Assignment 1: I made a billion in PartyPoker!!

Hello all,

My name is Saurin Sanghvi and I just added this class a few days ago, so I am in a major catch up mode. Anyways, I am a senior in the College of Human Ecology and I thought this would be a very interesting class to take. Until now, the latter statement has definitely proved to be right.

I have always been fascinated about the Texas Hold’em phenomenon that suddenly took over the youth of this country for the past few years. Ever since ESPN started televising the World Championship of Poker Tournament that takes place in Las Vegas, everyone has been captivated by this exciting game. Even I was a huge fan and went on the online poker playing portals such as Pokerstars and Partypoker to try my luck out in the gambling world. What makes is more appealing to many young players is that you can gamble with fake money and can invite your friends around the country to join in on the fun. I remember in high school when I invited couple of my friends to play with me and we all chatted on AIM instant messenger and hustled the others playing with us online. I guess that’s another phenomenon that people need to worry about: cheating through AIM. The most interesting thing about this space is that it became popular really fast and has just become a part of a growing teen’s development.

The popularity of the internet portal has also greatly affected how it is perceived in the everyday world. Now, instead of looking upon poker as a bad game that makes you gamble, it is kind of looked upon as just a game that is played for fun. The emergence of poker has also been recognized here at Cornell University where there is a poker tournament held at Barton Hall.

Another reason for the popularity of this type of space is because it is a MUD and also an internet chat where people can interact with each other and make up characters so they come off like they know how to play poker. Therefore, the players in this space can play around with their anonymity by controlling how much they reveal about themselves. Furthermore, the live online chat can increase the synchronicity of this space.

All in all, I have been very interested in how the internet has affected communication and with new inventions such as chats, gaming servers and videoconferencing, more change is about to take place.

Assignment #2: IRC ubergamer

I chatted with a fellow on a random IRC channel titled #star. I initiated a one-on-one chat with a user who goes by the alias gh0stryd3r. He appeared to be very open, though with a slightly poor sense of grammar(even for an online persona). It appears I was lucky to find someone willing to talk though. Apparently, the majority of users accessing IRC through whatever client rarely talk. It seems that they all just like to idle in channels but not actually participate in much chatting. In fact, the majority of the channels on the server that I connected to where for purposes other than chatting. Luckily, there are still those who enjoy a chat every once in a while.

As the discussion started, carried on, and eventually came to an end, I found I was very quickly coming up with quite resolute opinions on gh0stryd3r’s character. The Hyperpersonal model is easily the best fit to how I felt about gh0stryd3r. He appeared to be childish, and prone to start conflicts. Without more than a few lines exchanged between the both of us, I already assumed that he must be at least under the age of 15. Further discourse led me to the understanding that gh0stryd3r is an adamant computer gamer. To him, the only worth of an online persona, is how good he/she is at games. The skilless are immediately shot down as “n00bs” and treated with the upmost disrespect by this individual. Upon hearing that I don’t play counter-strike(a commonly played computer game), gh0stryd3r decided that I’ve been leading a deprived life. He then continued to affirm that if we were to play each other in a computer game, I would be “sopwnt.”

After a brief, 40 minute exchange between me and gh0stryd3r, I realized more and more how the hyperpersonal model fit my opinion of him. I found him to be conceited, quick to argue, and poorly versed in rhetoric. Although I conversed with him for a good period of time, these opinions grew rather quickly, and by halfway through the conversation I was already beyond adamant in my views of gh0stryd3r. It is true that the persona I was viewing was most likely selective self-presentation, and that I was participating in the same. Gh0stryd3r feels the need to present himself as an “über l33t gamer,” with little to no respect for those who are unable to stand up to him on the field of battle(in computer games that is). Perhaps my views were made due to the lack of cues available in an irc chat setting, but regardless it does not make me more inclined to seek out such encounters in the future.

