Yesterday, I made friends with a flight attendant. At least that is what “littlemysie” told me she did for a living when I initiated a chat with her while playing a game on pogo.com.
We chatted about where we are from, where we’d like to travel to, and how we spend our time. Within the next forty five minutes, it got even more personal; we chatted about 9/11 and airports and how she prays before she gets on every flight. Then I mentioned my cat and all of a sudden there was a wave of messages about her two
Immediately before I started talking to “littlemysie,” I chatted with “jesta”, a 29 year old male. In those five minutes, I discovered he likes working on cars, prefers 1970s mustangs, and lives in
These two experiences definitively show that in order to get to know someone you need time, and according to Social Information Processing theory (SIP), the lack of nonverbal cues in CMC make the process of getting to know someone even slower. But SIP fails to address some of the other aspects that influenced my online impressions of these strangers.
I think my impressions are most closely associated with what the Hyperpersonal theory would predict because despite the time difference between the two conversations, I developed rather intense impressions of both strangers. In reality, I think the limiting nature of CMC due to the lack of nonverbal cues contributed to my impressions because I was left to purely concentrate on their verbal cues and what they chose to tell me (also referred to as the re-allocation of cognitive resources).
After looking back at my conversations, I also realize that I presented very different aspects of myself (selective self presentation) according to the need of conversation. I would therefore predict that both strangers have a very different impression of me. For example, I had no reason to tell littlemysie that I own a mustang! But it was pretty important in the conversation with jesta.
And even with these super strong first impressions, their first names are still a mystery to me. Weird!
1 comment:
Hi Diane! I found it interesting that you garnered such intense impressions and still didn't find out their actual names by the end. But I was wondering what impressions did you have of these people? Were they extremely positive or extremely negative (according to the Hyper-personal Theory, there is no intermediate impression)? I’m assuming that they were somewhat positive but to me, it is hard to decipher whether it is the Social Information Processing theory or the Hyper-Personal Model because although you said you were left to focus and formulate impressions solely on their verbal cues I question, based on the information in your blog, what kind of extreme or intense impression you could form about someone from information about their interest in cars or that they are a flight attendant. I think if you look at the lack of nonverbal cues that maybe the intense impression that you received could be due to the over-attribution process of the Hyper-Personal Model ( If it were in fact this model). For example, your attribution of masculinity to the 29-year-old car enthusiast from Maine supports the over-attribution process in my opinion. Did you attribute a faithful religious persona to the flight attendant because she prays every time before a flight? I think that the re-allocation of cognitive resources did play some role in forming your intense impressions but I also think that the over-attribution process contributed to these impressions as well. Interesting post! I liked it!
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