Assignment 2

The psychological space I entered on the internet was an online forum discussing careers. This forum is in the asynchronous area of the internet due to the lag between responses. Since I did not converse with another person due to time constraints, I observed the past history of two people involved in a conversation. The targets I observed appeared to be young males (it was never actually revealed so I inferred from cues from the text) who were debating the salary at a firm they were hoping to join. The conversation was particularly unfriendly between the two. It seemed as though each person had something to prove to the other individual. Each person thought they were right and the other was wrong with no chance of compromise. In terms of personality traits I was able to observe, each person seemed very neurotic over the details of where they obtained the salary information and were very extroverted in expressing their opinions of who was correct. Neither was particularly open about their identities or agreeable in coming to a decision. Conscientiousness of each others behaviors was not directly observed since each person seemed to only care about yelling their own opinion at the other person. I think that in face to face, each person would not have been as aggressive toward each other. The anonymity of the forum allowed them to argue in a more open fashion than I think they normally would in face to face conversation.

I think that of all the theories discussed in class, my impression of the individuals would best fall under the Hyperpersonal Model. Perhaps due to the topic being discussed along with the anonymity of the forum, I perceived the individuals to be overly aggressive. The users were using “selective self representation” to show only their aggressive, meaner traits through CMC, while blocking their other, more friendly qualities. Thus I may have been over analyzing their personality by just looking at the aggressiveness of their text. I also may have been wrong about them both being males, but judging from the words they were using, they both seemed to think each other was male. I also think that since each post seemed to be more aggressive than the last, each was confirming behaviorally they were against each other so each increased their meanness. Overall I found analyzing something as simple as an online forum very interesting. I definitely will look at it from a different perspective after discussing these theories.

Online Impression

The internet space I will be writing about is an asynchronous discussion forum called College Confidential. The forum, which I came to know a few days ago, is quite interesting. Basically high school students post their stats and such, hoping for feedback into entrance into universities. I had come across someone who went by the username Santabanta2. Basically this male (or so he claims) has had 169 posts since August 2007. That averages to about 5 posts a day. After going through some of his older posts, I decided to join the forum, and answer his questions, or at least attempt to.

Given the nature of the posts (he was asking for chances on college admissions) I guessed he was about 16 years old. The subject of his posts was “what are my chances: mediocre applicant.” At first I felt, this kid was being honest and frank- he did not have great stats, but just wanted some input. At this point I felt his honesty provided a warming effect on the forum. As I clicked on the subject, I saw the following:

Private High School - Bay Area, CA

SAT1 - 2400
SAT2 - Math2 750, Bio 780, Chem 770
APs - CalcAB and BC 5, Chem 5, Bio 5, Eng 5, APUSH 5

3.99 GPA UW - Taken the most rigorous courses (11 APs)
Expecting awesome recs, will be fantastic for sure

WHAT ARE MY CHANCES OF GETTING INTO STANFORD, HARVARD, BERKELEY?
(He listed many activities and awards, that of which I will omit for space)

For one, these stats are not “mediocre” by any means. Furthermore, upon analyzing this person’s characteristics, I have come up with the following:

· Neuroticism - Santabanta receives a low score for neuroticism. Although Santabanta was criticized as “fishing for compliments” and being “full of himself”, he remained cool and composed. Maybe because he wanted proper answers for his questions he could not act harshly toward other forum visitors. It may have just been the forum environment that pushed him to stay composed.

· Extroversion - I do not feel Santabanta was extroverted by any means. He had posted 169 posts, that of which they were solely dedicated to his own stats. He had never responded to a question posed by another fellow collegeconfidential visitor. Therefore, I feel he is not extroverted, but rather introverted, possibly self-absorbed in his own numbers.

· Agreeableness - Santabanta was agreeable. In the midst of constant criticism regarding his use of the word “mediocre”, he still persevered. He even admitted to “fishing for compliments.” This is selective self-presentation. I am sure Santabanta had other responses to his fellow forum lurkers when he was told he was “fishing for compliments”, but regardless, he accepted it laughingly, and followed his response with emoticons.

· Openness - Santabanta was not open by any means. He was open to discuss his own stats, but never took an interest in other people’s stats. This portrays a self-absorbed impression of him.

· Conscientiousness - Santabanta was very conscious of his own thread. He accepted comments and criticisms, because he probably did not want them to hold up discussion of his own stats. However, he was not conscious of other people’s threads. Regardless, his proper language, and responses to criticisms show his exercising of self-presentation.

I think this was an example of the CFO perspective. Firstly, the lack of verbal and relational cues produced a depersonalized form of communication, and decreased awareness of others, inhibiting more relations within the college confidential forum. The forum eliminated all impression relevant signals, so Santabanta was able to constantly talk about and follow his and only his thread. In the SIDE model, which this situation also reflects, one forms stereotypes that are more accented because of the limited social and interpersonal cues available. My final impression of Santabanta is that he is very self-absorbed in his own numbers. His words “expecting awesome recs, will be fantastic for sure”, definitely show this. But it may be that he was just trying to get to the point, as this internet space is a forum, and responses are lagged as it is. Also we saw that the communicative limitations of CMC engaged Santabanta to exercise selective self-presentation. Because Santabanta was limited to only textual information, his positive and desirable cues (as accepting the criticisms laughingly with emoticons) allowed him to present himself to the world in a positive manner while masking his other characteristics.

The word “masking”, seems so deceptive, but I guess in this day and age where we are part of an internet driven society, masking oneself is the norm. Quite sad if you stand back and really think about it.

Assignment 2: Interacting and Observing Guest2386

Over the weekend I decided on a synchronous online chat room as the psychological space where I would interact with and observe another person. It was surprising how nervous I was as I entered a chat room from a Meebo, an instant messaging website. Being nervous I created a fake persona and I became Kelly, a 20 year old Communications major from Maryland.

I found it interesting the effects that a nickname had on the number of conversations people started with me. Both cutechipmunk and friendlycactus yielded in zero conversations, while kittykat besieged me in private messages from guys looking for more than just a nice conversation. I settled on kitkat, an actual nickname of mine, and got the response I was looking for, people chatting with me in an almost everyday manner.

I ended many conversations before engaging with Guest2386 who privately messaged me and introduced himself as Mark, a 23 year old Australian graduate student in Business. Hearing he was from Sydney I automatically asked if he was a surfer. This proves that the hyperpersonal method was definitely a factor in our conversation because based on some of his answers I either exaggerated his traits or in this case stereotyped him. I did this again when he said he likes playing soccer and I assumed he was athletic rather than actually being someone who just enjoys the game. The social information-processing theory was also a factor in my conversation with Mark because I felt that while impression-relevant cues were present I would need more time interacting with Mark in order to form a more focused impression.

