Hello, Everyone,
Communication 245 has been an extremely interesting class so far; and our first assignment has been extremely fun. Doing homework that is so interactive really enables me to understand and apply what we learn in class. Given the assignment to enter a psychological space I was somewhat skeptical. How am I going to get someone I don't even know to talk much less open up to me? Putting myself in the position of the receiver, I assumed anyone I tried to interact with would automatically sign off. In this way I was applying the idea of homogenization i.e. that everyone would act like I would.
Interestingly enough the first person I im'd did sign-off; therefore my hypothesis was confirmed. However, I tried again and suprisingly the person responded with a simple, "hi." Just from the first words I assumed the person was skeptical and would be very guarded. In class we have discussed how instant messaging can be both asynchronous or synchronous but in this particular situation the interaction seemed solely synchronous. AOL has added a feature to instant messages that enables the receiver to see what the sender is typing thus we can tell if the person is actually taking a long time to answer the questions.
At the beginning of our conversation the person seemed quite introverted and was not very open to conversation. All my questions received one word answers and they did not inquire about my persona at all. It was not until I found that we had similar activities that the male opened up to me. After this I was able to get more descriptive and elaborate answers. From this I concluded that the person was actually somewhat extroverted once you broke the surface and very open. When I asked him if he would go on a blind date he not only said he did but implied that he would do it again. This particular fact shed new light on my previously formed impression of him. He seemed quite calm, lacking in any trait of neurotism; yet he did admit to being "ADD crazy" in highschool. He was neither agreeable or unpleasant to talk with and was conscious of what was going on but did not pay very close attention to detail (both of what he was saying and what I was asking).
My particular interaction directly supports the idea that our impression formation is enhanced with time when we are in a computer mediated area. At the beginning of the discussion I believe I definately overattributed the short answers as meaning the person was not friendly and uninterested. Additionally, later in the discussion he discussed how he was shy and then when we talked about relationships he said he was too embarrassed to ask someone out. In this instance I can see a little bit of the behavior confirmation theory taking place. I thought it was cute that he was shy and after that he seemed to play up the innocent and sweet guy.
Overall my impression changed and became more dense over time thus it was proven to be in line with the SIP model which states that our impressions develop slower in a CMC environment,.
It was a very interesting assignment. I was suprised that I actually wanted to continue talking to the person after I had all the information I needed!
Monday, September 3, 2007
My Friends Friend
I had no clue where to begin looking for some random person online to talk to, which is kind of pathetic when you think about it because it's cyberspace, and uh..it's cyberspace. It's not like billions of people use the internet, right? So anyways, to avoid the sex talk and the "What's your idea of the most romantic date ever?", I found an easier way to talk to people. Being at Cornell, I have made many friends, especially in my dormitory. So what I did was ask if a friend if I could go on their buddy list and chat with one of their friends, someone I know nothing about. I didn't want my friend to tell me anything, not even if they were male and female, so I went from there.
My friend John, who is from PA, has tons of friends whether they be from his hometown, here at Cornell, or his study abroad trip he did in Australia. After chatting with this person for about 10 minutes, I was informed that SHE also lives in PA and that she was 19. We'll say her name is "Ashley" for privacy reasons and ASHLEY'S favorite color is BLUE. She is still in HIGH SCHOOL and has a pet lab named COCO.
I got the feeling as we were talking that she was pretty uncomfortable. She thought I was John at first, but when I revealed to her that this was John's friend she definitely became a little standoffish. Time passed and she started to warm up to me. From that I incurred that she is a trusting person, and from her constant lol's, OMG's, and smiley faces I figured she must have a somewhat loving and bubbly personality. As the conversation continued the more she talked up herself. So I would say even though she seemed to have a loving personality and wouldn't care what people thought of her too much, she followed the Hyperpersonal Model, namely the selective self-presentation process. The more we talked the more she revealed about her body type and how "nice" it was. She also informed that she was pretty popular at her school and only few people disliked her. She continued to tell me that they probably dislike her because they are jealous of her. So after that non-sense I told her that I had to go take a shower and the conversation ended.
After our conversation ended, I told John what I thought about her and he said most of my impressions were pretty accurate. She does have a loving personality, but she is somewhat full of herself. He did reveal to me that the physical makeup I had of her was totally off. Though I thought she was brunette with dark eyes, turns out she was red-headed wish blue eyes. Can't win them all I guess.
My friend John, who is from PA, has tons of friends whether they be from his hometown, here at Cornell, or his study abroad trip he did in Australia. After chatting with this person for about 10 minutes, I was informed that SHE also lives in PA and that she was 19. We'll say her name is "Ashley" for privacy reasons and ASHLEY'S favorite color is BLUE. She is still in HIGH SCHOOL and has a pet lab named COCO.
