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.

Dissed by Sox girl

As I sat in the library perusing all the chat rooms I could enter, I chose the College Chat on ChatAvenue.com. I picked the username SBS427 so as to not expose my gender. There were 32 people in the chat room however very few people were talking. In fact, the first message I saw when I entered the room was from “Sox girl” and read “why isn’t anybody talking?” I took this as an opportunity to say “hey guys whats up?” Consequently, I received a private instant message from sox girl asking if I wanted to chat. I said sure and we began a short conversation.

I noticed that her chat icon was the NBC peacock symbol so I asked if she worked at NBC, thinking that perhaps we might have a common interest in the entertainment industry (I worked at ABC this past summer). Sox girl replied “no, I just like the peacock”. She then asked what the SBS in my username stood for and if it was like “CBS”. I didn’t really understand why she asked this, but I told her no, it stood for my initials. She then proceeded to ask the almighty A/S/L question and I said 20/F/NY. Upon my answering of this question she told me she had to go, and that maybe we’ll talk again soon. I am going to guess that Sox girl was looking for a male to chat with and once she heard I was female she no longer wanted to chat with me.

Even though I did not chat with Sox girl for a long time, I was still able to form an impression of her keeping in mind the “Big 5” traits. Her unwillingness to talk to me after I told her I was female gave the impression that she is not a very open person. Sox girl seemed extroverted when I first entered the chat room. She was upset that no one was talking and did not hesitate to send me a private instant message. I also got the impression that Sox girl was a bit of a phony when she told me that she had the NBC symbol as her chat icon because she liked the peacock. Seeing the NBC symbol when I first entered the chat room was what had caught my eye and sparked my interest in finding out more about Sox girl, and I was a bit disappointed when I learned that she was not an NBC employee, or even an NBC fan.

My experience in forming an impression of Sox girl follows Walther’s hyperpersonal model. I was only able to rate Sox girl on her extroversion and openness, thus the breadth of my impression was small. In addition, my impressions were intense, seeing as that although I had very few cues to evaluate Sox girl on, my concluding impressions were that she was outgoing, yet unintelligent, and on the prowl for a male to chat with.
Perhaps if I had not dissuaded Sox girl from chatting with me by telling her I was female, I would have been able to form a more thorough impression of her.

Chat Rooms: Too Sketch for Comfort? Assignment #2

Hey guys! I'm doing this while I'm chatting... I just googled "free chat rooms" and after much searching (most of them were wayy inappropriate!) found one where the people seem relatively normal, and I'm talking to a particular user in separate a separate screen. The larger server for the chatroom is parachat.com. I guess the whole chat room thing is just a bit overwhelming for me since I've never done it before and so many people post at a time that it's really difficult to keep people straight, much less try to analyze one particular user.

Right now the user I'm chatting with is "tatersalad87" So far, neither of them has been inappropriate, despite the sketchy sounding names. I asked tatersalad about if his name was supposed to be dirty and he said no (haha... I wouldn't have known any better), it's from some comedy routine. I took his word for it. On a side note, this is getting pretty annoying because new windows keep popping up with private messages. I should have made my username gender-less. I suppose that's another psychological phenomenon-- why people are so forward and unabashed when it comes to hitting on the other sex online.

So tatersalad, who I've just now learned actually has a name (!), Eric, seems to be a nice, quiet guy. If I were to judge him on extroverted-ness, I would definitely put him on the introvert side. However, once I revealed to him that I was new to the site, he was very helpful and said he chatted there "all the time". When I asked why he liked the site, he said it was easy to find people to talk to. This, to me, said a lot about his personality. I think that often times people who find it hard to generate genuine conversation in face-to-face settings find it much easier to have legitimate conversations in a CMC situation. In a CMC setting, everyone on the site is using the site for the same general purpose-- to chat. In face-to-face, people are more likely to show their disinterest, or simply to reject the conversation from the start. In addition to seeming introverted, Eric told me that he is currently a bioengineering major at a community college.