While I can’t say that I made a precise impression, I did make mental notes on Mark’s behaviors and how they related to the “Big Five” traits. Firstly I would say that Mark is more introverted than extraverted because while we were both in the same chat room I didn’t even notice him until he privately messaged me and he also depended on me to continue the conversation. From this I decided that he’s shy and socially awkward and thus prefers spending time alone, but it might be that based on available cues I am exaggerating his introversion

From our conversation I came to think that Mark is agreeable and seemed like a genuinely decent and honest person; he listened to what I had to say, positively responded, and was never negative towards my views. Mark also seemed to be slightly neurotic. I noticed that he tended to be emotional in his responses, his messages would often become intense and anxiety-filled, and he acted like I was abandoning him or losing interest when I didn’t immediately respond to something he said.

While I communicated and to some extent got to know Mark, I believe that I didn’t have enough interaction and information about his character to really decide how open or conscientious he is. He displayed behavior that could be described as more or less open and also more or less conscientious. But on the whole Mark seemed like a warm person and one whom I enjoyed talking to.

Assignment #2: Tycho Brahe

The space I'll be writing about is a blog that is connected to a webcomic. I've been following Penny Arcade for quite a while now, and have formed a very strong impression of particularly the writer/blogger Jerry Holkins. Penny Arcade posts a new comic strip every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Most of the strips feature the characters Tycho and Gabe who take on the personalities of Holkins and the artist Mike Krahulik respectively. Each strip is accompanied by a blog post by Holkins, often giving some background to the strip but then continuing into other subjects.

Given the "geeky" topics of Penny Arcade (primarily games) the initial impression is that he would be in his early or mid-20s. This is reinforced by the character Tycho who is drawn as somewhere in that age range. A picture of Tycho is at the top of each of Holkins' blog posts (the posts actually are signed Tycho, although it's understood that the posts are not meant to be the character). As a result, despite being aware of a difference between the character and the writer, I picture Holkins as looking like Tycho. Yet while Gabe and Krahulik do have a degree of resemblance, Tycho and Holkins look absolutely nothing alike: Holkins in fact is a little overweight, bald, and now 31 years old with a son. The presentation of the site makes it difficult to form a more accurate impression even after knowing what he really looks like.

Holkins' most defining trait is his over-the-top prose. He admittedly delights in large, unusual words and his posts are filled with bizarre metaphors. One of my favorites was:

" 'niche' may be insufficient to describe the tight, sunless, deep sea crevice such a product might reside in. Not that it matters to me, of course: I am the pale white lobster that makes such cracks his home."

As a result of his writing, Holkins comes across as fairly neurotic and introverted, while still being very warm and agreeable. I find that the CFO perspective is inaccurate in this case. Rather than a lack of cues resulting in a negative, neutral, or un-developed impression, I extrapolate his entertaining writing to create the impression that he himself is very entertaining and clever all the time. Over-attribution is definitely present and Holkins, in the asynchronous medium, has the luxury of carefully sculpting his self-presentation. He might choose to exaggerate some of his own traits so as to blur the line between himself and Tycho. The Hyperpersonal Model seems to fit the best with how my impression formed. I think it would be very interesting to have a conversation with Holkins to see if he creates a different impression during synchronous online communication.

Assignment #2: An Interview with a BMW1600

The forums are always a wonderful place to find all sorts of people, and by tracking a person’s posts, it becomes child’s play piecing together their habits and characteristics. An advantage of the forums is that veteran posters tend to be more open than in an instant message conversation. Offtopic.com happens to archive many of their “epic” threads, and a quick search for common handles drew my eye to “BMW1600.”

His first post started with:

“When I eventually come to my senses and discard my belief in God, how long is the waiting period before I am allowed to start attacking those who still believe?”

Even from his opening post, I could tell that was a sarcastic, but very entertaining person. This one sentence alone showed some hostility toward atheists, a sign of neuroticism, justified by the fact that many of his threads parody well known and infamous posters on Offtopic. The entire thread itself had no higher purpose than to rile and amuse, which, combined with his 61,263 posts, reveals him to be an extrovert with a love of attention. BMW1600 doesn’t just open up a can of worms with his threads, he likes to play with those he frustrates and bask in the praise of other posters.

I would prefer to reserve judgment on his openness since his parody of atheists throughout the thread seemed more tongue-in-cheek than scathing. He might very well be one himself, fed up by the constant barrage launched by atheists toward the God-fearing, however unlikely that is. He may be very open or very closed to new ideas, and because of his perchance to parody, his true character is a bit harder to discern. Whether he’s an agreeable fellow or not is up for grabs, considering I didn’t have the opportunity to observe him responding to the threads of others, but his cynicism suggests that BMW1600 may be a bit less than trusting and a lot less than compliant toward others. Same goes for his conscientiousness; while I don’t see any definitive evidence that points toward a meticulous, careful person, there is a feeling that many of his posts were cleverly written to get the most response, positive and negative, from the Offtopic community.

My impressions are evidence for the hyperpersonal theory, which states that, because of the lack of many cues in CMC, one tends to overemphasize the traits of the target person. Even from his sentence, I was inferring things about BMW1600’s characteristics and beliefs. Despite my attempt at objectivity, it is far too easy to see more than what’s there, and because I may never meet BMW1600 in person, I will never know whether my impressions were right or wrong.

Assignment Two: A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy

For my post this week, I ventured into the seedy underbelly of the Internet known as Internet Relay Chat, or IRC. To make a very long story short, IRC was started way back in the 80s to fulfill one programmer’s need for synchronous communication. Since then, it has endured expansion, revision, regulation, schisms, splits and more to become the most sprawling, poorly documented and yet one of the most widely-used sections on the net. (For those of you, like me, who enjoy reading on the history of the Internet, here is a little more from Wikipedia.)

As I have said by now, IRC is a synchronous communication space. People connect via their computers to IRC servers and the join particular themed chat rooms known as “channels.” On my adventure, I connected to the EFnet servers (which has a rightful claim to be a descendent of the original IRC networks). After browsing through the listing, I elected to join #bioshock, a moderately busy channel dedicated to discussing the eponymous recently released computer game.

Based solely on the topic of the channel, my impression of the chat’s participants was immediately skewed towards an exaggerated, hyperpersonal characterization. I imagined a room full of (fellow) nerds sitting around bantering about the latest popular game release, with a name and topic only a nerd could love.

The chat was already scrolling at a furious pace when I finally managed to connect. Being that I was a complete outsider, I decided to try and track one target’s interactions amongst the five or six active participants. Although the channel listed over 100 active participants, the majority, including myself, did not say anything. This is important because I feel that the number of silent “lurkers” in the channel may have had an effect on my perception of the discussion’s rhetoric. Instead of interpreting the somewhat heated arguments as friendly or personal debates, the participants seemed to me to be jockeying for support of the other people in the channel. This “demagogue” trait definitely gave me a more negative perception of the participants that I might otherwise have had.