I got the feeling as we were talking that she was pretty uncomfortable. She thought I was John at first, but when I revealed to her that this was John's friend she definitely became a little standoffish. Time passed and she started to warm up to me. From that I incurred that she is a trusting person, and from her constant lol's, OMG's, and smiley faces I figured she must have a somewhat loving and bubbly personality. As the conversation continued the more she talked up herself. So I would say even though she seemed to have a loving personality and wouldn't care what people thought of her too much, she followed the Hyperpersonal Model, namely the selective self-presentation process. The more we talked the more she revealed about her body type and how "nice" it was. She also informed that she was pretty popular at her school and only few people disliked her. She continued to tell me that they probably dislike her because they are jealous of her. So after that non-sense I told her that I had to go take a shower and the conversation ended.
After our conversation ended, I told John what I thought about her and he said most of my impressions were pretty accurate. She does have a loving personality, but she is somewhat full of herself. He did reveal to me that the physical makeup I had of her was totally off. Though I thought she was brunette with dark eyes, turns out she was red-headed wish blue eyes. Can't win them all I guess.
My SWG Family I Never Knew... Assignment 1
In Communication 245 this week our assignment was to enter a space on the Internet and interact or observe another person. When first reading this assignment I was thinking the only possibly to complete this assignment was going to be to enter a chat room and talk with people on there. As I searched for a chat room I thought would be interesting I realized, why not just talk with someone in my MMORPG and get to know him or her better. As I logged onto Star Wars Galaxies I never thought that I would be logging on here in order to do my homework, I was pretty odd for me. I chose a member of my guild that we always call Pace or Paceo. I chose to specifically target him in our conversation during the weekend and did not let him know I was doing so or why I was doing it until the end of the weekend. Normally when talking to my guild on SWG I talk to them about the game and not them personally, so this assignment was a nice little helper in getting to know someone I talk to almost every day but know little about. Over the weekend I was able to gather so much information about him that I could honestly consider him a good friend. Although I found out all this information about him I still had really no clue what he looked like. I chose not to ask him about personally information like this to keep our friendship healthy until he was told why I was so curious lately. I believe that over the weekend I was able to gain a pretty good understanding of whom Pace really was and what he stood for. Referring back to our lesion in class in week I think that my interaction more closely proves true the hypothesis of the SIP theory or the Social Information Processing Theory. I believe this because when interacting with Pace I was never in a position to think any neutral or negative thoughts about him. Instead I just feel as if getting to know him took a little more time then it would have face to face.
First Impressions
In order to form an online impression, I entered a teen chat room (synchronous online space). The first topic of conversation for any new member of the chat room always revolved around the four basic social identity questions: age/gender/location/myspace page (no doubt to view one’s physical appearance). According to the SIDE model, deindividuation leads to an increased reliance on these few remaining cues, which leads to stereotyping. Although the SIDE model was involved in my impression formation, it was not the predominant model. The Hyperpersonal Model, which is an extension of the SIDE and SIP Models, definitely had more of an impact on my impression of the members of the chat room.
In the chat room, I was able to observe and interact with many different people. However I will only focus on one online person, referred to as “tootsie”. I found myself judging tootsie from the moment she entered the chat room, even before she said a word. I began by stereotyping her as flirtatious and girly because of her name. This overattribution based on such a minimal cue (name), and the consequent stereotyping corresponds to the SIDE model. Once she spoke, tootsie confirmed my original impression. Her first line read: “who wants to talk to a hot blonde”. All my suspicions seemed confirmed and my impression of her went to the extreme end. This intense, overattribution to the extremes about a girl I don’t even know confirms the Hyperpersonal model. Tootsie’s first question to everyone was “are you a boy” and “how old are you”. Even though gender and age are basic social identity questions everyone asked in the chat room, coming from tootsie was different. Since I had already decided I did not like tootsie and that she was a “dumb blonde”, her inquiry about age and gender seemed promiscuous and aggressive. I also assumed she was extraverted because she was trying to talk to everybody. Later on in the chat room, tootsie and another female were involved in an altercation. Cap locks and exclamation points were used to show anger. Now that I am analyzing my reaction, I realize that it was the other female who started the altercation and tootsie was not at fault. However, during the incident I immediately thought that tootsie was the instigator. I overattributed the aggressiveness of the situation to tootsie’s personality, as opposed to the situation. I thought tootsie was aggressive, extraverted, and not agreeable.