So Eric just signed off and I did as well. As I was saying though, the fact that he is a bioengineering major made me jump to the conclusion that he was not only introverted, but intellectual and maybe a little nerdy. Sorry to all you engineers out there, but that's the truth. Incidentally, he told me later in the conversation that he was a nerd, but said he liked to go camping, canoeing, hiking, etc. I of course told him that I could be a nerd as well, and he seemed surprised. He also told me he "never gets the girls" because he is a nice guy, and girls don't go for nice guys. I honestly believed him, although when you think about it, I had no reason to.

I guess I would say that my online experience with my new friend (haha) was more on the side of Hyperpersonal. I definitely saw the selective delegation of personal information, as the few things he told me about himself seemed to me to be the strongest impressions I recieved. When he wasn't quick to respond and ask me a hundred questions, I immediately assumed he was shy, reserved, and most of all, not a pervert. All of these implications could be entirely off base, but because I had a limited amount of time talking to him (about 20 minutes), I had to base my entire perception off of the few things he told me about himself. Maybe it's just because I'm a visual learner, but I also found myself unconsciously trying to picture him in my head as I was typing to him. He said he had shoulder-length blonde hair, and I pictured a surfer type, especially since he said he was from Florida. When he said he didn't like the beach, I had a more difficult time typecasting him. I think this is due in large part to the categories I have predetermined in my brain, which I know is a bad thing because you're not supposed to just shove people into categories, but I know we all do it whether we do it consciously or not. I think that in some way, the energy, or resources, that I would have used to visually and physically assess this guy were definitely used in trying to figure him out through his words; how he expressed himself, how long it took him to respond, the types of questions he asked me. Normally, I would not have thought so hard about these kinds of things, but I was using my limited resources on a small breadth of cues.

When it comes to my own personal relationships, I think I'll stay away from sketchy chat room men.

Assignment 2 - Meet gansta

For this assignment, I decided to observe a chat room on meebo.com called “Flirty Teens.” Upon entering, I noticed a chatter named “gansta***” (asterisks added to preserve privacy) who seemed to have a fondness for talking in uppercase and being aggressive toward the other room members. Following are a few of his communicative gems:

[15:36] gansta***: U DONT EVEN NOE ME
[15:37] gansta***: U DONT EVEN NOE

[15:38] gansta***: IF U THINK IM FAKE COME TO THE BRONX
[15:38] gansta***: WHEN U SEE ME IN RED AND WIT MY CREW U WOULD STOP RUNNING UR MOUTH

[15:39] gansta***: BUT DEES PPL DONT NOE WHO DEY MESSIN WITH
[15:39] gansta***: THINKING THEY COOL RUNNIN THERR MOUTHS A A COMPUTER SCREEN

A short while later, apparently out of sheer frustration, he left the room.

From these outbursts and from his screen name, I guessed that gansta was a young male. I developed an impression of him being extremely hostile and, because of his blunt disregard for the tenets of basic English spelling and grammar, not very smart. Because of his antagonistic nature and seeming lack of self-discipline, I found him to be not at all agreeable or conscientious. His explosive irritability and up-front demeanor led me to believe that he had a high degree of neuroticism and was very extroverted. Finally, I got the impression that he was quite stubborn, unwilling to listen to the ideas and thoughts of his peers and, thus, not very open.

In essence, from the few lines of text above, I gained a very strong, negative impression of gansta. I found him to be quite rude and obnoxious, almost to a stereotypical, comical effect. Overall, this is in line with the SIDE and hyperpersonal models because I felt that he had a one-dimensional personality – but my perception of that one dimension was very intense. In other words, the minimal amount of cues that were provided to me led me to form a greatly exaggerated mental image of gansta. I felt that part of his persona might be drawn from the behavioral confirmation aspect of the hyperpersonal model. That is, perhaps some part of his attitude stemmed from the other room members egging him on, coercing him into reinforcing the stereotype that he had been portraying. It was also very possible that he was choosing to selectively self-present these aspects of his personality to make him appear tougher and more intimidating to his fellow chatters. However, one aspect of the hyperpersonal model that did not apply to this situation was the developmental aspect. I immediately formed a strong opinion of gansta - it did not grow over time.