The argument (about, ironically, whether it was more semantically correct to call a particular action “hacking” or “bypassing security”), which I observed for about two hours, seemed to coalesce around two distinct leaders, whom I will call “user x” and “user y.” (The names have been changed to protect the innocent.) Both seemed to be extraordinarily extroverted, although this may have been a hyperpersonal assumption on my part due to the relative inactivity of the other channel members. Also, they seemed to be highly neurotic, choosing every time to expound on each other's negatives in order to kindle the flame war. By association, they appeared to be low on agreeableness, although they were supported by other chatters that agreed with their position. Perhaps this indicates some level of agreeableness that I could not see as an outside observer. They appeared to be very open and lacking in conscientiousness; the language was incredibly foul and horribly insulting to the point where I'm certain almost nobody would use it outside of the Internet.

These two users’ communications certainly seemed to confirm the hyperpersonal model. Every time one of them would say something, the other would pick out a small detail from the message and expound on it, drawing characterizations of one another with progressively increasing distortion. Eventually, these hyperpersonal impressions that user x and user y had of one another caused the whole discussion to devolve into insult hurling and to lose any productive meaning. One would have been hard-pressed to predict any other outcome under those circumstances. The fact that both sides could not see past the straw men built on selected traits in their opponents both confirms the hyperpersonal model and spells demise for any similarly-situated discussions.

How do you draw an artichoke?

After thinking long and hard about what kind of internet environment I wanted to explore for this assignment, I finally decided to take a break from thinking to do my habitual, daily browse of the web. For some reason, cooperative web gaming came to mind as a potential idea to look into. I realized that many websites that offer multiplayer “board” games enhanced for the internet (such as Reversi, Internet Chess, Poker, and others), generally provide a means for the different game players to chat while they are competing for points. It was at this moment that I remembered an old favorite game of mine, InkLink from Shockwave.com.

InkLink is a cooperative game for up to eight players. For each of the 10 rounds in the game, one player is selected and given a secret word to draw while the other players guess what the word is. (It was my turn to draw in the image above. I had no idea how to draw an artichoke.) The interesting thing about the scoring system is that not only do the correct guessers get points, but the artists get the same number of points as well. The game is designed in a way that allows the players to use their guess text boxes as a means of chatting as well. There is a “whisper” ability that allows you to carry on private conversations with other players in the same game as you. I chose this competitive, yet somewhat cooperative, group to chat with because it allowed me to observe multiple people in a closed environment.

I realized quickly that being friendly and open would generally warrant the same sort of responses in these chats. I found that on the whole, those who played InkLink were generally mature (regardless of what age category room I was playing in at the time) and courteous; they simply wanted to have fun playing a game they enjoyed. One major factor of the Big Five struck me the most. Though I didn’t find players to be very open about themselves, most were quite agreeable, especially due to the minor cooperative nature of the game. I was actually surprised to find extremely limited “flaming” and “trolling” in these games. Maturity in these games also surprised me to an extent, especially when competing against players with usernames like xTOOxSEXYxFORxMYxSHIRTx and dadog1234. I developed a CFO based position originally, only to realize that my short period of interaction with these players led me to reevaluate their personalities and realize that Social Information Theory was more applicable in this situation. By the end of these games, I had attempted to communicate with all the other players at least once, to get a feel for their online personas. But because I was not focusing on only one person to observe/analyze and I wasn’t able to collect too much information about the multiple players, I feel that I probably relied much more on SIDE theory by taking various personality traits I was able to pick up and throw them out into the extremities of the personality spectrum.

Assignment #2

The online space I entered to meet someone and form an impression was with the chatroom feature of meebo.com. Meebo is a website where you can log in with AIM, ICQ, etc. using a browser instead of downloading a client. I made up a screen name and entered some of the chats. I found most to be overrun with people who were obnoxiously posting, talking dirty, or just being argumentative. I finally found a room about Talib Kweli where users were having “normal” conversation.

Before typing any messages I watched the chat for a while. One of the features of Meebo’s chat rooms is that users can put YouTube videos in a queue and everyone in the same room sees the video simultaneously. This added an interesting element to the typical anonymous synchronous online space. Since everyone was seeing and hearing the video stream it seemed to let people connect more so than in the chat rooms without the video enabled. Even though it isn’t analogous to face to face nonverbal and vocal cues, it did add more information to the opinions that were being posted and seemed to increase social presence.

After talking with the group for a bit about the videos being played, I messaged a user Scienterrific. (As an interesting aside, we never explicitly asked what gender the other was, but I immediately assumed Scienterrific was a girl from her pink font, and then thought of this person as a girl for the rest of the conversation). I found myself drawn to this name more than the others and I realized that I “judged” the people from the little information I had. As an engineer I found this name funny and thought we would have a lot in common. We started chatting and asked some questions serving as interpersonal probes. I asked her if she was in college and she talked about how she recently graduated, but “LOVVEEEEED college.” When she said this I felt a connection since it is my last year in college and I am having a great time here. We talked about where we are from and through our conversation, found out that she went to the same art school as my mother, and that we both love living near the beach.

My observations strongly support the Hyperpersonal Model. I didn’t disclose everything about myself but picked what I wanted to share. The few similarities that we did have were amplified due to over-attribution. I felt like we had a lot in common and had similar personalities from few details. After talking I felt like we also exhibiting a degree of behavioral confirmation. When we had something in common, I overstated my enthusiasm and acted the way I thought she saw me and have a feeling she did the same. The conversation we had was very pleasant, even though we talked for only twenty minutes, I felt that this was someone who could be my friend in “real life.” I came away from the experience thinking that Scienterrific was warm, slightly extraverted, very open, very agreeable, and very conscientious (I don’t feel I have enough information to judge on neuroticism). Since this person was friendly, funny, and open during our short conversation, I instinctively felt that this is how her personality probably is all the time.

I found this online activity to be interesting, especially because I am generally a skeptic about online interactions. I found myself experiencing many of the aspects of the Hyperpersonal Model we learned about in class.

Online Impression Formation

For this assignment, I chose to enter an internet chat room. It was an interesting experience for me since as a child I was always blocked from them on AOL. My parents strongly believed that they were full of “sickos” who were looking for more than just a friend to talk with. So, with them in mind I chose to enter a Girls Only chat room on chatavenue.com. It wasn’t girls only- the language was crude and I left shortly after. I searched until I found a chat room where the content was much more relevant to my purpose.

