are brown. It is almost needless to say that this individual was not extremely conscientious since the majority of the things he said about himself were almost certainly false. He seemed to be in a very nervous, defensive state. Late in the Alaska conversation he made territorial challenges, such as, “What do you know? I’ve never seen you in here anyway…maybe you should go find another room.”
It is very possible that this conversation was not meant to be as hostile as I perceived it. It might have been a couple of teenagers having a good time making up an identity, or it could have been a woman in her fifties who got bored watching the Fox News Channel. However, the words that Normul Purson used combined with a tone I detected from context made it seem as though Normul Purson was trying to scare me out of his chat room, or some other negative action. I reached these conclusions due to a lack of Normul Purson’s social presence as well as a lack of non-verbal clues. As a result, I developed a negative impression of Normul Purson. This impression was in line with the CFO prediction that lack of cues in CMC leads to neutral, negative, and underdeveloped impressions.
At last, I got a response from a male called “Normul Purson.” I asked him, “ASL?” and from his answer, I instantly decided that he was most likely a little bit socially awkward. “23/m/Republic of Alaska,” he answered. Over the next few minutes, he tried to change his age to 19, then 31. He argued with me when I insisted that Alaska is in fact a state, not a Communist nation, as he claimed it to be. He claimed to be a heart surgeon, and he started throwing (what would be in a face to face situation) very insulting names and adjectives my way when I challenged that very few twenty three-year-olds have completed the right training to become surgeons. His argumentative nature and constant expression of his opinions suggested to me that he is very extroverted, and somewhat neurotic. He carried on his Alaska argument in a manner that suggested to me that he was actually trying to be disagreeable, even after I gave him countless facts about Alaska’s statehood. The fact that he kept changing his age, and later that he refused to describe himself, pointed to a lack of openness. I wondered why he refused to have any type of conversation about his appearance when it was so easy to lie. For instance, I claimed to be a 5’9 redhead with green eyes. In reality, I’m 5’4, dirty blonde (if not light brunette), and my eyes are brown. It is almost needless to say that this individual was not extremely conscientious since the majority of the things he said about himself were almost certainly false. He seemed to be in a very nervous, defensive state. Late in the Alaska conversation he made territorial challenges, such as, “What do you know? I’ve never seen you in here anyway…maybe you should go find another room.”
It is very possible that this conversation was not meant to be as hostile as I perceived it. It might have been a couple of teenagers having a good time making up an identity, or it could have been a woman in her fifties who got bored watching the Fox News Channel. However, the words that Normul Purson used combined with a tone I detected from context made it seem as though Normul Purson was trying to scare me out of his chat room, or some other negative action. I reached these conclusions due to a lack of Normul Purson’s social presence as well as a lack of non-verbal clues. As a result, I developed a negative impression of Normul Purson. This impression was in line with the CFO prediction that lack of cues in CMC leads to neutral, negative, and underdeveloped impressions.
Support, compassion, and love, all in a chat room.
Having been charged with exploring an online space novel to our own experiences, I, like many, decided to enter a chat room, an anonymous, synchronous online space. After exploring the different options that existed, I decided to enter a chat room that is present so that people that are going through difficult times in their lives could have a place to discuss their problems. I found this particular chat room on the website www.talkcity.com, and choose it for a few reasons. The chat room was smaller, so it would be easier to interact with other members, and seeing as the group was there to offer support, I hoped that chatters would be more willing to open up and talk with me.
When I entered the chat room, I was immediately greeted by everyone present. I said my greetings and allowed them to continue their conversations, so that I could determine what kind of atmosphere pervaded the chat room, and how the members were interacting. After spending a few minutes as an observer, I decided that the overall ambiance of the room was one of warmth and support, and was even able to formulate impressions of some of the chatters. I immediately liked most members, while there was only one member that I felt was somewhat ruining the mood of the room. That one member, however, left shortly after my appearance.
