Smashing my iPhone

This weekend I had the rare opportunity of forming an online impression of a person, then meeting her face to face. I woke up Sunday morning to find my iPhone missing from the previous evening’s activities. Not knowing what happened, I assumed I permanently lost it, and bought a new one that morning. However, just before I broke the seal on the new phone, my inbox told me that a strange girl has sent me a message on Facebook reading:

"Hi...i think my roomates found your iphone in the lobby of our dorm. It was on the floor and the screens all cracked. So if its really your iphone...they have it."

From the message and its context, I already formed a positive and gracious opinion of her for taking the time to track me down as the rightful owner; I assumed she was very conscientious. Her message also suggested that her roommates found the phone while she was the one who contacted me. I concluded that her roommates may have been too shy or unwilling to contact me through Facebook, while her high level of extraversion took precedent over the situation. The informality and ellipses within the message told me she wrote it quickly, allowing me to construct a casual tone of voice as I read the message. I inferred she was laid back and low on neuroticism from her nonchalant message construction.

After much relief, I messaged her back and arranged a time to pick up the phone later that day. Once the adrenaline settled down, my curiosity took over and I couldn’t help but take a peek at this girl’s profile and form a deeper online impression of her. Her black and white profile picture showed her in a white dress slightly smiling at the camera. The picture was artistic and portrayed her as attractive and flirty; I would expect her to have an active social life. There wasn’t much more information on the profile page (as this was her limited profile) except for a typical list of favorite movies and TV shows.

However, her limited profile distanced me from her, as I knew a lot of information I expect to see on Facebook was deliberately missing (such as wall posts and other pictures) compared to my friends’ profiles on Facebook. I assumed that she had wild pictures and wall posts that she wouldn’t want potential employers or Facebook stalkers to see. This assumption about the limited information builds off of my already extraverted opinion of the girl, and I filled in the missing parts with a party animal, rather than a neurotic individual concerned with people spying on her.

The cues filtered-out theories fail to explain my impression. According to the CFO theories, the missing profile information should distance me from her, however I replaced the missing cues (photos and wall posts) with the inferences I already created from the information I saw. Furthermore, the Facebook information I did see struck me as anything but cold, as I have grown used to and trust Facebook as a way to communicate with people I already know.

The Hyperpersonal theory best explains my assumptions since I formed exaggerated opinions about the girl’s honesty and extraversion. While she took the time to find the rightful owner, most people would have done the same, and my attention focused on this small fact to infer she is a very honest individual. At the same time, her picture and tone of the message led me to believe she was outgoing and not neurotic. The Social Identification/Deindividuation theory was irrelevant in this experience, because I did not have access to any stereotypical information. However, I may have been prone to make assumptions about her personality given the appropriate information; for example if I knew she were an engineer. The heaviest contributors to my extreme hyperpersonal perceptions were from the over-attribution processes and the re-allocation of cognitive resources. I focused too much on the wording and context of the message, in addition to her artistic photograph. Concentrating on these two elements yielded a very positive opinion of the girl, with no other information to contradict this opinion.

Upon our meeting, my extreme expectations were let down. The girl seemed completely normal in both appearance and personality. She was not engaging, and simply gave back the phone with little side conversation or comments. Strangely, she looked nothing like her profile picture and my mental image of her; I even had difficulty in recognizing her when I came to meet her. In the end, this was an interesting experience and proved how I make exaggerated opinions about people online (which are eventually let down in reality).

Despite the psychology behind my little adventure, I am very gracious for her actions, and she saved me from having to buy a new phone (I’m returning the new one I bought) and if you’re curious, the phone works perfectly fine despite the huge cracks in the screen.