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.