Online impression formation

The psychological space I observed was an asynchronous forum called “Will Write for Chocolate”. A woman by the name of Debbie Ohi has a forum that she dedicates to her writing, especially her comics and her surveys. People are free to view her work and post comments expressing their thoughts and opinions on the given topic that day. A woman by the name of Saoirse Redgrave gave a very interesting response to Debbie Ohi’s question “Do you write for the market or do you write for yourselves”? Saoirse conveys herself as being a very strong willed person who doesn’t seem like she takes direction from anyone but who follows her own path in life. I make this assumption from her mannerisms when she writes, the words and expressions she uses, the fact she confident enough to give her full name (or perhaps that’s all a ruse), and the presence of a limited number of cues.

In her response, Saoirse says “she writes for herself first” rather than for an audience as she says “she’s selfish that way” with a picture of a smiley face. From this, I am able to sense that she knows she may be viewed in a bad light because of her selfishness but could care less. Why be bothered with what others have to say about you when a happy life is what you make it, not what others make it. In addition to her almost persistent way of thinking, she puts her thoughts in a way that makes it sound like whatever she finds interesting, others will view it just as thought provoking and sensible as she did. I also find it very interesting she only takes the audience into account when she truly likes what she’s working on and will edit some words to appeal to their taste, almost as if she has to. My impression of her is that she is a middle aged, educated woman because of her choice of words, the fact that she has been “around the block” in a sense and knows what she’s doing, and is forceful with her presentation. She also uses expressions like “ugh” to describe how she’s feeling and try to accurately convey her emotions. This makes me view her as a dramatic person, in relevance with her word choice and with her appearance as well. She is very open and extroverted with her thoughts as she willingly does blog postings and freely expresses her thoughts without hesitation. And lastly, she gives off the impression of being a “cold” person for the fact that she seems like she would be hard to get along with and is not very agreeable or open to other opinions. I say this because of her aggressive writing and her constant use of negative terminology (she uses the words “I don’t” a lot).

My predictions are more in line with the Social Processing Theory and hyperpersonal model. With the limited number of cues to go on, the attention is shifted to “social identity variables” and impressions are therefore over dramatized. Such limitations provide difficulties when trying to analyze a person but, according to the Social Processing Theory, it’s feasible. And so, according to the Hyperpersonal model, my assumptions of Saoirse, with her self-selected qualities she presented, are intensified. Also, because of the limited number of social cues available, impressions, such as mine, become stereotyped ones. The assumptions we make are based upon what we already know and thus they are presumed stereotypical. The feeling of positive or negative attributes towards a person is also present by the way a person, such as Saoirse, presents herself online, in this case, in her blog.