Assignment #2: Boys Bands Aren't Just For Teenage Girls

The internet space I decided to enter was a chat room using Yahoo! Chat. I went into a boy bands chat room because I thought it sounded like a pretty safe choice, and Yahoo! has pretty boring chat room choices to begin with. There were only about ten people in the chat room and no one was saying anything so I left to find a new one. Just as I did this I got a message from another person who was the room.
Not surprisingly, one of the first things lakshya_king2002 asked me was, “asl plz.” I lied about where I was from, which is part of selective self-presentation of the hyperpersonal model. He then replied that he is a “22/m/India.” At this point, the only information about this man I have is that he is 22, from India, and in a boy bands chat room. This quickly cemented my impression that he is a creep. I know this is not a lot to go on, and it could be over-attribution, but I think I was probably right in this case. After this I started giving him one-word answers or not answering altogether, so he probably thinks I am not a very friendly person. However, this did not stop him from asking me to go to India, if I have a webcam, and when I will be online again. I think the hyperpersonal model is accurate, because by the end of this conversation, although I had few cues to use, I felt pretty strongly that this was a man to stay away from.
This experience led me to realize that where you meet another person in an online space can influence the assumptions you make about them. If I had been sent a message by a 22-year-old male when I was in a chat about rock music, as opposed to boy bands, I probably wouldn’t have jumped to the conclusion that he was a creep as soon as he said his age (I probably would have waited until after he asked me to go to India). This is because you have expectations about the kind of people you’ll meet in a chat room. If I had been in a singles chat, this whole thing wouldn’t have surprised me too much. The fact that I was expecting to be talking about the new Backstreet Boys CD, and instead got some guy asking me if I have a webcam, really through me off and led me to make assumptions more quickly.

Assignment #2: Chatroom with Giants72

The internet space I chose to enter was a chatroom entitled college. I figured college was the best choice considering it was basic and applied to my true age. The last time I was in a chatroom was in Middle School when AOL was the cool new craze. I was somewhat nervous entering an unknown space where I knew I would not be talking to any of my friends/acquaintances. In order to log in, I first need to create a screename. I decided to go with the basic name of Kate1001 in order to remain as unknown as possible.

I decided to observe a user with the name of Giants72. I did not want to choose a person with a basic name because I assumed that they would be less likely to share as much information considering their name alone tells little about themselves. I decided to interact with Giants72 right away. I addressed this person in the chat with Giants72, what is your name? Although he would not reveal his name, nor his college he did share he was from the NYC area, a male age 19 and was in fact attending college in the NYC. He would not reveal which school he attended. Our conversation consisted mainly of me asking specific questions such as “What do you do for fun?, “How is school?” He always responded to my questions and in time began asking me the same questions as well. It seemed that as I was more open about sharing info, he too began to communicate more easily. Considering the 5 Personality traits, I would label Giants72 as a 6 on a scale of 1-10 for openness. Although he would not reveal his name or college, he did share he enjoyed running, was trying out for the crew team, majoring in some form of business. I would rate him an 8 on agreeableness. He seemed to be very friendly and also inquisitive about my interests as well. He does not seem to be very extraverted, I would rate him a 3/10. When I asked, what do you do for fun? He responded watch TV. I then asked do you go out often in the city with friends and he replied, no I would rather chill here. Neuroticism and Conscientiousness were more difficult to tell in our brief conversation. Maybe if I had more time with Giants72, I would be able to develop a better impression in regards to these traits.

My impression of Giants72 most definitely could be applied to our class discussion. I found it difficult at first to form an impression of Giants72 because I wondered often about his non verbal cues. When he made a comment, I would think, “Is he lying?” “Is he sarcastic?” Face to face it is much easier to distinguish the meaning of a person’s comments due to non verbal cues. Regardless, I would say my impression of Giants72 can by classified under the hyperpersonal model. I found out a decent amount of information about Giants over time. The information I did not find out, I began to stereotype in my mind. I thought to myself, “He must be physically fit if he is trying out for crew?” and “He must be smart if he goes to school in NY, probably NYU or Columbia.” Both of these assumptions could turn out to be completely untrue but based on the information giants provided it was the assumption I made about him.

Assignment 2: What does ffs mean?

