Assignment 2: (Living?) Second Life

I have never conversed in a chat room before, but I’m sure a chat room conversation would not be far from my expectations, so I decided to move way outside my comfort zone and join the meta-world, Second Life. I was instructed to choose a first name (which was an open form field) and a last name (from a drop down list). I was sent to Orientation Island, along with a few other newbies that had just joined the game as well. As I entered the immersive 3d world of Second Life, my identity was instantly switched from “Alon Sharbani” to “Sher Burger”. Instead of appearing as a 5’10” guy with black hair and a medium build (my true self), I was represented by the avatar I chose, who has blond hair and seems to be about 6’4”. It took me a little time to gain basic control of my body, but eventually I got the hang of it and was able to carry out a conversation with a few people. The conversations were text based, and resembled instant messages, but were accompanied by a full 3d view in the background. (see image).

The first person I tried to talk to was completely naked, and thus looked like almost everyone else on Orientation Island. When I approached her and started a conversation she responded to me very abruptly and inconsistently, indicative of an unconscientious and cold personality. She soon left the scene by teleporting to, I assume, another island.

I then walked into this fellow named tylerkordalis Ultsch who was a very well dressed. He was wearing a suave black suit and nice shoes. He was certainly the odd one out on Orientation Island. He informed me that he had spent over 30 hours on Second Life. He was in the process of upgrading his avatar’s features. He has two girlfriends, both of which do not know the other exists. He even offered to find me a girl. He seemed very conscientious in that he was very proud that he had two “very hot” girlfriends. He even remembered and disclosed how many hours it took him to get each girl, one took three hours, and the other took five hours. He responded to all of my questions in much detail as well, indicative of intense extroversion. However, this detail did not have breadth but was focused. From our first conversation I do not think tylerkordalis is particularly neurotic, open, or agreeable. A second conversation would be necessary to verify the intensity of that impression. He seemed to be in a very comfortable and relaxed state and all in all, he played the part of his suave avatar.

My impression was in line with the hyperpersonal model. I probably over-attributed certain traits, especially conscientiousness, because the person’s avatar (visual appearance) augmented and bolstered my text-based impression that he was conscientious. I also think that selective self-presentation played a huge role in impression formation tylerkordalis didn’t talk about any of his problems, only the “great” things that he has done in Second Life. I also doubt someone that takes pride in having 2 virtual girlfriends looks much like tylerkordalis’ avatar. Nonetheless, his appearance was unmistakably specific and convincing at some level.

*A note on the bottom of my screen reads "Second Life is now fully voice enabled." If I attempted to carry out the conversations with a microfone and speakers, the outcome would have been closer to that of an FtF impression, because I would have been able to judge voice inflexions and the conversation would have greater bandwidth, more cues, and therefore more social presence. Though gestures are a possibility on Second Life, unfortunately none of the people I talked to bothered to use them.

Online Impression Formation

Initially, I wasn’t quite sure how to approach this week’s assignment, since the internet and the definition of a psychological space are both very broad. I knew I wanted to interact with people, instead of passively observing peoples’ blogs or posts; interaction plays a key role in developing impressions. The first idea that came to me was to enter a chat room and meet a completely random person; however, this would not allow me to actually meet the person in real life. This became another priority—meeting someone FtF after interacting with them in CMC would allow for comparison between the two worlds. It would also allow me to actually differentiate between the Hyperpersonal model and the CFO model. The main difference between these models is the intensity of impressions. If I were to just interact with a person online, and formed an extremely intense impression of him/her, this would not justify either model. It could mean that the Hyperpersonal model, is in fact, correct, or it could also mean that I happened to come across a very extreme person, which would not rule out the CFO model. Then I thought of meeting someone on Facebook or MySpace that went to Cornell, so I could actually meet them, but these social networks would give away too much information, and there would not be much to learn about them through the interaction. I resorted to emailing a random person on a general Cornell mailing list server, without telling them that this was for a class (in order to prevent excessive selective self-presentation because if I told him I was going to be writing about him, he would have tried harder to impress me). Surprisingly, I received a response and continued interacting with this person through email. After emailing this person a couple of times, I also had the opportunity of chatting with this person through a synchronous space, AIM, as well as meet him Face-to-Face twice.
My first impression of Alex (not his real name, but for the sake of not having to type “him” hundreds of times…) was that he showed a great deal of agreeableness. After all, he kept interacting with me for no particular reason, which showed that he was honest and friendly. As my almost 2 hour conversation on AIM continued, this impression heightened throughout the conversion. He was very compassionate and cooperative throughout the conversion:

ev***** (4:41:16 PM): Yeah, I can't wait to meet you too.
ev***** (4:43:38 PM): I also cannot help but think that we would be enjoying laughing in person
ev***** (4:43:57 PM): because of all of the sincere smiles that go along with laughter.

Another very apparent impression that I formed was that Alex was extremely conscientious. He seemed to be very organized and goal-oriented—I concluded this when he told me exactly what he wanted to do with his life. Also his strict, formal writing style throughout the conversation showed me that he had self-discipline.

I also felt that Alex was very extraverted, because there was not really any pause in our conversations for two hours. This doesn’t really show that he was extraverted, but it gave me a sense that he was outgoing and enjoyed the company of people very much.

It was hard to judge Alex’s neuroticism, since both of us enjoyed talking about positive issues. There were also no outbursts of anger, or sudden moments of depression. However, he did constantly complain about his high school (because it was originally designed to be a prison, not an education facility) and hometown. From this, I concluded that his neuroticism was generally high.

Interestingly at this point, I had no basis for judging his openness because we did not mention our appreciation for art, religious ideals, political views, thought process, etc.

As you can probably tell, most of these impressions are fairly extreme or intense, which supports the Hyperpersonal model. After meeting with Alex in real life, my impressions became less intense, which further supports the Hyperpersonal model.

Alex was not as compassionate or agreeable as I made him out to be. He was still friendly but just not as friendly as I thought. He also became less conscientious, as he acted more spontaneous and really did not plan out his day. Alex was also clumsier and not aware of his surroundings. He was also less extraverted, as he was not very energetic or outgoing. The same can be said about his neuroticism. After meeting Alex face-to-face, he seemed more normal person than I thought he would be.

However, I still could not judge his openness after emailing him, conversing through AIM, and meeting him FtF.

After meeting him in real life, we still kept in contact, and he finally showed a signs of openness. He showed that he had an appreciation for music and art, which is correlated with openness. He also proved that he had an abstract way of thinking:

ev***** (1:38:47 PM):It [pauses in conversations] is not as awkward online
…
ev***** (1:40:10 PM):I think that it [online conversations] is less awkward for other reasons. Awkwardness in speech is more associated with uncertainty about how to change your facial expression, where to walk, etc.
ev***** (1:40:15 PM):but you are the expert on this
ELLIS WENG (4:40:30 PM):omg the prof said the exact same thing in class… ev***** (1:40:43 PM):Really?
ev***** (1:40:59 PM):I swear I have only thought about this on my own, and I have not taken a class.

After I finally told him about this class, he was open to the ideas and began to formulate his own ideas about this subject (He managed to come up with the concept of reallocation of cognitive resources, while using the same exact examples as Prof. Hancock). He did not simply accept everything I told him about this subject. He challenged some of my ideas, while accepting criticism. He also showed that he was curious; he was open.

After interaction with Alex in a CMC environment I realized that my impressions were much more intense than the impressions that I formed when I finally met him—this supports the Hyperpersonal model. Through my interaction I also realized that certain aspects of the Hyperpersonal model were followed: over-attribution process, developmental aspect, selective self-presentation, and reallocation of cognitive resources.