In addition to the overattribution aspect of the Hyperpersonal model, self-presentation and behavioral confirmation were also most likely at play. People are dynamic and have many dimensions to their personality. Thus, there is clearly more to tootsie’s personality than all that was shown or made evident to me. Tootsie chose to portray and emphasize the flirtatious aspect of her personality and clearly tried to play on her blonde hair. But there is more to tootsie than she revealed (hopefully). Tootsie may also have been using behavioral confirmation. She clearly knew that her name would imply her to be playful and a girl as seen by her response below:
undertaker: tootsie are u a girl
tootsie: yes
tootsie: duh
Tootsie could just be behaving in the way others think she will behave.
My experience with this chat room supports the Hyperpersonal model, in that based on minimal cues, an exaggerated and intense impression of tootsie was formed.
In the chat room, I was able to observe and interact with many different people. However I will only focus on one online person, referred to as “tootsie”. I found myself judging tootsie from the moment she entered the chat room, even before she said a word. I began by stereotyping her as flirtatious and girly because of her name. This overattribution based on such a minimal cue (name), and the consequent stereotyping corresponds to the SIDE model. Once she spoke, tootsie confirmed my original impression. Her first line read: “who wants to talk to a hot blonde”. All my suspicions seemed confirmed and my impression of her went to the extreme end. This intense, overattribution to the extremes about a girl I don’t even know confirms the Hyperpersonal model. Tootsie’s first question to everyone was “are you a boy” and “how old are you”. Even though gender and age are basic social identity questions everyone asked in the chat room, coming from tootsie was different. Since I had already decided I did not like tootsie and that she was a “dumb blonde”, her inquiry about age and gender seemed promiscuous and aggressive. I also assumed she was extraverted because she was trying to talk to everybody. Later on in the chat room, tootsie and another female were involved in an altercation. Cap locks and exclamation points were used to show anger. Now that I am analyzing my reaction, I realize that it was the other female who started the altercation and tootsie was not at fault. However, during the incident I immediately thought that tootsie was the instigator. I overattributed the aggressiveness of the situation to tootsie’s personality, as opposed to the situation. I thought tootsie was aggressive, extraverted, and not agreeable.
In addition to the overattribution aspect of the Hyperpersonal model, self-presentation and behavioral confirmation were also most likely at play. People are dynamic and have many dimensions to their personality. Thus, there is clearly more to tootsie’s personality than all that was shown or made evident to me. Tootsie chose to portray and emphasize the flirtatious aspect of her personality and clearly tried to play on her blonde hair. But there is more to tootsie than she revealed (hopefully). Tootsie may also have been using behavioral confirmation. She clearly knew that her name would imply her to be playful and a girl as seen by her response below:
undertaker: tootsie are u a girl
tootsie: yes
tootsie: duh
Tootsie could just be behaving in the way others think she will behave.
My experience with this chat room supports the Hyperpersonal model, in that based on minimal cues, an exaggerated and intense impression of tootsie was formed.
Chattabodz
For this assignment, I decided to enter a chatroom called "Chattabodz" and observe they way that people interacted with one another. This is a chatroom created for people to find love or make friends. It allows for people to use a webcam or post a picture so that other people in the chatroom can see whom they are talking with. It was very interesting to see how the nickname that you use in a chatroom can affect how many people want to chat with you. When I first entered the chatroom as "Soccerchick11", I wasnt recieving any invitations to converse in a private chat. However, when I re-entered as "sexysoccergrl", I had almost immediate responses from multiple people to engage in private conversations. This shows that it really makes a difference and sends out a certain first impression by the username that one chooses. I decided to accept the invitation for a private chat with "dongboy25"... Im sorry but I cant help from laughing at this username. My first impression came from his username, which made me think that he is in college and is a boy. I thought what adult or child would use the word "dongboy" to identify himself? Anyways, he started the conversation by telling me his age, sex, and location and then asking for my information. At first, he seemed pretty cold. It took him a long time to respond to my questions, and answered them with one word answers. But as I continued to speak with him he opened up more and seemed like a nice person. After about 2 minutes he told me that he was a college student, and about his hobbies. By the continuous use of smiley faces and the acronym "lol" (laugh out loud), I could infer that he was happy and easy going person. However at the end of our conversation, I think that my first impressions of "dongboy25" were exaggerated and not very detailed. I don't feel like I really know this person well and my interaction supported the CFO perspective because there was a significant lack of cues leading to my original negative and undeveloped impression of him. However I also believe that in this situation, the social information processing theory applies because the transmittion of information took a long time over this internet conversation. Even though I dont think I get to know this person very well, as the conversation progressed, I felt that I knew "dongboy25" better than in the beginning of the conversation.
anyone looking for a relationship?