LiveJournal

Hello Brown Bloggers! When I first started working on the Blog assignment for this week, I thought it would be fun to talk to someone in a chat room. Within twenty seconds of entering a “Healthy Lifestyles” chat room, I had two random IM’s from people who were inside the chat room. I started talking to the two users, ShiftyBert and CleverJasper. The conversations, however, quickly turned from “Hey, how’s it going?” to more inappropriate topics (the screen names were initial warning signs). I signed off quickly and resorted to reading LiveJournal, a more comfortable medium where I could peruse pages of information on other people without being interrogated myself.
I was browsing the “Most Recent” journal entries, when I stumbled upon an entry titled “Here’s What Happened” by the user JULY_DAYS. When I clicked on User Info it read “The Diary of a Woman Who Survived a Psychopath.” Her most recent post describes the trials and heartache she experienced. “I have been ripped off, scammed out of money by a con/narcissist who claimed to "love" me…was targeted USED over and over again and until I fully realized what was really going on I was losing on a consistent basis every stable and enriching and important thing in my life. My finances, emotional, mental, and physical health have all gone down hill.”
As I read this woman’s heart-wrenching story, it struck me that the pain I feel for her is only caused due to the way she has presented herself. I take great pity on this woman and her son, but the truth is, I don’t know her. How different would the story be if her best friend was narrating it? Were there warning signs that she ignored that would have allowed her to avoid this mess altogether? The idea of selective self-presentation plays a large role in all Blogs, as people are going to write in a style in which they want to be viewed.
The author uses very strong language to describe her feelings and capitalizes certain words like misery, suffering, hope, etc. These make her point stand out even more, and she also uses capitalization to emphasize words in phrases such as I KNOW or I CERTAINLY.
I believe that this specific blog entry falls under the Hyperpersonal Model. Because I have no pictures or previous information about this woman I can only associate her with being used and broken. Another aspect of the Hyperpersonal Model that may fit here is behavioral feedback. Depending if people leave comments or let her know that they are reading her blog she may alter her style of writing. It would be interesting to see if her future posts change my opinions of her.

Online Impression Formation- Blog 2

Hello all. Not having quite the courage to go into a random chat room and talk up a stranger after hearing so many internet horror stories, I ventured over to Xanga, a weblog community, to investigate someone’s internet persona.

I found myself at the weblog of Julie Ann. It seemed fortuitous that her last post had been such a momentous one- I could not have found an entry more revealing of her life if I had tried. In her post titled “Hearing Sounds for the First Time,” Julie Ann started out by gushing all the emotions she was feeling: her first line was “What a crazy, weird, awesome, stunning, shocking, shaky, wild, insane experience!” She was describing her recent experience transforming from a person who has been deaf all of her life, to one who would be able to hear due to new CI technology.

From her post, I could exact that she was extremely open, in that she not only shared such a personal, meaningful experience with the blogging world, but she included pictures of herself in the doctor’s office, hearing her mother say “I love you” for the first time, her children’s first day of school, and her husband. Through her explanation of why she chose her mother to be the first one’s voice she would hear, I could gather that she is very conscientious, in her rationale that her mother deserved the honor since she birthed Julie Ann, was the only one to fully learn to cue, and trained Julie Ann to speak throughout her life. It was also evident that she is agreeable in that she is extremely grateful for the gifts given to her, and seems to be in love with life. In her “about me” section, she describes herself as “a deaf Christian Mom…to my four beautiful children and being a loving wife to my dear husband Bill. I homeschool my daughter Clarissa. Photography is a passion of mine. I love writing poetry, reading, biking, spending time with my family and doing things with them. Being with friends and having fun. I enjoy…meeting new people, and most of all, serving my savior, Jesus Christ.” Also, upon receiving a musical card from her friend, she cried for joy.

Since Julie Ann is so open and forthright with her emotions and pictures of her life, I find it hard to believe that she would selectively self- present (at least consciously). In her blog, everything seems to come out in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way. For example, in later posts, she even lists every dollar of savings she earns and what it goes to buying, and most of her activities for a given day. Through her pictures I can pick up on nonverbal cues such as her facial expression and how she interacts with her family. I can also read into her emotions through her use of formatting (more emotionally charged lines seem to increase in font size). Although it is hard for me to situationally observe Julie Ann, since only her home life seems to be presented in this blog, I feel based on the little information I have gleaned, I have formed strong impressions of this woman as a caring, joyful, fun mother. The intensity and lack of breadth of this judgment would support the Hyperpersonal theory of impression formation.