One of my older friends, who has since graduated from college, met his wife on MySpace. Because I have never used MySpace, I am not quite sure of all of its different features nor am I exactly sure on the details of their first acquaintance. My friend Ryan did, however, keep me very informed and updated after his budding online relationship with Jess got underway. After their initial interaction, Ryan and Jess began to speak online several times a week. Several times a week turned into at least every other day; and eventually, they spoke to each other daily. Ryan discovered that Jess shared many of his same interests. They not only liked similar movies and music, they also had a shared undying love for dogs and warm, sunny weather.
As their online relationship continued, Ryan would tell me how close he felt to Jess and how special she was to him. Yet Ryan also shared with me his doubts and minor fear that this woman he had never met was not actually who she said she was. After three months of communicating via the online world, Ryan asked Jess if she wanted to meet in person. Many of Ryan’s suspicions were confirmed when he met Jess for coffee and she brought her yellow labrador—she was indeed the dog-lover she claimed to be online. All of the other uncertainties that Ryan had held prior to his face-to-face encounter with Jess also slowly vanished the more they spoke and continued seeing each other outside of virtuality.
Ryan and Jess’ mixed mode relationship fits very well with Berger and Calabrese’s (1975) Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT), which is a process that leads to affinity and attraction. This theory goes on to say that once you meet a person, you will like him or her more because then you have more information about that person. Therefore, increased information about a partner will lead to greater liking and intimacy. Ryan and Jess knew a great deal about each other prior to meeting, but I know that Ryan, if not Jess as well, held some uncertainties about whether or not all that information was true. After leaving virtuality, Ryan and Jess gained additional information about each other which was positively confirming and only strengthened their already forming intimate bond. Just as URT predicts, Ryan and Jess’ relationship had a positive outcome for leaving virtuality—two years after their first MySpace encounter they got married.
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Megan, that’s an interesting story of a marriage that began online. This example is a good application of URT because their meeting FtF confirmed their expectations/information of each other so uncertainty was reduced. I too have older friends that met in a similar manner through myspace. These types of relationships don’t follow the results from Ramirez & Wang as well because the success of their relationship relies on a combination of their long-term association and mixed modality. I think in a long-term relationship online, the mixed modality helps smooth the transition in leaving virtuality. Similar to SIP, do you think there is a long enough period of time where people will fully disclose their personality so that when they meet FtF, impressions will be confirmed?
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