After spending several minutes as an observer, I decided that it was time to start interacting with other members. I joined the current conversation, and began chatting with the other members. I noticed fairly early into my experience that there were basically two different groups of people present. The people who were there to talk about their problems, and the people who were there to help others. Based on which category I had placed them in, I saw people as either selfish, those that wanted to talk about their problems, or as being more altruistic, those that were there to help others. I started up a conversation with one of the selfless, ottermom, and started discussing a variety of issues.
The relatively short conversation between ottermom and I gave me enough cues to formulate an opinion of her. She is middle aged, a mother, a lesbian, and an extremely warm and caring person, the final conclusion based on her frequent use of the words "hun" and "sweetie". After our conversation, and my subsequent exit of the chat room, I realized that the way in which I formed my impression of ottermom closely correlated with what the hyperpersonal model has to say about online impression formation. Going into the room, I had already established some stereotypes about what kind of chatters I would find inside. I speculated that they would be very emotional people, and that they would also be, for the most part, caring and compassionate. When I found out the ottermom was older than I , I placed her into a more matronly role, as though she was a mother consoling a child. The frequent use of the words "sweetie" and "hun" reinforced my impression of ottermom as a caring mother-like figure. Based on few cues, I created a persona for ottermom that suited my needs, and fulfilled the stereotypes that I expected to find in the chat room that I chose to enter.
When I entered the chat room, I was immediately greeted by everyone present. I said my greetings and allowed them to continue their conversations, so that I could determine what kind of atmosphere pervaded the chat room, and how the members were interacting. After spending a few minutes as an observer, I decided that the overall ambiance of the room was one of warmth and support, and was even able to formulate impressions of some of the chatters. I immediately liked most members, while there was only one member that I felt was somewhat ruining the mood of the room. That one member, however, left shortly after my appearance.
After spending several minutes as an observer, I decided that it was time to start interacting with other members. I joined the current conversation, and began chatting with the other members. I noticed fairly early into my experience that there were basically two different groups of people present. The people who were there to talk about their problems, and the people who were there to help others. Based on which category I had placed them in, I saw people as either selfish, those that wanted to talk about their problems, or as being more altruistic, those that were there to help others. I started up a conversation with one of the selfless, ottermom, and started discussing a variety of issues.
The relatively short conversation between ottermom and I gave me enough cues to formulate an opinion of her. She is middle aged, a mother, a lesbian, and an extremely warm and caring person, the final conclusion based on her frequent use of the words "hun" and "sweetie". After our conversation, and my subsequent exit of the chat room, I realized that the way in which I formed my impression of ottermom closely correlated with what the hyperpersonal model has to say about online impression formation. Going into the room, I had already established some stereotypes about what kind of chatters I would find inside. I speculated that they would be very emotional people, and that they would also be, for the most part, caring and compassionate. When I found out the ottermom was older than I , I placed her into a more matronly role, as though she was a mother consoling a child. The frequent use of the words "sweetie" and "hun" reinforced my impression of ottermom as a caring mother-like figure. Based on few cues, I created a persona for ottermom that suited my needs, and fulfilled the stereotypes that I expected to find in the chat room that I chose to enter.
Late-Night Chatting with Andreww
One of the best ways to meet someone online is entering a chat room due to its synchronous forum style that allows for a conversation in “real time”. Being extremely unfamiliar with the world of chat rooms (I’ve had no previous experience in them), I searched “chat room” on Google and clicked on the first one listed. I was brought to Para Chat, a website which simply advertised to join a free chat. The website prompted me to give a user name and then brought me into the Lobby Room, which was the main message board. My user name, Lucinda (a friend and I always use that name for things) was a bit reserved in contrast to others, ranging from incest_sex_male to a-wow-date, which were more directly to the point.