I started a private chat with a boy named Weston (Weston1000) who was from the state of Washington. He was a senior in high school and was eager to start college. I posed as a high school junior from New York. After the awkward mundane getting-to-know-you part was out of the way, he asked me what other forums I visited regularly and if I engaged in any metaworlds. We talked some more and I realized just how much time he spent online everyday.

My first impression of Weston was right in line with the Cues Filtered Out Theory. Due to the limiting interface, I had no vocal cues or body language to use in judging him. All I knew was this boy liked chat-rooms and spent way too many hours online each day. The lack of cues lead me to have a negative view of this boy. Automatically I starting picturing his physical appearance. I saw a geeky boy with glasses feverishly typing on his computer. The Hypersonal Model states that when one speaks with another and there are limited cues, one tends to generalize and stereotype the other. I filled in the missing gaps, such as his social status, hobbies, and personality. I thought that Weston was unpopular in school, didn’t do many extracurricular activities, and was an all around extroverted person. At the end of our conversation, he gave me his AIM screenname, so we could talk another time in the future. I knew that was never going to happen because he was a big computer geek and we had nothing. Curiously, I looked at his profile on AIM and found a quote from a movie I liked. The internet is a deceptive place-maybe if we met in real life I would have gotten a different impression and we may have become friends.

Assignment #2

To find a chat room for synchronous chat, I googled “chat rooms” and found http://www.chat-avenue.com. This site has many different chat rooms for all types of people, ranging from sports chat to gay chat to college chat. Looking for someone I could relate to, I entered Music Chat. It prompted me to create a nickname, so I chose “heythere” as my alias so no one could tell my age, sex, or location without asking. The lines of dialogue between the chatters do not flow evenly and appear to be repeating as well, making it very difficult to follow the conversation. A couple of users are automated “bots”, advertising their webcams and single’s websites. A few users dominated the entire chat room with crude language and inappropriate topics, so I looked for someone to talk to in a private chat. I tried to initiate many private chats, but few users were receptive and ignored many of my requests. Finally I found Coke 1 who spoke with me about musical tastes.

Coke 1’s paralanguage, including his use of capitalization and full sentences in our synchronous chat, indicated a level of formality and maturity. We spoke about our musical tastes before exchanging A/S/L information. Because he liked rap and metal genres, I was able to make guesses about his opinions on a number of other issues. Coke 1 was not sure if he wanted to go to college, so he is extremely different from anyone I have encountered at Cornell.

In terms of the Big 5 Traits, Coke 1 seemed very agreeable because he said he wanted to try sampling artists from my musical tastes. He was open to new ideas, but also sometimes seemed neurotic because he expressed negativity towards his hometown. I do not feel I can rate him in terms of extraversion or conscientiousness, as is predicted by the research in Hancock and Dunham. Because I only had one interaction with him, the breadth of qualities I can rate him on is severely limited.

As is predicted by the hyperpersonal model, I feel intensely about the personality traits I could perceive. Due to reduced cues and over-attribution processes, I have stereotyped Coke 1 based on his musical tastes and level of education. His use of paralanguage was a form of selective self-presentation. As is predicted by the hypotheses of the hyperpersonal model, the breadth of personality characteristics of Coke 1 is smaller, but the intensity of the characteristics is greater.

Self-anlysis of Online Impression Formation Assignment (Saidu Ezike)

Due to the fact that my interest lies in the broadcast/media field, I felt it would be a great idea to contact an employee from a TV station via e-mail in hopes of being mentored while remaining within the guidelines of this assignment. For confidentiality purposes, we’ll call this target Sally and leave her workplace anonymous. I will say, however, that the target was a 28-year-old black female from New York City who was married with two children. She mentioned to me that she “love[s] [her] job but [has] to take a lot of [expletive].” In terms of the big five traits, this is my impression of her:

Neuroticism: I felt that her Neuroticism was very high. Her unpleasant emotions hit peaks with a number of questions I asked regarding the workplace; it was mind-boggling. Since we have only been in e-mail conversation for about 3 days, I did not expect for her to speak of the negatives of her work; especially in the manner she did. For example, by the third day of me speaking with her, she used profanity to discuss some of the experiences of being the one of the few minority females in the workplace. For the most part, using profanity in conversation comes after one has developed a sense of comfort with their partner. It is difficult to determine whether or not we have developed a sense of comfort with each other.

Agreeableness: Since she gave me an honest perspective of her work, I felt that she was somewhat obliged to let me “cry on her shoulder.” Since she allowed me to do this comfortably, I would say that her agreeableness is very high. I even got to tell her that I felt that at times, she might be a little sensitive to racism without her being offended. A lot of times, due to the way racism is portrayed, it’s easy to say that someone is being racist when they actually aren’t. I pointed her to a number of YouTube links regarding this issue.

Extraversion: She is not very extraverted at all as a matter of fact, she mentioned that she often has to “fake being outgoing” in order to get on good side of her co-workers. She feels that she doesn’t need to be extraverted in public since she is already married. It was hard to analyze her extraversion because it seems that she is willing to mentor those on the rise but chances are if she saw me in the street, she likely would not say hello unless I approached her. I also noticed that when she speaks, she uses a number of periods after her thoughts. Honestly, I felt her punctuation was a little intimidating but after a few e-mails, I became used to the punctuation.

Openness: I would say that this is the trait where I will give her the most intense impression. I told her a number of weird facts about myself and rather than delaying in her response, she actually praised my creativity. This made me look up to her as a mentor. She admitted that she has been through humbling experiences in her life, which lead her to become more willing to hear the ideas I proposed to her. He answered just about every question I asked her.

Conscientiousness: “If I wasn’t conscientious, I would be where I was now.” The aforementioned quote from Sally mirrors my views towards her. She gave me a rundown of actions she took to get to where she is now and the road was not easy. Coming from a relatively poor family, she had to create and host makeshift TV shows in her neighborhood all while obtaining her education.

My impressions of Sally were relatively intense considering the fact that we have not been speaking very long. Also, I actually think that my impression is opposite of Walther’s Social Information Processing Theory. My impression of Sally would have formed slower if we had been talking face to face since I feel that she is relatively shy when it comes to FtF interaction. Once a sensitive subject was touched upon we were able to speak on a deeper level. I know that, if we had been face to face, I would have been relatively intimidated or embarrassed to ask her some questions that I asked through e-mail.Due to this intensity, rather than being on the Cues-Filtered Out perspective, my impression is on lines with the hyperpersonal model, especially behavioral confirmation.

Although she has been very honest with me in our conversation, she has “played the part” when it comes to her profession. Some of the terminology she uses, I feel, is to make sure I know that she is very intelligent. She made it clear in her language that although she is speaking to me the way she is, she is still my mentor. I couldn’t help but respect that and it is highly likely that I followed along the lines of the over attribution process since I look up to this lady. I am inclined to believe everything she says to the highest degree and have intense impressions of her since I plan on being in her position a few years from now.

