Assignment #2 Impression Formation

Tonight I delved into the world of chat rooms. At first it was a bit overwhelming trying to find out where to go, it was of course harder than I imagined to find one. However I ended up on teenspot.com and entering the “Hangout” chat room. I picked this one because it seemed relaxed by the title and it had only a few people. I thought it would be easier to get to know someone the less people there were; keep things simple. Upon entering immediately I was asked if I was a girl. Then I was asked by the same boy, pattex, what my asl was. Confused by the terminology I just asked and found out it was my info, more specifically my name and age. Immediately following pattex invited me to a person-to-person chat. This is where we really started to talk one on one in the CMC environment. From the first few minutes I felt an immediate rush of questions, there was no reservation in asking questions such as name, age, interests, and social types.

At first I was turned off by pattex because he was too forceful in the conversation and it was uncomfortable for me. He came off as cold because of this. Then once we started talking he wanted to know more about me and this personality seemed warmer. As far as the 5 big traits; neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness I only really got a good idea of his openness. All of the other traits I felt like I didn’t have a basis to judge from. His openness however in the beginning came off as cold but later I think I adjusted my expectations from FtF conversation to more CMC style. I think this observation is directly related to the CFO (cues filtered out) perspective that states “lack of cues in CMC should lead to neutral, negative, developed impressions.” This is dead on to my experience because I really couldn’t get a good idea of what kind of person this was because the conversation was so removed feeling from a FtF first impression of meeting someone. I don’t think that he spoke in the same way he would have if we had met in person.

Overall, I feel as thought since I was going into a space where I had never been and knew no one that the conversation was very different in CMC form than it would have been FtF however, I think that when I talk to someone online who I have met in person, even if only to a small extent, I can get a much better impression from CMC. I think this is because even the smallest amount of an introduction gives the conversation somewhere to start from without resorting to the blunt and cold standard questions.