The Lobby Room itself was extremely overwhelming, as I’ve never seen so many disorganized postings rapidly rush out onto on a message board. I didn’t even have an opportunity to attempt to jump into one of the myriad conversations because moments after I entered the Lobby Room, three windows immediately popped up with people inviting me for personal chats. I declined speaking to Horny4u and Male_Alone because their user names alone made me a bit uneasy.
Andreww seemed harmless enough and I began talking to him. Right away he described how he looked and asked me to do the same. I was a bit taken aback that he immediately sought to find out my appearance before anything else, but as this was part of the experience, I told him some of my physical attributes. We chatted for a little and all of a sudden, he made a comment that made it very apparent as to which direction he wanted to take the conversation. When I didn’t respond to his liking, he realized this was not going to be his lucky night with cyber-sex and abruptly ended the conversation.
My impression of Andreww was formulated based on the hyperpersonal model. Within two minutes of chatting with him, I not only conjured up an image of what he looked like, but I felt like I could guess certain aspects of his personality. My image of Andreww was created due to Selective Self Presentation, as he kept on emphasizing certain physical characteristics. As we continued conversing, I realized that I used the Over-attribution Process, as I stereotyped him as a very confident, popular person due to his apparent extroverted personality and status as a jock. He had a very smooth segue into the more lewd part of the chat which implied that he had not only done this before, but created the assumption that he had a way with the ladies. Since he hastily ended the chat, my opinion of him wasn’t too positive, but perhaps if we continued talking, he might have dispelled some of my impressions about him.
The Lobby Room itself was extremely overwhelming, as I’ve never seen so many disorganized postings rapidly rush out onto on a message board. I didn’t even have an opportunity to attempt to jump into one of the myriad conversations because moments after I entered the Lobby Room, three windows immediately popped up with people inviting me for personal chats. I declined speaking to Horny4u and Male_Alone because their user names alone made me a bit uneasy.
Andreww seemed harmless enough and I began talking to him. Right away he described how he looked and asked me to do the same. I was a bit taken aback that he immediately sought to find out my appearance before anything else, but as this was part of the experience, I told him some of my physical attributes. We chatted for a little and all of a sudden, he made a comment that made it very apparent as to which direction he wanted to take the conversation. When I didn’t respond to his liking, he realized this was not going to be his lucky night with cyber-sex and abruptly ended the conversation.
My impression of Andreww was formulated based on the hyperpersonal model. Within two minutes of chatting with him, I not only conjured up an image of what he looked like, but I felt like I could guess certain aspects of his personality. My image of Andreww was created due to Selective Self Presentation, as he kept on emphasizing certain physical characteristics. As we continued conversing, I realized that I used the Over-attribution Process, as I stereotyped him as a very confident, popular person due to his apparent extroverted personality and status as a jock. He had a very smooth segue into the more lewd part of the chat which implied that he had not only done this before, but created the assumption that he had a way with the ladies. Since he hastily ended the chat, my opinion of him wasn’t too positive, but perhaps if we continued talking, he might have dispelled some of my impressions about him.
Chatting online using mIRC (assignment 2)
In order to complete the second assignment, I decided to join a chat room, because I thought it would be a guaranteed way of meeting someone randomly and being able to interact with them. I chose mIRC because I had no idea where to go to find a chat room, and I knew about this program. When I first joined, all of the default channels seemed to have little activity, so I decided to look for a random channel on a subject I would know well. I eventually entered the channel #wow, which I thought would mean "World of Warcraft," but it actually stood for "Women of Warcraft." Nevertheless, it seemed to have some activity, and the discussion was essentially about the game, so I decided to stay. It made for an interesting experience, but also one that I have encountered before when talking to online gamers.
My experience in the chat room was quite uneventful at first. I was talking to someone who had just come back to playing Warcraft after having taken a 6 month break. After some discussion, I had mentioned that I had just recently quit playing the game (which is actually true), which then incited the wrath of someone with a little too much time on his hands. For the sake of his privacy, I won't use his online nickname. As much as I wanted to avoid an online brawl, I decided to engage this individual. After a moderately long period of unfriendly interaction, I felt as though I had seen enough. I think that the beginning of the chat was the most representative of this individual's behavior, so I have included a screen-shot of the beginning of our chat.