Assignment #2: Online Impression Formation

After a long time of deciding which psychological space I wanted to enter, I ended up entering an online chat room called “the love shack.” This chat room was described to be the “hot spot” chat room for those who were interested not only in dating but for those looking for “true” love. I wondered what people would think and expect upon entering this chat room: did they really expect to find “true” love or was this a way to just talk with random strangers about love?

I expected to find a lot of people in this chat room to be active in voicing their opinions and information, but only a few were actively chatting. I noticed that the very first detail people asked for and gave out was the typical “age/sex/location” information. After observing for a couple of minutes, I introduced myself to be a college female student in the East Coast and found someone who was interested in talking to me.

“PrinceCharming” was a 20-year old college student who lived in Ohio, who seemed to be a fairly agreeable and pleasant person to talk to. He was interested in art and mentioned that he even made a sculpture for a girl he liked. I perceived him to be a sweet and sensitive guy, but he could have presented himself to be this way to attract girls to talk to. He mentioned that he was really hurt from a recent relationship and seemed to have joined the chat room to find someone he can talk to about his hurt.

Even towards the end of our conversation, “PrinceCharming” left a pretty good impression on me. He seemed pretty genuine in expressing his pain from his previous relationship, and his hopes of finding someone new. When I asked him if he was looking for new love through this chat room, he confirmed his earlier answer by saying that he needed a complete stranger who would sympathize with him—he was not comfortable sharing his stories with real people in his life.

The hyperpersonal theory can be best used to describe my impressions of this person. The limited cues that described where he lived and his age already created a stereotypical image in my mind. The over-attribution process can also be applied in this conversation in that other partial cues, such as his story of making a sculpture for his past girlfriend, created exaggerations of his sensitivity trait that persisted throughout the rest of the conversation.

Oh, Facebook

Weeks ago I received a random friend request from a fellow junior at Cornell. Thinking nothing of it at the time I decided to accept. "The more facebook friends the better, right?," I thought to myself. I never questioned this oddity until this assignment was given. Why would a stranger befriend me, Ashley Downs, the girl on Facebook with the LEAST interesting profile?! And why would I accept him, Mr. Popular, the guy on Facebook with the MOST interesting profile? It was a puzzle in and of itself that led to an interesting investigation.

With his AIM screen name posted on his profile I decided to act bold. I signed online, IMing him immediately. He was incredibly kind and took to my questions well. Just 5 minutes into the conversation however our demonstration of the hyperpersonal model seemed evident. I tried to present myself positively with each question asked and I believe he did too. Thoughtfully taking the time to provide witty banter with each response the conversation moved along slow. Rather than typing quick replies we each sought to showcase (the best) pieces of ourselves.

We spoke for about two hours. As the conversation progressed I found the level of openness increasing and the level of formality decreasing. Originally seeing the Hyperpersonal Model supported I concluded by seeing the Cues Filtered Out Perspective. We seemed to connect quite well as we each welcomed uninhibited behavior. Lame stories were shared coupled with inappropriate jokes. Throughout the discussion we became more extroverted as our guards vanished.

I have never been the type to randomly speak with a stranger but I thoroughly enjoyed the anonymity of this discussion. Though the Social Identity Deindividuation Effect (SIDE) infers that our words would become increasingly similar over time I found the opposite to happen. As we became more comfortable with eachother we found it easier to act as individuals. I provided the lame stories and he provided the inappropriate jokes. He would make it a point to tell me how awful my stories were and I reciprocated with his terrible jokes. There was no accord. But it was refreshing.

I tend to be a pushover more often than not; I constantly agree to the demands of others to avoid confrontation. Deep down however I possess a fiery side that enjoys sarcasm and neuroticism. During the discussion with my newly formed friend I found it easier to showcase this side. Ultimately, in the end, the Cues Filtered Out Perspective seems to be most appropriate.

Oh, and for all those wondering, he befriended me because we're both in the group "Bob Dylan is the Man." Oh, Facebook. The connections you create are countless.

Online Impression Formation

In my attempt to test out several communication theories, I decided to join a synchronous chat room. The chat room I chose to enter was the “just friends” chat room via www.icq.com (a chat room website). When I first arrived to the room, I was asked to enter a nickname. Considering last week’s Wallace reading, I spent some time deciding on the person I wanted to project to the chat room starting with my screen name. I chose the name Skiierdude88 due to my love for skiing and the fact that I am a dude.

Upon entering I was completely disoriented, but after a few minutes I saw that the group was discussing which was better, dark chocolate or white chocolate. I introduced myself by saying Hi, and then began talking to “Eric_336” about how we wished that someone would say something more interesting. We began to talk in a separate chat, and Eric told me he was going to Manhattan University. He then told me he was studying medicine and I told him I was a business major who hoped someday I’d end up in Manhattan. This seemed to confirm the notion of mutual sharing, where in one person sharing a piece of information can compel the other to share the same piece of information with the other.

Even though there were less channels of communication via the chat room, it was very easy to see that Eric was very agreeable. Throughout our entire conversation there was no point in which there was a clash of any views or ideas. Perhaps this was because through just text he was able to fake his way out of situations that may have been much more conflicting in person.

The conversation with Eric certainly followed the hypothesis of hyperpersonal theory. In the beginning of the conversation Eric had said that he lived in Manhattan and was studying medicine yet I had already created a vivid image of him in my head. I formed this image based on exaggerating his negative attribute such as poor grammar use and long lulls between my responses and his. This would be an example of the over-attribution process in which I used a few cues which led to stereotypes and over exaggeration of his personal traits. Furthermore, I found myself engaging in selective self presentation, only talking about the things that I really thought were interesting, like school, sports etc. rather than focusing on the boring stuff.

meeting a stranger

Hello,

For this assignment I chose to enter an online chat-room, something I never really got into doing over my years on the internet. There were a variety of rooms, so I chose to go into a room labeled teen-chat to see the conversation of some younger people. As I was considering the readings I realized that I would most likely label the people in this chat room by their age, even though they could in fact be 30 years old and lying. I entered expecting immature conversations, and random insults volleyed around aimlessly. So of course I had primed myself to find these things.

My target, “the dreamer”, a teenage Canadian caught my attention upon entering the room as I witnessed him berating another chatter about his handle/nickname. From just this initial offense I had already perceived a strong negative opinion about his personality. I began to think he was immature and mean, and unintentionally looked for other things he did that strengthened this finding. As the conversation continued he surprisingly began talking about politics, but not in a rude manner. He spoke of the positive aspects of the Canadian health care system and spoke of other policies of his country showing he had national pride. He gave some reasoning however no one really responded to him, but instead just made random comments that chat rooms are known for.

