For my assignment this week, I decided to pick one of my Facebook friends that I have little to no contact with and know very little about. All of the people I met during orientation and never spoke to again and people that I have met randomly at parties only to never see again were all fair game. I’m sure everyone is friends with someone who meets these criteria. I selected my subject, let’s call him Derek, based on the fact that he had a lot of information on his profile that could be examined based on the Brunswikian Lens Model.
According to the Brunswikian Lens Model, observers judge people based on “personality byproducts” that they generate during their day-to-day activities. When these personality cues are accurate representations of that person, the cues are said to have validity. Using a particular personality cue to make a judgment about someone is called cue utilization. When a cue is utilized and valid, functional achievement is said to occur and the impression formed of the target should be accurate. It is difficult for me to assess the level of functional achievement in this case, because I have no way of knowing if the information available on Derek’s profile is an accurate representation of his actual personality.
Derek has a lot of information on his profile that links him to both the environment around him and his internal environment. While it is hard to determine exactly which information is self-directed, I think in part the information about his religious beliefs can be considered a self-directed identity claim. Derek takes pride in his strong faith. He has an application on his profile that features a different bible passage everyday. Reading these passages most likely reinforces Derek’s belief in God and strengthens his faith. Derek’s about me section has information that can be considered other directed identity claims. He lists various adjectives to describe himself and encourages people to talk to him to get to know him better. Based on his profile, it seems like Derek is extremely extroverted. Also, the fact that Derek has so many friends leads me to believe that he is at least moderately agreeable as well.
In terms of behaviors that might reveal aspects of Derek’s personality, Derek’s news feed shows that he has recently become Facebook friends with several different people, providing evidence of interior behavioral residue. In addition, Derek has many pictures of him engaging in various activities with his friends and lists many club and organizations he is a part of on his campus. Based on his willingness to share information about himself and get to know other people, I would say that Derek seems to be open to new experiences. While it is difficult to make an accurate judgment, Derek seems to be extremely involved on campus and motivated, leading me to believe that he is conscientious. Based on the limited information available on his profile, I do not think that I can accurately judge Derek’s neuroticism. He describes himself as being both “relaxed” and “uptight and histrionic” at the same time. While I am sure both are probably true at different times, given the little that I know of him, I don’t think I can make a judgment as to whether or not he is generally neurotic. Seeing how difficult it can be to accurately assess one’s personality based only a Facebook profile makes the fact that Facebook often serves as the sole basis of impression formation all the more troubling.
4 comments:
Sarah- what a great blog! Perhaps Derick's entire facebook profile is a self-directed identity claim. He could use all of the information to remind himself or who he is. Or, maybe his profile is a reflection of his "ideal self." In which case, people looking at his profile would assume him to be extroverted or agreeable (based on what he has posted, number of friends, etc.) in which case, he would use behavioral confirmation, to affirm their believes in ftf scenarios.Your analysis was very interesting and well written.
Great post! I went in the same direction that you did and decided to analyze the Facebook profile of someone I knew very little about. Derek seems like an interesting guy. The fact that he is so open and proud of his religious faith is something you don't always see in people of our age group. This attribute of his Facebook profile definitely points to his openness and to his conscientiousness. The fact that he describes himself as both "uptight" and "relaxed" is strange to me though. Surely both can be true at different times, but since he consciously listed both adjectives, it makes me wonder what kind of impression he is trying to form. Surely, Derek seems like an open and extraverted person, and this is further supported by how many new friends his interior behavioral residue illustrates him to have, but I wonder if his other-directed identity claims are all that true. Good job!
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http://comm245green.blogspot.com/2007/10/a72-myself.html
Sarah,
I think this is such an interested post. Your introduction grabbed me from the very beginning. It's funny to think of all the people who "friend" us freshman year and who are our "facebook friends" now. I rarely think about the fact that I don't ACTUALLY know these people.
Your application of the key terms from the model discussed in class is done both meaningfully and concise.
After reading your post I have actually started looking at many of my facebook friends. It is funny to think how I could actually be pretty good friends with these people based on their profiles. Also it is interesting to contrast this with the idea of selective self-presentation. Initially we discuss the fact that we present our "ideal self" in our profile but looking at all the other cues and areas of the profile do we really end up presenting someone who is that different from who we really are?
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