For this assignment, I will use Brunswikian Lens Model to analyze the Facebook profile of a new friend I met through Vampires (a decision I soon regret since her profile goes on for pages and pages).
We added each other as friends so that we can have more people to “bite” with and earn more point to get our creatures closer to the next level—it’s kind of like a pact between players of these supernatural creatures game on Facebook. I will call her L for this blog (not to be confused with L from a certain famous manga series).
First, some technical stuff. According to Brunswikian Lens Model, “environmental cues function as a lens through which observers make inferences about the underlying characteristics of a target”(Walther, 6). If a cue accurately reflects a target’s underlying personality characteristics, that cue has cue validity. Since we are cognitive misers and don’t use all the cues available to us to form impressions and make judgments, the level of usage of a cue in forming an impression is called cue utilization. And when we have both cue validity and cue utilization, we have functional achievement – we would have accurate judgment of the target. In other words, if we use a valid cue, we can pin point the target’s personality. Also, the model focuses on four mechanisms that link individual to an environment they inhabit: Self-directed identity claims, Other-directed identity claims, Interior behavioral residue and Exterior behavioral residue.
Self-directed identity claims are “symbolic statements made by occupants for their own benefit, intended to reinforce their self-views”(Walther, 7). In other word, self-directed identity claims are there for the creator him/herself. She has many photos of her, her friends and her families (dance party, trip to the beach, etc). These are her memories hold special meanings to her. There was also this photo of this painting. Many of her friends were tagged on an empty corner. It’s possible that it’s something special too. The most significant – though only a few word – would be that she is engaged. I guess she would always like to be reminded of this happiness.
Other-directed identity claims project an image of how the creator wants to be viewed by others. She has pages of different gifts and bumper stickers from her friends, showing that her friends are not just a statistical number in Friends in Other Networks. (Though her low number of wall posts suggests otherwise, I suspect that it’s because people can’t find her wall in her profile). Her About Me is very general – basically she likes everything in many categories with only a few exceptions and that she is or was between jobs. She displays her creatures (all Level 5) on the right-hand side of her profile (takes a lot of space), displaying her power and making everyone think: how, in the name of God, did she get all those points?
Interior behavioral residues are “physical traces of activities conducted in the [immediate] environment”(Walther, 7). In this case, this would mean a record of everything she did on Facebook. A good example of this would be the News Feed (or Mini Feed on the profile). L’s Mini Feed, unlike that of many of my other friends, is not collapsed. As far as the eye can see, it’s filled with Vampire, Zombie, Werewolf and Slayer battle records. My guess is that she leaves the LONG Mini Feed open because she wants to know when and by how much her creatures progressed. In other words, she is hooked on these Facebook games.
Exterior behavioral residues are residues of things done outside of the environment in question. The most obvious example would be photos – the dances and acts in which she performed on stage, trips to the beach and to what seems to be Salem, Massachusetts.
In conclusion, I analyzed L’s Facebook profile using the Brunswikian Lens Model and formed a fairly good impression of her. Now, I shall try to summarize her personality using the Big Five Traits--neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. She seems to be high on the openness and extraversion scale as demonstrated by the shear volume of data on her Facebook. Judging from the number of friends she has and the amount of stickers/gifts she received, she is very agreeable. And from the thousands of points on her creatures and the fact that she leaves her Mini Feed open to check her creatures’ progress even though the creatures news take a lot of space, I would say she is pretty high on the conscientious scale as well. As for neuroticism, judging from some of her weird pictures, I would give her a 7 on the scale of 1 to 10.
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Hey Rui, this is a really good post. I think you did a great job explaining what all the components of the Brunswikian Lens Model. I had always wondered why people put up so many of those goofy facebook games/apps on their profile, so it was interesting to read an analysis of one of these profiles. I think your interpretation of L's personality factors was pretty good. The only thing I would question is how you came up with a 7 out of 10 for neuroticism just by the pictures.
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