My findings are interesting, and I feel that they support the Hyper personal model. The first thing I did was form an exaggerated opinion based on little data supporting the over-attribution processes. I thought that his insistence on changing a nickname was uncalled for, and although he didn’t cross any lines, like saying inappropriate things, I still found myself form a cold opinion of him. However as I stayed in the chat room longer and watched him talk I began to find him more of an intellectual person. I attribute this to the developmental aspect/SIP part of the Hyper personal model, as I got more data I was able to form a more correct opinion, although since it was such a short amount of time it still comes nothing near the face to face.

Online Impression Formation

I am a regular Facebook and AIM user, so I decided for this assignment I would attempt to branch out. Since I have never really used chat rooms, I decided to see what the dynamic would be like in Yahoo's public chat rooms. I joined a chat room called “College Sports” since I was hoping to have a good understanding about whatever was being discussed. I noticed that multiple conversations were occurring simultaneously, but I chose to interact with Nittany Nation.

As soon as I joined the room I discovered that the main conversation centered around the ongoing FSU vs. Clemson college football game. From their user name, I assumed that Nittany Nation was a Penn State fan, and I discovered from the conversation that he was male. I was eventually able to confirm that he lived very close to Penn State's main campus.

It may have been the setting of the room, but my impression of most of the users was that of an overly masculine sports fan. Nittany Nation often joined in the sexist jokes towards the two female users, as well as criticizing both Clemson and FSU. I was not able to make any determination as to neuroticism, but he seemed to be quite extroverted as he often led the group's discussion. As with most users in the room, Nittany Nation seemed more interested in expressing his views than remaining open to other's opinions on the game. In this way the room resembled more of a pulpit for dedicated sports fans to talk about their favorite team than a true discussion of the game in progress. He did however seem fairly agreeable with the other users in the room, possibly because his views were not challenged. Conscientiousness was difficult to gage in CMC conversation, as I learned very little about Nittany Nation himself.

My experience with Nittany Nation contained aspects addressed in multiple theories discussed in class. My lack of knowledge regarding neuroticism and conscientiousness suggests a cues filtered out (CFO) element involved. If I had been able to judge the person's voice, tone, and body language I feel I would have a more complete picture of the person I was observing. Based on the impression I was able to make, I feel the most accurate theory for my experience is the Hyperpersonal Model. Since the room was named “College Sports” and most of the other users were highly opinionated males, mostly of college age, I assumed that these traits applied to Nittany Nation as well. This over-attribution is similar to the SIDE theory. There was also a large element of selective self-presentation, as none of the users in the room wanted to appear weak, and likely adapted their comments to a perceived alpha-male ideal. As the model predicts, my impression was tilted towards that of an extreme sports fanatic, not a casual sports fan.

Online Impression Information

The online space I chose was the game World of Warcraft. I have been playing for over a year and I recently joined a raiding guild. A guild is a loose organization of players who get together a few days each week to complete raids, which are dungeons that require upwards of ten people. These larger groups tend to be more committed and tight knit than the groups of people who play less frequently. I decided to observe a guild member named Urbetta (pronounced ur-betta) because he was in my raid group on Sunday night. Before that I had logged less than an hour in group with him so I do not know him very well. During raids we use both voice chat and normal text chat through the internet.

After killing a boss with Urbetta in my group (an hour or two of playing) I was able to develop a first impression of his personality. I know his gender because of the voice chat we use but i don't know anything else about his appearance. In fact I think I identify him with his character's in-game appearance as opposed to a real person's appearance as funny as that sounds. The fact that in the game people are represented by a character of a fantasy race with its own scripted non verbal cues makes it somewhat difficult to visualize the person behind the character. Urbetta exhibited openness to a degree as he was always joking around with everyone and making fun of people, but much like everyone else I have met through the game, he revealed next to nothing about his personal life. I have noticed that in-game people can joke around like they are best friends despite hardly knowing each other in the context of the real world. The talk among my guild members is atypical of a group that knows so little about each other. Most of the time the things said are highly inappropriate to be said about a stranger but the funny thing is that no one really cares. Urbetta exhibits both agreeableness and conscientiousness. Because he’s always fooling around Urbetta sometimes gets yelled at by the group leaders for talking too much. This happened a few times when the group was fighting a boss that required a lot of concentration and coordination among the team members. Urbetta never objects and always complies with the request because he’s mindful of the other people in the guild. He seems to know when to focus and once we've started the tough parts he is dead silent. On the same note, despite his jokester personality he happens to be an excellent player and he rarely makes mistakes.

I think my observations mirror the hyperpersonal hypothesis. My impression of Urbetta lacks breadth because his personality can be summed up by two major traits: his joking demeanor, and his being a very skilled and reliable player. Because I know only two things about him their importance is highly exaggerated. I am being forced to make a judgement about a person despite the fact that I really know nothing about them. While my observations match the hyperpersonal hypothesis I believe such impressions are highly inaccurate representations of the person’s real character traits.

Assignment 2- My night as "Selina"

It took me a long time to find a partner to chat with.

At first I tried AIM and Yahoo Messenger chat rooms. However, it was difficult to find non-relationship based chatrooms, and I moved on to the safer sounding Chat Family. Shockingly enough, after signing in with the name “Selina,” I was bombarded with many shall we call them “seductive” private messages. When I recovered from my disgust for the not so family-oriented lines, I decided to private message a nice looking screen name. I picked the screen name Sweet and Sassy on the assumption that this was a nice, young female. Within a few lines of text, I determined Sweet and Sassy was definitely female, nice, and generally not insane. She seemed warm and introverted, willing to share only when I prompted her with questions and hardly asking me any questions. Besides introverted, I interpreted her responses as agreeable because she answered with “I guess” and “lol” to my comments. I could assume she wasn’t highly educated because of some verbal cues like multiple spelling errors. However, she seemed nice because she kept apologizing for herself. A nonverbal cue I noticed was normal grammar, whereas most of the other chat room people were typing with shorthand or slang.

I had to work pretty hard to keep the conservation going, but she did answer honestly about her desire to leave her rural town, go to college, join a sorority and meet new friends. She didn’t seem to want to talk about herself or show off as many other people in the chat room were. She admitted to joining chat rooms as often as possible, but insisted it’s possible to weed out the perverts. Although I had a generally positive impression, I definitely had a hard time bonding with her because of the limited cues. My feelings towards her would follow the CRO theory, where I developed a neutral (leaning towards negative) impression of her as the conversation dragged on. I got tired of probing her for more information and started to think of her as a boring conversationalist. I didn’t find myself over-attributing any one observation or creating exaggerated impressions. I was surprised she didn’t want to ask me more questions. (Perhaps she follows the hyperpersonal theory and created her own imaginary version of “Selina.”)

