11. How Could I Be So Wrong?

I am a bit embarrassed to admit this but upon my acceptance to Cornell University, I decided to message people on Facebook who seemed like they had some common interests with me. I wanted to make some friends before I arrived at Cornell, particularly with people who would be living near me in my dorm. A particularly salient interaction was with a guy named ‘Eric’, I decided to send him a message since he went to high school with some of my cousins and would be living next door to me. We messaged back and forth and talked about people we knew and similarities that we had with one another. We were both pretty excited about meeting each other since we had so much in common. I really thought that we would end up being really good friends given our interaction and our proximity to one another in the dorm. Even though we lived on the same floor and were in the same wing, we didn’t end up meeting one another until about two weeks into school. When we finally met one another, he was nothing what I had anticipated him to be. From the pictures that I saw of him, it was as though I was meeting an entirely different person. Despite our great conversation online, it did not persist in our face-to-face interaction and it was as though we had nothing in common, even though we did. After this initial meeting with ‘Eric’ our friendship did not continue, he was just not the person I had originally thought he would be after I met him face-to-face.

My negative face-to-face interaction after leaving the virtual world with ‘Eric’ can best be explained by Walther’s (1996) Hyperpersonal Model. The Hyperpersonal Model explains how people form exaggerated impressions of people we interact with online and is comprised of five elements:

1. The over-attribution process

2. Developmental Aspect

3. Selective Self-Presentation

4. Re-allocation of cognitive resources

5. Behavioral Confirmation

The aspects of this model that are most applicable to my interaction with ‘Eric’ are the over-attribution process and selective self-presentation. With regard to the over-attribution process, fewer cues lead us to form more stereotyped impressions of people. With the few cues that were given through my CMC interaction with ‘Eric’, it caused me to over-attribute my perceptions of ‘Eric’. We both thought we had so much in common with one another, our mutual friends and similar interests created an exaggerated impression of ‘Eric’ that was not very accurate. In addition, selective self-presentation also influenced my perception of my online friend ‘Eric’. He manipulated his image by only telling me things that he thought would make me like him better and by only posting images of himself that portrayed him in an attractive way. For quite apparent reasons, ‘Eric’ specifically chose images of himself that made him appear tall and good looking. In addition, he neglected to tell me that we really did not share many common interests aside from the fact that we had mutual friends and that we would be living next door to one another. This something I would have picked up on after a few minutes of conversation face-to-face where more cues are available.