About a year ago I emailed a computer science professor (that I had neither met nor heard of). His personal page on http://www.cs.cornell.edu/ listed research subjects which interested me. I had wanted to take his class for years, but my required courses always conflicted with the timing of the computer science class. Hence, I sent him an email expressing my desire to take an independent study with his supervision. He responded after two weeks and then we continued to send a number of brief emails back and forth for two more weeks before finally meeting.
Originally I had only a slightly positive impression because he was polite in his emails; although, he seemed inaccessible and uncaring because of the brief and delayed messages. The uncertainty of his personality contributed to my uneasiness. Would he be too busy and distracted to help? Would he be too strict and not sponsor an independent study for someone he had just met with limited computer science knowledge? Upon meeting him I noticed he had an accent, I could tell his general age, and I had his undivided attention. He seemed humanized and much more generous and concerned about learning that I originally expected. He was not strict as I thought he might be, but flexible, and we found a way to combine the independent study with one of my other classes so that I could take it. During the modality switch from virtual to physical, many uncertain traits were delineated (through nonverbal cues and additional verbal cues); this contributed to a more positive impression. My experience coincides with Uncertainty Reduction Theory, which states that the reduction of uncertainty about a person increases attraction. Thus, URT predicts positive effect for modality switching.
According to the modality switching study done by Ramirez and Wang, social information from meeting in FtF violates previous CMC induced expectancy. The valence (positive or negative nature) of the experience depended on the timing of the switch. Short term switches (less than 3 weeks spent on CMC, before moving to FtF) yielded a positive evaluation, while longer term switches (greater than 3 weeks) yielded a negative evaluation.
My experience coincides with the study since we had a short term switch that yielded a more positive evaluation than if we had continued conversing in CMC. My impression at the time of the switch was also more relationally important (as predicted by Ramirez and Wang) in that it was more recent and had priority over the CMC impression.
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2 comments:
Alon,
Interesting post. I find it strange that you only had a slightly positive impression. Usually leaving virtuality causes very intense impression because of the Hyperpersonal model. I guess it was hard to get all the information from that one email. Maybe URT and Wang’s study apply because you communicated very little, and there was no chance for behavioral conformation in the Hyperpersonal model to take effect.
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