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.

Assignment 2

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.

Impression formation

I chose to observe the New York Time’s Diner’s Journal, a blog on dining and wine. As an avid reader of the Times’ weekly Dining Out section, I chose to analyze this blog because I knew I would find it particularly interesting. The most prominent blogger on the site is Frank Bruni, who is one of the Time’s most respected restaurant reviewers.

Upon reading Bruni’s posts I was able to develop an impression of him based on his truly unique writing style and voice. From his blog, many of Bruni’s personality traits become obvious in the initial impression making process. For instance, his writing suggests that he is not an amateur in terms of restaurant culture, and has quite a sophisticated knowledge of food. He knows what should be expected of a restaurant, and what sets certain restaurants apart from others. In terms of the “Big 5” personality traits, I think I would consider Bruni to be extraverted, in that he is has strong opinions that he makes sure are heard. In order to be a restaurant reviewer in a city like New York, I think this trait is necessary, due to the extraordinarily high standard set in what many would consider to be the restaurant capital of the world. Bruni is not afraid to criticize some of the city’s finest restaurants, as well as praise some of its least prestigious. In addition, he displays a level of openness. He begins one post stating that he found himself “choked-up and misty-eyed” one morning upon reading a column that considered the Upper West Side of Manhattan to be a restaurant Mecca. This opening reveals two things that suggest openness. Firstly, it reveals Bruni’s deep level of emotion that he can devote to a food related statement. Secondly, it openly announces to a broad array of individuals where he resides, which to most is an extremely personal detail.

As I went about forming such impressions, I felt as though the theory that most closely explained the process of impression formation was the Hyperpersonal Theory. I felt as though the lack of cues, such as age, gender, and race, allowed me to focus solely on Bruni and his opinions of the food and restaurants he was reviewing. While the breadth of the impressions I was forming was rather narrow, the intensity of such impressions was quite deep. For example, from reading the blog it became obvious that Bruni has a deep appreciation for New York City and its cultural in that he almost always injects a statement praising the city.

Surferdude85

Because, as discussed last week, the Internet phenomenon that I am most fascinated with is the concept of forming romantic relationships in chat rooms over the Internet, I decided to take this weeks assignment as a way to further discover what this phenomenon is all about. Thus, I decided to enter a variety of “looking for love” and “singles ready to mingle” type synchronous chat rooms, in hopes of meeting my target person whom would help me with this mini case study. After a series of way to creepy encounters, however, and after a handful of different PV (private chat as I soon learned) invites, I decided to switch to a 20’s chat room, and finally met the person whom I not only felt comfortable talking with, but whom seemed the most interesting as well: Surferdude85.

Surferdude85, or John, a 21 year old art student from Toronto as I later learned, stood out among the crowd of over a dozen of these private chat invites for a variety of reasons: his first question was not the A/S/L interpersonal probe, he asked me things other than what I looked like, and, most importantly, seemed to be a very interesting person. I got the impression, even from the brief 15 minute conversation we had, that John is a very warm, slightly introverted, good natured, easy going guy that is very laid back and interested in meeting many different types of people. I determined this mainly because of his interesting questions and apparent “artsy” personality, but also because of what John did when I told him that I had no artistic abilities whatsoever.

After reveling to John that I could not even draw a normal looking house, he immediately responded with words of encouragement and expressed a want to help. In fact, he gave me the best art lesson he could over CMC, and walked me through a step-by-step way of drawing a realistic human body. And while I’m not quite sure that my end result was as realistic as we both may have hoped, his patience and the way that John expressed that he really wanted to help me reinforced all of the immediate impressions described above. In fact, I got the overall impression that John was a really great guy.

Because John and I were able to exchange social information even in the absence of nonverbal cues, my findings are aligned with the SIP model. I do believe that if I had met John face-to-face, my impression formation would have been much quicker; it took a few minutes for me to learn that John was an extremely artsy male 21 year old Canadian, something that could have been accomplished in a few seconds had we not been communicating over the computer, thus further illustrating the SIP theory.

My findings are too aligned with the Hyperpersonal model, and I believe that more of my impressions of John are due to this theory, especially the over-attribution process. Because I quickly learned that John was an art student who was very focused on his studies, I immediately formed an impression of him in my mind based on stereotypes; I pictured the soft, introverted, easy going, artsy kid that is frequently portrayed in the media, and while my impressions changed slightly as more cues were revealed, I never really strayed from this main stereotype in my mind. Moreover, I feel that my findings are too more aligned with this theory because of the selective self-presentation subcategory of the Hyperpersonal Model. John revealed very little information to me other than things surrounding his art life. While I am sure that he is much more than just an art student, most of my impressions were formed around this idea because it was the only information that was presented to me. Had John not used selective self-presentation, I perhaps could have formed a different and maybe more in depth impression of John and his personality.

Online Impression Formation

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.

Assignment Tw0

My foray into a psychological space landed me in an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) chat room run by the music-oriented torrent site OiNK. Wallace identifies IRC as a synchronous chat environment, but after my experience, the synchronization seems to be much less than what one would expect from a face to face discussion.

When I entered the chat room for my first time, I did not really know how an interaction would begin between myself and complete strangers. So I typed, "hello world!" and quickly found myself talking to someone who, in fact, claimed to be the World. You can imagine my relief at finally being able to get some long seated questions answered: "Have you really been running a fever lately?" and "Is the term 'Mother Earth' actually gender appropriate?" World claims to love Al Gore for bringing attention to the recent fever of global warming, and told me that "Auntie Earth" was actually preferred. After changing his tag to represent his role as 'World' he soon ended the ruse to enter "normal guy mode" and reverted to his "normal" nickname.

As our conversation progressed and he revealed himself to be a male from Sweden, I found my impression of him beginning to form. Even through his layered sarcasm I began to notice a constant level of conscientiousness based on his awareness and evaluation of current events and the political climate. He seemed confident and was very enthusiastic to talk about our similar musical interests, but I did not have a good sense of his extraversion. Similarly, I did not really have enough time talking with him to determine his level of neuroticism, but he was certainly very agreeable, giving compliments and avoiding points of conflict when possible.

I did not find that the lack of cues would have prevented me from getting to know him-- on the contrary, a casual 30 minute conversation gave me a much better introduction than many 50 minute class periods that I've spent sitting next to a stranger in the flesh! I think I would say my experience lent itself towards the hyperpersonal model due to the fact that my impression of his openness and conscientiousness were not necessarily based on extensive evidence. The intensity of my impressions did seem slightly exaggerated in retrospect only because I realize that my evaluations are probably inaccurate after such little exposure. There was certainly selective self-presentation in that the musical tastes we expressed were trimmed down to emphasize the interesting and more diverse range of bands that we listened to- the ones that promoted a more fruitful conversation. The overall conversation also gave the impression that our textually based conversation would suffice, given enough time, in garnering accurate impressions of each other.