This individual was rude, cold, and downright nasty. I would honestly have to say he was slightly neurotic and very extraverted, but far from being agreeable or conscientious. I cannot comment on his openness, because our conversation did not address the necessary topics. We didn't really try to find out much about each other with interpersonal probes: our conversation was more of a "flame war" than anything.
At first, I wanted to say that my experience matched the over-attribution processes of the Hyperpersonal model, but then I realized something: after talking to this individual, I had no clue to what he was really like. My first reaction to his kind of communication is to say he is a hostile person, but to be honest, I have seen his behavior online from many people who are agreeable in real life, including myself (I am almost always quite friendly, but I have said some nasty things online). He could have been angry at something else (perhaps losing in Warcraft) and just displaced his frustration on me. By the way he talked I could tell he was male, but I couldn't decipher much beyond that. Therefore, I would say my experience matched the CFO perspective.
My experience in the chat room was quite uneventful at first. I was talking to someone who had just come back to playing Warcraft after having taken a 6 month break. After some discussion, I had mentioned that I had just recently quit playing the game (which is actually true), which then incited the wrath of someone with a little too much time on his hands. For the sake of his privacy, I won't use his online nickname. As much as I wanted to avoid an online brawl, I decided to engage this individual. After a moderately long period of unfriendly interaction, I felt as though I had seen enough. I think that the beginning of the chat was the most representative of this individual's behavior, so I have included a screen-shot of the beginning of our chat.
This individual was rude, cold, and downright nasty. I would honestly have to say he was slightly neurotic and very extraverted, but far from being agreeable or conscientious. I cannot comment on his openness, because our conversation did not address the necessary topics. We didn't really try to find out much about each other with interpersonal probes: our conversation was more of a "flame war" than anything.
At first, I wanted to say that my experience matched the over-attribution processes of the Hyperpersonal model, but then I realized something: after talking to this individual, I had no clue to what he was really like. My first reaction to his kind of communication is to say he is a hostile person, but to be honest, I have seen his behavior online from many people who are agreeable in real life, including myself (I am almost always quite friendly, but I have said some nasty things online). He could have been angry at something else (perhaps losing in Warcraft) and just displaced his frustration on me. By the way he talked I could tell he was male, but I couldn't decipher much beyond that. Therefore, I would say my experience matched the CFO perspective.
Entering My First Online Chat Room
To complete assignment #2, I entered my first ever chat room. I’ve always used AIM or email to contact my friends because I’ve never been entirely keen on the idea of chatting with strangers over the internet. In the first minute of entering a site called “ParaChat”, I found cyber bullying, people asking for mothers, people requesting sluts, and people asking for certain nationalities. Needless to say, I already knew it would be quite the new experience.
After observing these quick, short conversations, I took up a chat with a person with the username “backstreet_boy”. To be honest, the username only caught my eye because it made me laugh and think of middle school. While briefly talk with me, this person would regularly stop to heckle other users in the chat room (i.e. “what kind of username is ‘starpeh’? that sux its so stupid”). Although this user didn’t outright tell me whether he or she were male or female, the more I watched and conversed, the more I felt that backstreet_boy was indeed a male. He would continuously talk about sports and how he worked out a lot. When he asked me “age/sex/location”, I lied, and happily explained I was a 22 year old female who lived in
I soon left the chat, remembering only how cocky and rude backstreet_boy came off as. Perhaps this was because of the anonymity the internet chat room offered – no one knew who this person really was, and therefore, he could act as he pleased because the impressions other people formed of him didn’t matter in or apply to his real life. His tone of voice and facial expressions were also not observed, resulting in a huge loss of cues usually used by people to judge new acquaintances. Obviously, my first impression was definitely not positive. Perhaps this was because I didn’t have a lot of information to base my impression around, so consequently I over-exaggerated anything he had to say (explained by the “Over-attribution process” under the Hyperpersonal Model).