The over-attribution process occurred when I used the lack of cues to formulate opinions about Alex’s extroversion and neuroticism, which turned out more intense than they should have. The developmental aspect was evident when I finally learned, after conversing with him several times through AIM, that he was open. It also became obvious that he was using most of his cognitive resources to present himself in a more positive way; he emphasized his agreeableness and conscientiousness when we were interacting in CMC.

20 and Single!!

In my opinion, the pinnacle of synchronous online interaction is via instant messaging, video chatting, and chat rooms. Thus, I decided that I wanted to do a little chat room experiment; I decided to log into the 20 Singles chat room sponsored by AIM.com. I would like to tell you all what the actual chat room was like, but literally the second I entered it, (under a fake screen name: sweetipie38242), I was bombarded with three private chat requests. I barely had time to accept one of them when I received five more. I attempted to accept them all and begin to chat with each, I kept getting more requests. I had no less than fourteen requests when I decided to log off and log back on to try to form a game plan. I decided to only accept the first two requests I got. When I logged back in, mlsxsl86 and hog4life75 sent me private chat requests, and I obliged.

My story is as follows: I’m a 22 year old named Chrissy. I just graduated from New York University. I am now working at an advertising agency in New York City.

Hog4life75 was the typical “a/s/l”, what do you look like, what are you wearing, are you a virgin, what’s your favorite position, kind of guy.

hog4life75 (9:35:45 PM): so any revealing pics?

hog4life75 (9:37:12 PM): had to ask

Hog4life75 personified the type of guys I imagined would be in these chat rooms; sex-crazed, sketchy, obnoxious guys who have way too much time on their hands.

Mlsxsl86 was definitely not what I was expecting him to be, probably partly because I was simultaneously conversing with Hog4life75. I might have been predisposed to expect Mlsxs186 to be a jerk as well. Despite my initial inclination, I had a very pleasant, normal conversation with Mlsxs186. He had a good sense of humor, and was very polite and nice (especially compared to Hog4life75).

mlsxsl86 (9:22:45 PM): what u like to do for fun

sweetipie38242 (9:22:59 PM): clubs, party, hang out with friends, movies, reading, dancing

sweetipie38242 (9:23:03 PM): you?

mlsxsl86 (9:23:15 PM): friends sports meet new people bars drinks beach

mlsxsl86 (9:23:58 PM): u go to school?

He seemed to be genuinely interested in my life, which was defintely a nice contrast to Hog4life75’s idea of a conversation. He asked me questions beyond what my bra size was.

I would have to use the hypersonal model to analyze my impressions of both men. I think that I over-attributed Hog4life75’s comments towards me to being such a jerk. While I have no idea about the way this guy is in person, he might not be such a degrading person face to face. His comments certainly lead me to believe that he is a chauvanistic individual. With Mlsxsl86, I over-attributed his polite comments to him being a nice individual. He might have just been putting on an act. With computer mediated communication, it was difficult to tell what kind of person I was truly talking to. Everything that I concluded was based on reduced social context clues, so while I did have potential insight to each guy’s personality, I don’t believe it was as rich as a face to face interaction might have been.

Assignment #2- Dream Chat room

My experience in a chat room under the subject matter of dreams has definitely been the most interesting weird and funny encounter I had all week. There was a couple of people in the room, but only one really spoke directly to me, sharuk. I learned that he was from India, about 20 years old, and was studying BCA, which after numerous attempts of asking what that meant, he explained that it was a bachelor in Computer Applications. He seems kind of annoyed that I did not know what BCA meant but he quickly jumped into the ASL ( age/ sex/ location) inquery to get information about myself. Before giving him an anonymous name, Maria, I made sure to get his name, which was Anul. His english was not very good because he tried to explain how "pipil" called him Armstrong, and then corrected himself to say that "pupil" called him Armstrong. I made sure to not get into details about my life. I tried to get back on the topic of dreams, but he abruptly stated that he dreamt about the future and then asked if i was an astrologist. I was a little weired out but i wanted to see where he was going with this. He failed to continue on the topic but delved into finding out my studies. I was not able to clarify if he was actually in India now or he is just from there because he keep avoiding my questions and went on to say weird things like


