Although I am not typically a big fan of chat rooms, I decided to venture outside of my comfort zone and explore the psychological space of chat rooms on the Internet. I was curious to understand why it is so appealing to have a random conversation with a random person. In this nearly synchronous space, I wanted to see how much I could really learn about a person in just a small chat. I thought it necessary to take the plunge and choose a chat room environment that covered topics that were entirely outside my normal social interaction to make it truly an interesting experience. Let me preface this assignment by saying that I am neither a male nor do I have homosexual tendencies…
After selecting the first chat room website that I stumbled upon in my search for a psychological space to explore, I was fascinated by the wide array of topics that were covered on just one website. With my desire to explore something entirely outside of my element, I decided to enter a chat room for gay men. Not expecting to strike up many conversations, I chose a rather sexually ambiguous name, Jessie, to be able to just observe the chat room and observe people’s interactions with one another. However, after logging into the chat, I was almost immediately asked to have a private conversation with Le, a thirty-five year old man from Upstate New York (at least that’s what he told me). I assumed that he was a rather forward and open about himself. He appeared to be very extroverted, he was directing the conversation and he was the one who initiated the conversation after all. For the first time I truly experienced reciprocal self-disclosure. After Le told me some details about himself, I felt compelled to tell him about myself (minus my gender & sexuality). I am normally a person who doesn’t trust people and am hesitant to reveal details about myself, however, in this social interaction I felt an obligation to disclose information. Although ASL is the norm, Le asked my age and location but made the assumption that I was Male. Just because I was in that chat room and he didn’t bother inquiring if his assumption was true, re-confirming that you can’t just assume things, like you can in face-to-face interactions.
The conversation with Le started out as friendly and harmless, discussing our age, where we’re from and finding commonalities between us (he’s from upstate New York & has friends that live on Long Island). Going along with the Hyper-Personal model, Le exhibited traits of selective self- presentation; He typed responses with no mistakes, correct grammar & punctuation (capitalizing the names of towns), which led me to think that he was educated and conscientious. However, this harmless conversation was thrust towards a rather inappropriate direction after I asked what I thought was a safe question, “ What are your interests?” and after that I quickly ended the conversation and my impression of Le was entirely replaced by a far more negative impression. Again, his forwardness and openness are apparent in just his few selected words.
My impression of Le was most in line with the Hyperpersonal model. With just the 10 minute conversation with Le, I believed him to be extraordinarily open, forward & uninhibited. I was repulsed by how quickly the tone of our conversation changed and in that short instance, my impression of Le was formed. In addition to the selective self-presentation, I think that Le exhibited the behavioral confirmation of the Hyperpersonal Model. By being in this particular chat room, it may have led Le to behave more openly and more forward, because implicitly he behaved the more like the way people may have expected him to in this channel. The limited cues in the short interaction that described his age & sexuality already created a stereotypical image in my mind of who this person was.
4 comments:
It seems like you had a memorable experience on this assignment. The fact that you entered a chat room for gay men added a good twist to your blog. Your right in that there are chat rooms for many different topics. Not only were you forming an impression about somebody else but you were creating a person in yourself. I would have formed the same impressions about him as you did. The way he wrote and initiated a sane conversation with you made him seem like a mature, educated man, well at first anyway. I think that's the most interesting aspect of chat rooms, how open we are with complete strangers. I agree with you on the behavioral confirmation. He must have felt that everyone saw him as a potential interest so his openness was a reflection of that. Interesting in how with one statement he made, your whole initial impression of him changed from positive to negative.
I think that it is interesting when someone is in a certain chat room; people make the assumption that everyone else in the chat room is the way they say they are. For example, in the “Joan/Alex case” that we read about, the people in the chat room assumed that Joan was a real person and that she was telling the truth, which was obviously not the case. This re-confirms that you can’t just assume things in CMC interactions. I agree with you that the Hyper-Personal model was being displayed here because Le exhibited traits of selective self-presentation; by typing responses with no mistakes, correct grammar & punctuation. This caused you to form a certain impression about him. I also think that you are right with the point that Le exhibited behavioral confirmation of the Hyperpersonal Model by participating in this particular chat room. I think that Le might have been so open with you because he felt that he was in a forum where he knows the attitudes of the group and is therefore more comfortable expressing his attitudes. By your interaction, I feel that Le seemed warm, open, and willing to express his opinions. But by the end of your chat, the conversation confirmed the hypothesis that CMC leads to poorly developed and in this case, negative impressions.
You did a good job with linking your interaction with Le with the hyperpersonal model. You brought up an excellent point in saying that Le may have behaved more openly in the chat room than he would have in real life because he was acting the way that people expected him to; that looks like a prime example of behavioral confirmation. I also think it’s important to note that since you both were in a chat room for gay men, Le might have felt more open since he assumed that everybody in the chat room shared the same interests.
I also thought it was interesting that your initial impressions of Le changed dramatically when the conversation became more inappropriate. If you met Le in person, and he changed the tone of the conversation, I wonder if you would have had the same kind of reaction. I would guess that you would have still been repulsed if you met him face-to-face, but your reaction may not have been as extreme, since you would also be able to pay attention to nonverbal and vocal cues, which may help to minimize your repulsion.
Hi there!
First of all I want to commend you on your writing. Your blog post was very easy to read and addressed all matters in the assignment.
The thing that struck me most about your post was when you brought up the fact that you were entering a completely different area then you had ever been and giving yourself a completely different name. Here seems a very good place to draw on the idea of anonymity. Ask yourself whether or not you would go into a gay bar and have the same conversation with someone (I suppose you would have to be dressed as a man in this case). Would you reveal the same information?
I found it particularly interesting how you ended up revealing information to Le that you would not otherwise have because you said you felt obligated. Is this a common theme in internet interaction? Because of the anonymity do we feel we can devulge much more about ourselves because we might not actually meet the person? Again even this questions begs one to look at the fact that we tend to present our "ideal" self to people we do not know online, but are afraid to meet them face to face. One can explore whether the difference between our "ideal" selves and "true" selves thus creates further cognitive dissonance.
Adding onto your comments about how you assumed that Le was outgoing based on his chat information, you clearly demonstrate the idea of over-generalization. I think we can call say we take someone initiating a online conversation as extroverted but do we really know?
Great Job! Your post made me think about alot of questions that are still unanswered by research!
Post a Comment