Although entering the chat room was an interesting experience, I don’t think I will make it a regular habit. It’s not surprising that I over-exaggerated the little he had to say, I’m sure that if being in a chat room was part of my everyday life I would constantly get the wrong impression of people. The internet opens hundreds of new doors to people, allowing anyone to express themselves as they please. Chat rooms are the prime example of how people take full advantage of the anonymity the internet offers. I would definitely need more time to converse with this person in order to acquire a solid impression (as the “Developmental Aspect” under the Hyperpersonal Model explains).
Chat rooms- Assignment #2
After reading over this assignment I decided that the easiest way to observe an online target was by entering a chat room. Since I have never used chat rooms before, I did a search on chat rooms and decided on a site called chatfamily.com. Here there were several different types of chat rooms to choose from, including adult chat, teen chat, youth chat and gays and lesbians chat. I thought it might be interesting to enter a youth chat room, ages 13 to 17, and see if I could tell if the chatters were actually children.
In the chat room people were talking in real time, therefore it was a synchronous space. I entered the chat room feeling very skeptical and suspicious of who I would chat with inside. I had a preformed notion that I would run into pedophiles looking to chat with kids or something unusual along those lines. Scrolling through the conversation I looked for any obvious clues of an adult being present in the chat. I saw “does anyone like puppies” and decided that was an obvious clue. I answered back that I did indeed like puppies and was invited by the chatter into a private chat.
The person I chatted with said that he was 14 years old and lived in New York State. He was very open about his hobbies and school but never mentioned what he looked like, nor did I ask. We talked about simple things like movies and TV and noting sexual was ever brought up. This made me believe that he was in fact a fourteen year old and not some old creepy man trying to harass children.
The target was very open and agreeable throughout the chat. He answered the questions I asked him without any hesitation and for the most part his answers seemed to be honest. He seemed extravert because he was eager to go into a private chat with me and have a real conversation. I found myself using the hyper-personal theory when forming my impressions of the target. Through the short conversation we had, his straightforward questions and answers made me believe that he was really just in the chat room to talk, with no alternate motives. Maybe if I had talked for longer, or talked to him again, I would discover that he was indeed not being honest, but as of now I could not conclude anything of the sort.
In the chat room people were talking in real time, therefore it was a synchronous space. I entered the chat room feeling very skeptical and suspicious of who I would chat with inside. I had a preformed notion that I would run into pedophiles looking to chat with kids or something unusual along those lines. Scrolling through the conversation I looked for any obvious clues of an adult being present in the chat. I saw “does anyone like puppies” and decided that was an obvious clue. I answered back that I did indeed like puppies and was invited by the chatter into a private chat.
The person I chatted with said that he was 14 years old and lived in New York State. He was very open about his hobbies and school but never mentioned what he looked like, nor did I ask. We talked about simple things like movies and TV and noting sexual was ever brought up. This made me believe that he was in fact a fourteen year old and not some old creepy man trying to harass children.
The target was very open and agreeable throughout the chat. He answered the questions I asked him without any hesitation and for the most part his answers seemed to be honest. He seemed extravert because he was eager to go into a private chat with me and have a real conversation. I found myself using the hyper-personal theory when forming my impressions of the target. Through the short conversation we had, his straightforward questions and answers made me believe that he was really just in the chat room to talk, with no alternate motives. Maybe if I had talked for longer, or talked to him again, I would discover that he was indeed not being honest, but as of now I could not conclude anything of the sort.
Online Chat Room
The online space I choose for this assignment was a chat room via www.userplane.com, which is considered to be a synchronous space since people were talking at real time. This link was displayed on the AIM Today home page as the place to go chat with new people. Userplane was founded in 2001 by Michael Jones, Nate Thelen and Javier Hall and has a presence in more than 25 countries so I figured this my be a good link for this assignment.