By searching on Google for a singles chat room, I was led to chat-avenue.com, a place that at first I wanted no part of due to the explicit sexual comments that were scrolling way too quickly across the screen. With over 100 people in this chat room though, I thought maybe I could find a person to talk to and at that moment John typed in, “Anyone looking for a relationship?” I immediately responded to John and we started private messaging.
My initial impression of John was that he was boring and cold, making me carry the conversation and answering with short and to the point responses. However, as I continued to talk to John my impression turned to one more of pity. After getting over the initial age, sex, location, and looks information, he asked if I wanted to play a game where we could each ask each other three questions and no matter what the question was we had to respond honestly. I agreed to this game, and we started asking questions.
Although some of his questions were sexual and a little uncomfortable, I learned a lot about this 19 year-old from a small town in Indiana after only an hour of talking. I found out about his job working the 4am-1:30pm shift at the local Target, his shy personality that made it hard for him to meet girls in person, and the death of his dad when he was ten years old that led him to get a tattoo on his arm in his memory. At the end of my conversation, after giving this boy a fake email address, I was left with an overall good impression of him. I thought he was a lonely boy, looking for comfort from other people in any way that he knew how. He seemed open and agreeable but extremely introverted, which made me feel a sad warmth emanating from him that made me want to keep the conversation going.
The theory that was most influential in my impression formation was the Hyperpersonal Model. The first factor was the over-attribution process, which made me think John was unintelligent or of low economic status for not attending college and having to work a hard shift. We never discussed his intelligence but from the information he revealed to me I formed this impression, which ultimately made me feel pity for him. The next factor was the developmental aspect, where initially I was uninterested and turned off by the conversation. However, as we continued talking, I was able to learn more about this boy and in turn develop a better relationship and a better impression of him that I think may be even greater than if I had talked to him in person. Due to his shy nature, and the intensity of some of the topics we discussed, he only revealed the information about his father and even the status of his virginity to me because the CMC allowed for it. He was able to feel a sense of anonymity and comfort from talking to this stranger and therefore divulged more personal information about himself.
My initial impression of John was that he was boring and cold, making me carry the conversation and answering with short and to the point responses. However, as I continued to talk to John my impression turned to one more of pity. After getting over the initial age, sex, location, and looks information, he asked if I wanted to play a game where we could each ask each other three questions and no matter what the question was we had to respond honestly. I agreed to this game, and we started asking questions.
Although some of his questions were sexual and a little uncomfortable, I learned a lot about this 19 year-old from a small town in Indiana after only an hour of talking. I found out about his job working the 4am-1:30pm shift at the local Target, his shy personality that made it hard for him to meet girls in person, and the death of his dad when he was ten years old that led him to get a tattoo on his arm in his memory. At the end of my conversation, after giving this boy a fake email address, I was left with an overall good impression of him. I thought he was a lonely boy, looking for comfort from other people in any way that he knew how. He seemed open and agreeable but extremely introverted, which made me feel a sad warmth emanating from him that made me want to keep the conversation going.
The theory that was most influential in my impression formation was the Hyperpersonal Model. The first factor was the over-attribution process, which made me think John was unintelligent or of low economic status for not attending college and having to work a hard shift. We never discussed his intelligence but from the information he revealed to me I formed this impression, which ultimately made me feel pity for him. The next factor was the developmental aspect, where initially I was uninterested and turned off by the conversation. However, as we continued talking, I was able to learn more about this boy and in turn develop a better relationship and a better impression of him that I think may be even greater than if I had talked to him in person. Due to his shy nature, and the intensity of some of the topics we discussed, he only revealed the information about his father and even the status of his virginity to me because the CMC allowed for it. He was able to feel a sense of anonymity and comfort from talking to this stranger and therefore divulged more personal information about himself.
:-(
Unfortunately it looks like I'm going to have to drop this class because a required ILR class just opened up during the same time slot :-( It was great reading everyones posts and I'll continue to check out all the class blogs. :-)
I ordered the Wallace Psychology of the Internet book online because the Cornell store was sold out until 9/14. So if anyone wants to buy the book from me for $12 let me know either through AIM (Jason2811), email jag243@cornell.edu, or Facebook.
Good luck with your blogs!
I ordered the Wallace Psychology of the Internet book online because the Cornell store was sold out until 9/14. So if anyone wants to buy the book from me for $12 let me know either through AIM (Jason2811), email jag243@cornell.edu, or Facebook.
Good luck with your blogs!
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