sharuk (guest): hey can i say ur name lov
sharuk (guest): am saying that to protect

at which I decided to leave it at that and sign out. I don't know what he meant by that but I was hoping that it was his English barrier that made him sound creepy. He generally seemed like a nice guy being that he was wiling to talk and he did not ask me any real perverted questions. My encounter followed along the both the CFO model because under the short time I was talking to him I did not get enough information to really develop an impression about him. In addition , with the barrier of CMC, he did not open up enough to me. Nevertheless, along the Hypersonal model, whatever information I did learn about him, I did hold on to it and try to figure him out.

Blog #2: My new chat room buddy

A chat room is a very scary place. It took me several attempts before 1. I found a room where people were actually chatting. 2. I got people to talk to me. 3. Found people who would talk to me in non-inappropriate ways.

I first started my chat room experience by entering a number of different internet chat rooms trying to find one where people were actively interacting and having conversations. I started out by putting my username in for each of these chat rooms as “cubsfan2007,” not wanting to give away too much information about my age or sex. However, I found that this name did not engage many people into conversation, so I went for another approach. I settled on using the site free-chat-rooms.net. I quickly noticed that anyone entering the chat room with an obvious girl’s name would get an enormous number of responses from people, so I tried to go for that approach. Since my name is pretty rare and not many people would know it, I decided to use my roommate’s first name, Heidi. So having changed my username to “heidi,” I re-entered the chat room and once again said “hey everyone.” Unlike last time when I received no responses, I was immediately bombarded by 20 or 30 private chat requests. After shifting out the rather vulgar ones, I started chatting with a few people.

After a few rounds of accepting requests, I got into a conversation that I found interesting. In fact, as I write this, I am continuing my conversation with this person. In terms of the Big 5, I was very impressed by how well I got along with this person. I couldn’t really judge his levels of extroversion or neuroticism. They really are much more difficult to assess in CMC rather than in Face to Face. However, the person did seem very agreeable. We discussed sports, world issues, where we were from, what we did for a living, amongst other things. I should also mention that I was masking as a 22 year old, first year law student living in Chicago. His internet persona portrayed him as a genuinely nice guy. I found out he had been in Iraq for the past 13 months and he was going to start school soon. He was very open about his likes and dislikes and what had happened in his life. His being in Iraq and willingness to discuss things like global warming and the death penalty also gave the impression that he was very conscientious. I found myself starting to feel bad that I was so thoroughly deceiving him. Then I realized that the Hyperpersonal model had played its part and taken a hold of me.

After talking to this guy for about a half an hour, I felt a bond close enough that I felt bad lying to him. It was an extreme example of how the Hyperpersonal model, while not having as much breadth, is so much more intense. I was guilty of overattributing the few cues I had about “Aazrback” to create a much more real and whole person. The little that I knew about Joe, which is what he told me his name was, was so exaggerated I felt like I could infer so much more from it. It caught me off guard that I latched on to the Hyperpersonal model so wholly. It creeped me out a little how much I could be affected by it, but I guess that was what this assignment was supposed to show.

Assignment 1: CheeseBalls

I decided the best place for me to meet someone new was a chat room. I haven’t been in a real chat room since middle school and it would provide me with the opportunity to interact with many people. Chat rooms are basically synchronous chats meaning I could carry on a fluent conversation. There is usually no persistence and I could be as anonymous as I wanted to be. I simply Googled ‘chat rooms’ until I found a chat room titled “students” from ICQ. I joined the chat and greeted everyone in the room. I immediately received a response from CheeseBalls. I took this as a sign that he/she would chat with me so I sent him/her a message for a private chat and he/she accepted.