For this assignment, I decided to enter a singles chat room because I was curious to see if people actually participated in these rooms in the hopes of meeting people whom they would like to date. Initially, I entered a large room with about 75 people participating at the same time. I found this room to be extremely hard to follow, since new messages were posted at such a rapid pace. Most of the correspondence consisted of someone posting messages that would state the kind of person they were trying to meet and how to contact them through a one on one chatting service. The other messages seemed to be bots, or advertisements that would periodically send the same message to the room with a link to a pornographic website. I started to ask if anyone was actually interested in chatting and I got a response from someone whom I assumed to be female. We chatted back and forth for about five minutes despite the messages of the other people. Finally, she stopped responding so I went to another chat room called “the bar” with only 7 people in it.

I enjoyed the conversation I had in “the bar” far more than the one that I had in the larger chat room. When I entered the room, I was immediately greeted by someone named “la bella vita.” “la bella vita” and I chatted for about 45 minutes about nothing in particular. The conversation started out by her greeting me, but then being rude to me when I didn’t know what The Hills was. Once she started to be rude to me, I took her attitude to be an open invitation to say whatever I wanted to her. I started to flirt with her very intensely while she tried to shut me down. I pretended not to get the hint and just continued to flirt until she finally left the chat room. Our conversation was the only consistent one in the chat room so the other people in the chat would comment on our responses to each other.

I believe that my impression of “la bella vita” was more in line with the CFO prediction than with SIP or HYPERPERSONAL. The fact that I only chatted with “la bella vita” for one session rules out SIP for me. While I was typing my responses to “la bella vita”, I wasn’t really concerned about what kind of person she would think I was as much as I was concerned about saying something funny to make her say something funny back, which rules out HYPERPERSONAL. Without those sarcastic tones and facial expressions, it was hard to take anything that she said seriously. The emoticons helped me realize when she was being sarcastic but, for the most part, they made me even more confused since she used them so generously. When I finished chatting with “la bella vita”, I realized that my impression of her had nothing really to do with what she said to me but everything else. The fact that she was so engaged in an online chat room made me think that she was somewhat of a recluse. Her icon of a beautiful woman’s body led me to believe that she was probably a rather physically unattractive person in reality, which I based solely on past facebook experiences. Her knowledge of the emoticons and all the little chatting acronyms led me to believe that she was someone who spent plenty of time in such chat rooms talking to strangers. Despite all of these factor that might lead me to believe that she might be a recluse who continually talks to strangers on the internet, I couldn’t help but wonder if she was just the complete opposite. Maybe she was someone who enjoyed coming in to chat rooms and being funny and messing around with the people who did visit them on a regular basis. After our chat session was over, I realized I really had no idea who “la bella vita” was.

are you Really a 25/m/nyc?

Beginning this assignment I was extremely apprehensive. Having not been in a chat room since middle school the only thing I really remember is not knowing what “ne1 wanna cyber” meant and finding out the hard..and scarring.. way. I started my search for a “target” on chat-avenue.com where I had to choose a particular chat room. I chose “teen chat” because “sexy singles” and “girls only” sounded a little too much like I would relive my middle school experience. Bad idea. Every username was more obscene than the last and the chat text was scrolling furiously as more and more users invited other “hot” chatters to pm (which for a while I thought was a typo of IM). With names that I am not comfortable writing here and text that I was not even comfortable reading half the time, the “teen chat” users officially scared me into joining the “sports chat” room. Unfortunately, no one who is on the internet past 10:00 pm is really interested in talking about sports apparently because I was all alone in the chat room. Finally, I found “dating chat” where there were a handful of people with user names like Matt and Sarah so I decided to stay.
I found a target named Markus and began chatting. I was able form an impression of Markus through social categories: 25 year old male working in New York City. When I asked him what he did in New York City he responded “business” which gave me the immediate impression that he was lying because getting him to divulge much more about his work was nearly impossible. I then was able to form my impression of Markus through personality categories. His lack of willingness to talk about his job made me rate him very low on openness, however in many other aspects he seemed to be very agreeable. For example, any place in New York that I said I liked was coincidentally his favorite. I very quickly formed the impression through his extreme agreeableness and limited openness that Markus was a creepy liar who probably was not anything like who he claimed to be. He cemented this idea when he asked if I wanted to meet up. The prospect of actually meeting some stranger in person after a five minute chat on line may just be stomach turning to me, but PSYCHO immediately flashed in my head. I x’ed out and considered how the combination of agreeableness with very little openness in our very limited conversation had made me write off Markus as a liar who is possibly mentally unstable. I believe this most likely goes along with Walther’s Hyperpersonal Model and the over-attribution process. I was pretty much able to make the judgment that Markus was the next Unabomber through what little information I received while the possibility that Markus was completely honest and was actually my soul mate is probably just as great.

