My impression formation experiment baffled me for a while; I figured that I could do the assignment easily enough, but I had no way of making it fun. And then it hit me: I could just play a game and chat with my opponent. I've always been pretty good at Scrabble, and so because I'll only play a game if I think I'm going to win, to a Scrabble clone I headed: Yahoo has a version they call Literati.
I joined one of the Beginner rooms and started up a game with the first person I saw with an unimpressive Win/Loss record (remember, I like to win). The game started up and I kicked off the conversation with a friendly (though, to be honest, rather cold-sounding, through CMC) hello. My opponent, ritzo35, responded with a more casual hi.
There was a period of silence as I racked up points. I was worried that if I tried to initiate conversation while beating him too badly he might take it as a sign of condescension, so I started making smaller words (I had a strong enough lead that I could justifiably show this consideration). Then I mentioned to my opponent that I hated vowels, my expectation being he or she would infer that my lapse in performance was due to a sudden vowel upsurge.
Imagine my delight when I discovered ritzo35 was also suffering from a lack of consonants. We abused vowels for a while before I used one of those interpersonal probes, asking ritzo35 where he or she was from (Texas, if you're interested). Ritzo35 asked me the same question back, and I responded that I was currently at college in New York.
At this point I had already formed an initial impression of Ritzo35: he/she wasn't initiating any conversation, and although I was receiving responses to my questions and comments, they were for the most part uninteresting because they seemed automatic.
But then Ritzo35 moved the conversation forward by stating it was no wonder I was winning by so much. We progressed from there, and things were even a bit more friendly. My initial impression was disproved in a matter of minutes, and by the time we parted (my victory, 236-136), I felt as though I'd had a very pleasant game.
There are things I still don't know about Ritzo35 - such as his/her gender (the avatar Ritzo35 used was female, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything), but I do have an impression of this person.
My initial impression was definitely influenced by the CFO perspectives. I misinterpreted Ritzo35's short responses as uninterested and curt, when in actuality Ritzo35 was perfectly friendly and was apparently only waiting for the right moment to move the conversation forward. Had there been nonverbal cues to go along with his/her textual cues, such as a smile or something, I probably would have gotten a different impression (an impression that in all likelihood would have been closer to my later impression of Ritzo35). The absence of nonverbal cues definitely led to a reduced presence for Ritzo35 - reduced to text, this person couldn't allow his or her true personality shine through as quickly as he or she probably could have face to face.
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2 comments:
An online board game was a great idea for an experiment. It’s a synchronous space, but the presence of the game in the middle makes the interaction more task-oriented. One might expect the competitive nature of the game to have caused Ritzo to behave aggressively towards you. Perhaps, however, the game was just a distraction, serving only as a decoration in a glorified chat room. In that case, the fact that he would move to minimize tension in the conversation would in fact be the expected behavior.
CFO does seem to be the most appropriate characterization here, but I wonder if perhaps the female avatar served as a more powerful non-verbal cue than you give it credit for. I think perhaps if he had chosen a male avatar, you might have formed a more competitive, aggressive, and thus less positive impression of your opponent.
Hi Jason,
I, too, am a fan of online board games such as Yahoo’s Literati. It's one of the reasons why I was interested to read that you were able to have a successful conversation with your opponent while competitively playing against him/her. I also find it interesting that both you and your opponent did not find it necessary to establish each other’s sex and age. In my own experience, I noticed that age, sex, and location is not as important to establish because most of the time, we go onto online game sites to play rather than to get to know each other, i.e. in an online chat room.
Also, I believe that even though you conceptually knew that a person’s avatar does not necessarily tell you the sex of the individual, you may have unconsciously been affected by your opponent’s female avatar and, as such, approached your opponent the way you would approach a female. It’s interesting because in a usual CMC mediated conversation, age, sex, and location are the three fundamental questions that you ask someone when you first meet/talk/chat with that person.
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