To the website has two ways of logging in. One way is by being a guest with a username and the other way is by becoming a member. This option of logging in allows you to be anonymous each time you log in since people can have a different guest name each time. I did not feel like signing up since I do not visit the Chat Rooms on a regular basis so I first went under the screen name jaddius03. Apparently, my screen name did not attract much attention because I tried three different chat rooms and could not find any one to talk to. I decided to give it a rest since I just spent 20 minutes getting rejected by fellow chat roomers. After my break I decided to log back in under a different name of Cornell Man 11. This time I got lucky and someone had responded to my message of “If any one wants to talk IM me” and this is where my journey started.
My observation came from a 20-year-old woman who lives in Virginia and was bored so she decided to go in the chat room to use up her free time. The conversation started off like a normal conversation asking how I am doing and how my weekend was, however she wasted no time asking me how old I was (A). I told her I was 18 and she said that she was 20 so it was not a big deal. She then asked me where I was from, and because she doesn’t really know me and I don’t really know her for this purpose I said I was from the Syracuse area (L). After she told me where she was from she then wanted to confirm that I was a male since my screen name said Cornell MAN 11 (L). At this point, about 5 or so minutes into the conversation, I have finally realized that she just did the famous A/S/L on me but in a very sneaky way, so I asked her if she goes into chat rooms often and she replied that when ever she is bored she loves to come into chat rooms and just meet new people. So at this point I am saying to my self (wow she is a really open and warm girl) let me talk to her a little more and find out if this is just an act she is putting on. So we started to talk about Cornell, college, and sports.
About 45 minutes later, I realized that during this whole time I have never seen or met this woman in person before and I am having the type of conversation with her that I would have had with a friend. I realized after the conversation that since I couldn’t see whom I was speaking with, I couldn’t make any type of assumptions about her based on our conversation. Since I did not have any information about her physical appearance, attitudes and mannerisms that you usually encounter when you meet someone face-to-face, I can only base my assumptions about her based on the text exchange with her. If this were a person that I selected randomly out of a crowd, I probably would have looked at the person and determined before hand what I might talk to her about. This example links to the hyper-personal model. At the end of the chat, my point of view toward this woman was intriguing from many perspectives but what was most amazing was that I didn’t even know her name! I found this interesting because in face-to-face conversations, when you first meet someone, there is usually an exchange of names.
My conclusion about her was that she is an outgoing and confident person, who was able to answer and comment on any question that arose during the conversation. I found speaking with her very pleasant and easy. The impression I formed of her was, I believe, far stronger than any type of impression that I would have formed with someone that I had just met in-person and talked to for 45 minutes. This experience has helped me to further my understanding of the power of social media. I realize that social media serves an entirely different need for its users than face-to-face conversations.
To the website has two ways of logging in. One way is by being a guest with a username and the other way is by becoming a member. This option of logging in allows you to be anonymous each time you log in since people can have a different guest name each time. I did not feel like signing up since I do not visit the Chat Rooms on a regular basis so I first went under the screen name jaddius03. Apparently, my screen name did not attract much attention because I tried three different chat rooms and could not find any one to talk to. I decided to give it a rest since I just spent 20 minutes getting rejected by fellow chat roomers. After my break I decided to log back in under a different name of Cornell Man 11. This time I got lucky and someone had responded to my message of “If any one wants to talk IM me” and this is where my journey started.