Hello stranger.

When I first attempted to complete this assignment I tried interacting with a “target” in a chat room, and quickly realized that for some reason this idea scared me to death. I think I’ve seen too many episodes of To Catch a Predator. After a few failed attempts to casually start a conversation, I decided observing someone online would effectively soothe my anxieties. And what better place to judge, ahem, form an impression about a stranger than Facebook? Facebook is primarily an asynchronous tool that utilizes several of Wallace’s psychological spaces, including email (message function), newsgroups (groups and discussion boards), and more recently even a blogging function.

I chose a random profile, and for the sake of this person’s privacy (hopefully the irony isn’t lost), let’s just call him John. Based on John’s profile picture and personal information, I immediately see he is an 18-year-old white male. He is a freshman at Cornell, with no major listed. He seems to be athletic, as he is interested in soccer and track, is active in debate, and describes himself as Liberal. In terms of John’s personality, I can make a few assumptions. He participates in many of Facebook’s functions, which relays high levels of extraversion and openness. John has a long list of favorite music, movies, and books, showing that he doesn’t feel he has anything to hide. He has a lot of Friends on Facebook and has many pictures of him smiling and seemingly having fun. Overall, he seems like a friendly, agreeable guy. I might characterize him with a low level of conscientiousness though since he makes a few crude jokes in his profile and has some pictures of himself drinking and partying posted. This makes me think he hasn’t thought or doesn’t care that potential employers can use his profile to learn about him. He doesn’t have a status posted, so I can just assess his current state as generally happy, based on his profile picture taken with a friend.

The hyperpersonal model provides reasonable explanations as to why I so easily formed a positive impression of John. For example, the idea of selective self-presentation presumes that John purposefully selected his most desirable qualities to display in his profile. Naturally, I would be impressed with someone who is fun, listens to good music, and is involved in school activities. Also, over-attribution processes argues that fewer cues in computer-mediated communication leads to an exaggeration of character. For instance, since the only information I have to form an impression about John is on one webpage, I make stronger assumptions, like he must be athletic since he is interested in a couple of sports. Even though I know all of these factors are at work within my impression formation, I still feel pretty strongly about my assumptions; thus, I would say my impression is more in line with the hyperpersonal predictions. Since I have few cues, all of which are essentially desirable and positive, the exaggeration of my initial impression of John is high, as opposed to the CFO predictions which expect a weak intensity.

Strong Opinions About the Beatles

Lately, much of my web browsing has been dedicated to the reading of message boards. According to Wallace, message boards can be classified as asynchronous discussion forums. In these forums, individual threads exist where users can post comments relating to the topic of discussion. These conversations do not take place in real time—rather they slowly develop over the course of several days.

I decided to set out to meet and talk about music with someone in the extremely active “ateaseweb” message board. Officially, ateaseweb is a forum related to the band Radiohead, but its popularity has led it to become one of the most prominent sources of music news and opinions on the web. I started out posting in a thread called “Least favorite Beatles track” with my innocent opinion (“Julia” – I’m just not a fan). Upon checking the site for responses, I was surprised to receive a fast response from “idiotsavant” asking “Wow, you really don’t like Julia?”. Using this as an opportunity to segue into a private-message conversation that reminded me of an e-mail dynamic, I personally asked idiotsavant what his (her?) least favorite Beatles song is (it turned out to be “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”—which I am rather fond of). This led to a series of back-and-forth messages about the Beatles music with some information about us thrown in as well.

Idiotsavant, despite the username, came across consistently as a person with strong opinions, an expert’s knowledge of the Beatles, and an unwillingness to change his (I soon found out he was a “he” – male, mid-20’s, data-entry clerk in Los Angeles) mind. I essentially imagined a hip, trendy young man, living in a chic apartment surrounded by a collection of Beatles vinyl records and books on popular music.

