Genericjake1237 and I skipped the formalities entirely. Without knowing my name, my religious beliefs, or my ethnic background, the first thing he told me was that he believes life is meaningless. For all he knew, I could have been a devout Catholic or an orthodox Jew, but the high degree of anonymity made him feel protected. I developed a stronger impression of Jake in the ten minute CMC AIM conversation than I did of Jessica, my new housemate, who I met face to face just hours before.
Engaging in a highly synchronous chat with Jake emulated a face to face conversation; however, the lack of visibility and audibility let us each maintain a high degree of anonymity. Still, I developed a very strong impression. Out of the Big Five traits, I would rate him extremely high on openness. He felt comfortable enough with me, a complete stranger, to divulge his feelings about a girl that he liked. He asked me for advice on how to get her attention. He even confided in me that he tries to joke around in school to increase his popularity. This pseudo-relationship that we developed through CMC showed me just how powerful anonymity can be
Since Jake was so open with me, I consider him to be a warm person. He was very talkative and interested in my opinions. However, I would rate him low for agreeability because he struck me as very opinionated. From the start, he voiced his views on the purposelessness of life, his doubts about a higher power, and his dislike for people who try hard in school. He definitely came off as arrogant when he shared with me his 4.33 GPA and the list of girls that had crushes on him. Face to face, this probably would have deterred me from talking to him, but online, I think he was less concerned with the impression he made than with sharing his true opinions. Perhaps this was because of the recordlessness of our conversation. Jake is not the only person who feels less accountable for what he says on AIM than for what he says in person.
My impressions of Jake in the CMC AIM environment were definitely exaggerated and thus, more in line with the Hyperpersonal Model. Within the ten minutes that we talked, I decided that Jake was an opinionated, but very open person whose arrogance can easily be read as masked insecurities. This impression could be as a result of overattribution and lack of situational observation. When talking to someone for a limited amount of time in one environment, it is natural to fixate on certain aspects of the conversation and form an overstated impression. Because of reallocation of resources, Jake didn’t have to react to nonverbal cues or body language; instead, he could focus on the messages that we exchanged. Selective self presentation led me to judge Jake more intensely because he chose what information to share and what information not to share. He controlled what I knew about him, and had more influence over my impression of him in a CMC environment than he would have in a face to face environment.
4 comments:
Wow, you have written a great post! You are very detailed with your answers and gave good examples to verify why you came away with the impression that you did. It’s interesting how comfortable people feel when on the internet and give no hesitation when divulging personal information to people they’ve never met before. The most obvious reason for this, as you mentioned, is the idea of anonymity. It’s also fascinating how from limited information and cues available, people can form impressions of how a person may act, think, look, and so on. Certain words may give one impression and the presentation of thoughts and ideas may trigger another. In addition, the idea of a person being a “warm” or “cold” person can also be inferred by word choice. It seems, and I’m assuming here from what you’ve written, that Jake is in dire need of expressing his thoughts to someone and doesn’t seem to be bothered by doing so online. This may even be preferred by Jake as he is getting things off his chest while at the same time being anonymous about it. It’s a win win situation. Even though it sounds like he confided a variety of information to you, he, along with every other person, self selects information they want to present. Because of this, you lack information necessary for making a more educated impression of him. This then results in the over attribution process and impressions become intensified as the lack of information is the only basis for impression formation to based upon. Again, great post!
Lindsay,
Your point about recordlessness was a very powerful one. While I had thought before about how anonymity can effect the way people interact, like you mentioned, I never really thought that recordlessness or the persistency of communication would affect as much. Your experience and retelling of Jake’s behaviors changed this for me. From what you’ve said I find him to be a prime example of how people won’t necessarily always try to present themselves in ways that will make a good impression but would rather express their opinions.
I think it is interesting that in your interactions with Jake you skipped the formalities. When I was working on this project every conversation that was started with me or ones that I started all began with the formalities; name and more commonly ASL.
I agree with your thoughts that the hyperpersonal model fits this situation if only from your statement that you “developed a stronger impression of Jake in the ten minute CMC AIM conversation than I did of Jessica, my new housemate”. I believe that because you didn’t meet Jake face-to-face there were cases of exaggeration about his character. Between his arrogance and strong opinions I would say that there’s nothing generic and about Genericjack1237.
Great post!
Lauren
Hi you!
I found your post to be extremely interesting right from the get-go, as it was fascinating to see how much information someone is willing to reveal about themselves when such anonymity is present. Since it is obvious from your ten-minute computer mediated conversation that Jake rates extremely high in openness, I would be curious as to see how open Jake would be in face to face communication. Is he truly as open as he appears to be, or are these impressions exaggerated because of the CMC environment? Because I believe, as it appears that you do too, that this openness is due to the anonymity factor and his comfort in knowing that your impression of him does not really matter, I agree with you that your experience supports that of the Hyperpersonal model. Because very little cues are present, you are obviously taking the small amount you have and forming a general stereotype about this person. Moreover, on a side note, I am really curious as to whether or not all of these things are true. I got the impression (perhaps, however, due to the lack of cues), that Jake was making a lot of these things up, as many people seem to do when interacting over this type of communication. Great job and I look forward to reading more of your posts!
Lindsay-
You did a great job analyzing your experience in a synchronous chat. I found it quite startling how fast he brought up quite a personal belief. Perhaps he wanted to see how you would react to his revelation, and actually did not hold such beliefs. I also found your claim that your chat emulated face-to-face communication quite interesting. I think that with increasing computer-mediated communication infiltrating our social lives, the two forms of communication will become more and more similar. Such a claim leads me to wonder whether or not younger generations of people will have a harder time distinguishing between the features of face-to-face communication and computer-mediated communication. I happened to agree with you, that my experience in impression formation was in line with the Hyperpersonal Model. I think that due to the fact that CMC excludes many non-verbal cues that would be present in FtF communication, the cues that are revealed are exaggerated.
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