Since we were in the “students” chat, I asked CheeseBalls where he/she went to school. I learned he/she is 20 years old, goes to college in NYC and is studying Japanese. I don’t know what race he/she is, but I know he/she is not Japanese because I asked. The entire chat I never asked what sex CheeseBalls was, mostly because I wanted to see if he/she gave away any clues. While I still don’t know for sure if CheeseBalls was male or female, I believe that he was male based on his interests so I will refer to CheeseBalls as male from now on.

CheeseBalls was very open with me, especially as we discovered common interests. We both enjoy N64 video games and playing Frisbee. Throughout the conversation he was very friendly and outgoing. He seemed confident and relaxed. I would classify him as having “warm” traits.

Of course this assessment is based only on our online chat so there were some channels missing that are present in face-to-face communication. There were no vocal cues and tone was sometimes hard to pick up on. In some cases, tone can be understood online by changing case or adding italics or bold, but our conversation had none of these cues. I was only able to observer CheeseBalls online, but I did view him both in the general chat room and in our private conversation. In the general chat he was very friendly to everyone which was also reflected in our private chat.

My impressions of CheeseBalls are most closely explained in the Hyperpersonal Theory. Anything he said left a strong impression in my mind. For example, in the chat room, watching him greet everyone who joined immediately made me conclude he was a very friendly and outgoing person. I didn’t experience neutral or undeveloped impressions like the CFO theory suggests. It would be interesting to see what CheeseBalls is like in real life to see if my strong impressions match with his true personality.

assignment 2: perverts and introverts

As I have never used a chat room before, I figured the best place to find one would be to Google chat rooms. What came up for me was a website called www.chat-avenue.com, and I was told to enter a personal username. When I got to the chat room, I simply typed (in pink font) "IM me if you want to chat".
Within seconds, I received a flurry of friendly IM's from screen names such as "Kenny" "bigman480" and "surferdude6969" all asking me the same important question:

"Kenny: asl?"

"19/f/ny," I replied, honestly.

Most of them replied with a reciprocal answer. I found it a strange coincidence that every single guy who IMed me happened to only be one or two years older than me, never any younger. I didn't believe that could be possible, and I think this could be selective self presentation. I weeded out many of the guys who started talking to me as more often than not, their next question after asking what color my hair and eyes were, went along the lines of "wanna cyber?". Because I was typing in pink font and labeled myself as a 19 year old blonde girl (really I have brown hair), the other guys in the chat room automatically assumed that I was flirty, cute and ready for a crazy online time even though they knew nothing about my personality or what I really look like. This goes along well with the social information processing method, which is where chatters adapt cues into the visual channel (in this case, my pink font) which must be typed and read, and then categorize somebody socially based upon the limited cues
.
Eventually I began talking more with a chatter with the handle of wolfwood230; he was the only one who wasn't looking for something inappropriate.

wolfwood230: do you ever get lonely?

While this probably wasn't the most upbeat conversation starter, I felt bad for him and wanted to hear what he had to say. Wolfwood 230 explained to me that he was a junior at UChicago and hadn't managed to make very many friends. He lamented that he spent most of his time surfing the internet and going into chat rooms for company, as he couldn't find any in real life. I suggested to him that he join some clubs in school; and he said he was considering joining the Christian Fellowship. We continued to talk about shallow stuff such as our majors, not particularly much breadth in the conversation. Yet the initial part of the conversation, where he started off by asking if I was lonely and then spent some time talking about his social troubles, was very intense. Because wolfwood couldn't see my face and knew he would never meet me in real life, he probably felt as if he could say what he wanted to and be more himself. He could ask me questions he (probably) wouldn’t normally he would meet in a face to face interaction because he did not have to worry about rejection. If I decided that I did not want to talk to him anymore, he could just go back in to the chat room and find somebody else to meet. This also represents the hyperpersonal model to me as: much intensity without much breadth.