Psychological Space

The psychological space that I entered was a forum on the website, www.prosportsdaily.com. This site is a great source for breaking sports news, and articles are posted from newspapers every day of the week for readers to enjoy. This site also contains a ‘rumors’ section and ‘forums’ section for viewers to deliberate and discuss current events in athletics.

The user I observed was on a forum discussing Pittsburg Steelers’ quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger. The forum was designed to have people voice their opinions on whether he is overrated or not. This particular user’s personality could be labeled under neuroticism based on his/her interaction with others. In this situation, he/she sarcastically responded to previous posts which stated Ben Roethlisberger gets too much praise, by saying that the athlete is overrated because he won, one Superbowl. Other people on the forum were distraught at the fact that this person was apparently undermining the importance, significance, or feat of winning a Superbowl (possibly thinking that the original post was meant to say that he should be wining more championships to be considered a great player). This was an inadvertent mistake (due to sarcasm and lack of facial/verbal cues) and similar situations arose further along this forum. From this example is it apparent that computer mediated communication makes it difficult for people to understand tone, cues, and subtle meanings that face-to-face communication would clarify. The reason for distinguishing this person/situation as neuroticism, is due to the fact that these ‘let-downs’ by other ‘post-ers’ were bringing down the person’s morale; one time he/she stated that he/she should probably never post again because of such harsh ridicule. Having this occur would lead to the same person having to reject other ‘Big 5 Traits’ such as openness, because he/she would be too afraid to voice his/her own opinions.

This situation is one that I think happens a great deal in computer mediated communication. While conversing online, people are unable to pick up on cues and tones such as sarcasm, disgust, or happiness. This is a perfect example of why certain people become disengaged and upset with communicating online. It is important to note that after the interaction between those on the forum took place, the original ‘post-er’ explained his/her sarcasm and everything was solved. This situation follows the path of the Social Information Processing theory developed by Professor Joe Walther (1993), as the absence of social cues led to a slow transition of information between online users. SIP does not state that nonverbal cues are totally lost, but they are harder to pick up on and take longer to process while communicating online. It was difficult to pick up on the sarcasm used by the original person who posted, and thus the problem with computer mediated communication was picked up on. I find it interesting to see how other people, rather than myself and friends, were able to converse online and experience similar communication difficulties.

Assignment #2: Online Impression Formation

For the past several days, I have been posting on an asynchronous online forum. The forum is a fansite for a Broadway show called Spring Awakening that I’ve seen a few times and am a huge fan of. On this site, there is a particular thread for introductions, so on Saturday afternoon, I posted a little bit about myself and waited for people to respond. Out of the responses I got, I chose one person named Zoe to continue to chat with. Since we shared a passion for this Broadway show, it was easy to get carried away and discuss what actors we did and didn’t like, what scenes of the show were our favorites, and what our experiences have been like seeing it and meeting the actors.

From our short conversation, I can infer that Zoe is extroverted; I determined this based on her tendency to get more excited about topics other than herself, and the energy and enthusiasm she had towards our conversations. She was very agreeable and always willing to support my opinions and experiences with her own, and not once did I experience tension in our conversation. Zoe was also very open – she shared stories and facts about herself, and gave off an overall warm feeling. It was harder to judge her conscientiousness and neuroticism from our conversation.

My impression of Zoe clearly aligns with the hyperpersonal model, especially the over-attribution process. Since our conversation first sprung from our shared passion for this Broadway musical, I found it really easy to guess what she liked and disliked. (For example, I assumed, and then confirmed, that she liked John Gallagher Jr., musicals, and Duncan Sheik. I also assumed that she was an open-minded and thoughtful person, based on the content of the Broadway show.) It was very easy to make assumptions about Zoe despite the small amount of information I was given.

With regard to breadth and intensity, my experiences also match the hyperpersonal model perfectly. Although I still don’t know that much information about Zoe, I feel that I know her interests and her opinions very strongly. The instant bond that was formed through our shared passion made me immediately feel comfortable with her, like I was talking to an old friend. People are quick to attribute characteristics and interests to others just from one fact that they know, just like I was with Zoe; this experience has made me aware of how much people can assume about another person just from a small amount of information.

assignment 2

I entered a synchronous space on the internet, a random chat room and met one particular user, by the screen name of malehere. He was extremely forward, the first thing he asked was A/S/L? (Age /Sex/Location) Never having been in a chat room before I was taken aback at how quickly these personal questions were asked and answered. Not being able to rely on visuals or sound, I suppose knowing those social qualities (gender, age, race) helps people decide who to continue conversing with. Malehere was a twenty four year old male from San Francisco. We did not discuss race, but did go on to discuss livelihoods. He was in advertising, and I was a nurse from Manhattan. I found it is easy to ask and answer social questions, but harder to gauge malehere’s personality based on the top five traits through our brief online chat. He appeared warm, but almost in a suggestive inappropriate way. (I may or may not have been in a dating chat room by accident?) Malehere didn’t seem particularly extraverted, although that is a very visible characteristic, and hard to determine via CMC. He was fairly open, although I wasn’t really asking very personal questions. He wasn’t confrontational, and was fairly agreeable. At one point, I expressed discomfort about a comment he made, and he was quick to apologize and reprimand himself, in order to keep the social harmony in the conversation. It is hard to determine whether or not malehere was neurotic in the few minutes we chatted, but in that brief span of time, he didn’t seem anxious or nervous about anything. There wasn’t enough information to make a decision about his conscientiousness.
In order to form an impression of malehere I did engage in interpersonal discussion, including asking questions, and disclosing information about ourselves. (in my case fictional information) After chatting with malehere and getting to know him briefly, I agree with Walther’s Hyperpersonal Model and his Social Information Processing (SIP) model. In accordance with the SIP model, I felt I was able to exchange social information, despite the lack of nonverbal cues. I did feel that in an attempt not to appear too eager to chat, malehere did come off as kind of “cold,” at first. I think this may be due partly to what the hyperpersonal model describes as reallocation of cognitive resources. Because there were no non verbal cues to focus on, all I had to go by was the text, which may have caused me to overanalyze the conversation. I don’t feel as though malehere was selectively representing himself. If anything, he wanted to be agreeable, but not necessarily boastful. If we had continued talking, he may have been an example of what Walther describes as behavioral confirmation, malehere may have tried to behave the way he thought I perceived him to be. In conclusion, parallel to what the Hyperpersonal model states, my impression of malehere was less detailed, but more exaggerated or intense due to our chatting via CMC.