My observation came from a 20-year-old woman who lives in Virginia and was bored so she decided to go in the chat room to use up her free time. The conversation started off like a normal conversation asking how I am doing and how my weekend was, however she wasted no time asking me how old I was (A). I told her I was 18 and she said that she was 20 so it was not a big deal. She then asked me where I was from, and because she doesn’t really know me and I don’t really know her for this purpose I said I was from the Syracuse area (L). After she told me where she was from she then wanted to confirm that I was a male since my screen name said Cornell MAN 11 (L). At this point, about 5 or so minutes into the conversation, I have finally realized that she just did the famous A/S/L on me but in a very sneaky way, so I asked her if she goes into chat rooms often and she replied that when ever she is bored she loves to come into chat rooms and just meet new people. So at this point I am saying to my self (wow she is a really open and warm girl) let me talk to her a little more and find out if this is just an act she is putting on. So we started to talk about Cornell, college, and sports.
About 45 minutes later, I realized that during this whole time I have never seen or met this woman in person before and I am having the type of conversation with her that I would have had with a friend. I realized after the conversation that since I couldn’t see whom I was speaking with, I couldn’t make any type of assumptions about her based on our conversation. Since I did not have any information about her physical appearance, attitudes and mannerisms that you usually encounter when you meet someone face-to-face, I can only base my assumptions about her based on the text exchange with her. If this were a person that I selected randomly out of a crowd, I probably would have looked at the person and determined before hand what I might talk to her about. This example links to the hyper-personal model. At the end of the chat, my point of view toward this woman was intriguing from many perspectives but what was most amazing was that I didn’t even know her name! I found this interesting because in face-to-face conversations, when you first meet someone, there is usually an exchange of names.
My conclusion about her was that she is an outgoing and confident person, who was able to answer and comment on any question that arose during the conversation. I found speaking with her very pleasant and easy. The impression I formed of her was, I believe, far stronger than any type of impression that I would have formed with someone that I had just met in-person and talked to for 45 minutes. This experience has helped me to further my understanding of the power of social media. I realize that social media serves an entirely different need for its users than face-to-face conversations.
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Impression Forming
The psychological space on the internet that I chose to join was an online chat room. The chat room is a synchronous space, which means the people communicating in the chat room were talking in real time. The chat room is also very anonymous, in other words I do not really know who I am talking to at any given moment, so everything said must be studied with a bit of skepticism. The person in the chat that I observed described himself to be a 15 year old white basketball player. Throughout the chat he seemed to be quite an extrovert. He talked a lot about his physical characteristics and he even talked about girls and what he is looking for in the opposite sex. He made many surprising and lewd comments, which led me to believe he is open, and not afraid to say what is on his mind. The person did not seem to be particularly warm; instead he portrayed himself to be very arrogant and self-centered. Furthermore, he only wanted to chat with people in the room that sent him pictures of themselves. He did this so he could make sure that the people he chatted with were attractive and worthwhile to flirt with. The observed target did not display any cues that lead me to believe that he was neurotic nor conscientiousness. He continuously spelled words wrong, and used unfamiliar abbreviations and acronyms.
My impression of the person I observed in the chat was most in line with the hyper-personal theory. I viewed the subject to be a very stereotypical high school basketball player. Although he did not give a wide range of cues, the cues he did reveal were exaggerated in my mind because I focused more intently on them. The lack of cues actually caused me to focus on the cues that were given, therefore allowing for a stereotypical or exaggerated impression to be formed. For example, at one point in the conversation he said he wanted to chat with any blondes in the room. This statement made me think that he only liked blondes, and would not be interested in girls with any other hair color. However this is not necessarily the case. He could have simply been in the “mood” to talk to a blonde that day. He also talked a lot about his physical characteristics which caused me to think that he was obsessed with outward appearances only. This could simply be an affect of the selective self presentation theory. He might be much more than a “good-looking basketball player”, but that is all he chose to reveal in the specific conversation in this chat room. Maybe he was not comfortable revealing anything else, or maybe he indeed is just self- absorbed.
I felt it was very easy to form an impression of the observed target. He didn’t hold anything back, and revealed cues that made it very easy to stereotype him. The hyper-personal theory explains my observations of this person very well and also gave me insight into why I made the impression I did.
My impression of the person I observed in the chat was most in line with the hyper-personal theory. I viewed the subject to be a very stereotypical high school basketball player. Although he did not give a wide range of cues, the cues he did reveal were exaggerated in my mind because I focused more intently on them. The lack of cues actually caused me to focus on the cues that were given, therefore allowing for a stereotypical or exaggerated impression to be formed. For example, at one point in the conversation he said he wanted to chat with any blondes in the room. This statement made me think that he only liked blondes, and would not be interested in girls with any other hair color. However this is not necessarily the case. He could have simply been in the “mood” to talk to a blonde that day. He also talked a lot about his physical characteristics which caused me to think that he was obsessed with outward appearances only. This could simply be an affect of the selective self presentation theory. He might be much more than a “good-looking basketball player”, but that is all he chose to reveal in the specific conversation in this chat room. Maybe he was not comfortable revealing anything else, or maybe he indeed is just self- absorbed.
I felt it was very easy to form an impression of the observed target. He didn’t hold anything back, and revealed cues that made it very easy to stereotype him. The hyper-personal theory explains my observations of this person very well and also gave me insight into why I made the impression I did.
In order to complete this assignment, I decided to enter a chat room for the first time. As a novice chatter, I was unsure where to begin. I Googled the phrase “chat rooms” and stumbled upon www.chat-avenue.com. It was the first site I could find that did not require me to register, and so I entered “college chat” under the alias “dancer33”. There were about forty other users in the room and keeping track of conversations was nearly impossible. Instead of joining the group discussion, I scanned the list of users for a normal sounding name – or at least something not sexually explicit – and thus messaged “Eric”. Shortly after we began chatting, I received about five or six private invitations from other users. I accepted all of them, but all were immediately revoked when the inviter realized I wasn’t interested in cyber-sex.
Eric, like everyone I interacted with in the chat room, asked me my age, sex, and location first. He is 25, male, and lives in New York City where he attends a CUNY school. He wasn’t very conversational at first, so I asked him questions and prompted answers by offering bits of information about myself too. He admitted he didn’t like to talk about himself very much. As a result, much of our conversation was a vie for control through questioning. The more questions I asked him in an attempt to form an impression, the more questions he asked me in an attempt to turn the tables back around. Without realizing it, I was already forming a distinct impression of Eric’s character. He seemed apprehensive or distrusting, yet eager to learn about me before passing judgment. From this and other aspects of our interaction, I determined that he was probably a frequent user of chat rooms and the following about his personality:
Neuroticism: Eric did not seem neurotic at all, though I do not really know enough to say for certain.
Extraversion: I consider Eric to be an extravert because he was looking to chat, full of questions, willing to comment on the things I said, and secure in the things he said.
Openness: Despite his willingness to learn about me, Eric seemed pretty closed down when it came to revealing information about himself – particularly at first.
Agreeableness: After chatting for almost an hour, I found Eric to be very agreeable. In fact, I found myself really enjoying our conversation despite the fact that I’d only known him for such a short time (and only through CMC).
Conscientiousness: Eric seemed very cautious and slightly serious. I got the definite impression that he was quite conscientious.
My experience chatting with Eric matched the Hyperpersonal model extremely well. Although I had very little to base them on, my impressions were in fact extreme and consistent with over-attribution. His personality seemed a lot stronger than I expected to observe via computer mediated communication, and by the end of the conversation I really liked Eric. Additionally, we were able to focus our conversation on only topics we felt compelled to discuss by asking specific questions. In this sense, we were both practicing selective self-presentation and re-allocation of cognitive resources. Lastly, I found myself reaffirming his remarks about me, just as the model predicts through the behavior confirmation process. When he told me I was nice, for example, I attempted to make my comments and questions even nicer. Of course it was only after our conversation was completed that I realized how much of my impression formation experience could be predicted by the Hyperpersonal model. On the other hand, I am almost certain that my impression would mold and change significantly over time if I continued to chat with Eric.
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