My thoughts were certainly influenced by the Hyperpersonal Model. As the conversation progressed, I would be swayed and trust his opinion more and more—and of course, I realize only now that his surely channeled and affected presentation as a musical expert was likely aided by the convenient aid provided by iTunes, Wikipedia, and allmusic.com. Not only did Idiotsavant have all this information at his disposal due to our asynchronous medium of communication, he had all the time he needed to use his cognitive resources in coming up with perfectly knowledgeable and “cool” responses to my messages. I believe that I conceived this hyperpersonal notion of Idiotsavant due to the potentially extreme opinions people develop when discussing tastes in a non-personal setting. Even though this stranger was eagerly willing to shoot down my valued opinions, this strong persona he was developing (via clearly self-selected presentation) convinced he was knowledgeable, articulate, and worthy of my respect.

Impression Formation

I struggled with this assignment because I found it particularly difficult to develop a relationship with a complete stranger in a chat room. Never having entered a public chat room before, I was shocked at how immature and disturbing many of the participants were. After many failed attempts to develop relationships with individuals in the various chat rooms I entered, such as ICQ’s General Chat Room, the Free College Chat Room, and countless others, I finally came across “Vexington,” on a Christianity ICQ Chat Room. I entered the Christianity Chat Room because I was confident that it would bring with it a more mature range of participants.
When I first entered the chat room, I was overwhelmed at how quickly participants were entering new information. After “Vexington,” and I exchanged superficial information about ourselves, such as our age and place of birth, he invited me into a private chat room. I was relatively shocked when he initiated a private chat room because in my earlier chat rooms, I took the more aggressive role by inviting people and on repeated occasions was called a pedophile. From this point forward, I viewed “Vexington,” whom I later learned is Steve, to be an extroverted individual. Throughout our conversation, Steve and I discussed various topics of political and religious significance. As a factory worker who was born into Christianity, and was largely uneducated, Steve displayed conservative political viewpoints. Understanding these key social factors, and hoping that Steve would become more involved in our conversation, I asked him extremely controversial religious questions. For instance, I asked him to comment on issues of gay marriage, stem cell research, and the role of religion in society. The first resounding impression that I formed about Steve was that he was definitely uneducated. I formed this impression not only based on his improper use of language and grammatical errors, but also on his curt and often times counter-intuitive responses. After asking Steve to share his views on gay marriage, for example, he began by stating gay marriage will cause the deterioration of society, to some effect. Further on, however, he stated that though adopted children of gay and lesbian couples will undoubtedly adopt their parents’ homosexuality, he agreed that sexual preference is genetically predisposed, and thus forgivable.
In addition to gay marriage, Steve and I discussed the role of religion in society at great length. Though I had difficulty following his reasoning, he was adamant in his general belief that the United States is “going downhill.” He believed that society is destroying itself mainly because of the “twists,” of modern religion, but also because of what he stated to be, “opinions, people in power, money, and the like.” After our hour-long conversation, I had formed a fairly comprehensive impression of Steve. Though our text-medium, I found him to be genuine, uneducated, relatively extroverted, slightly aggressive, and fairly close-minded. Analyzing these impressions in terms of the available theoretical perspectives on impression formation, I feel that my CMC interaction with Steve most supports the cues-filtered-out Social Presence Theory. Unlike the non-CFO perspectives, such as social-information processing theory, social identity/deindividuation theory, and the hyperpersonal theory, which collectively focus more on the cognitive aspects of impression formation, and suggest that text-mediated-communication yields more intense impressions, the Social Presence Theory hypothesizes that Computer-mediated-Communication will yield impoverished social presence due to fewer nonverbal cues. My interaction with Steve most supports this theory, for though I definitely did utilize aspects of Wahler’s Hypersonal theory, such as re-allocation of cognitive resources in forming an impression of Steve, my impression was more comprehensive and less intense than the non-CFO perspectives hypothesized. Leaving the chat room, I had a neutral and underdeveloped impression of Steve, one that definitely matches the Cues-Filtered-Out perspective.

Assignment #2: Yahoo! Messenger Chatroom

I chose to join a random chatroom on Yahoo! Messenger. I have to admit this was my first chatroom experience. No one seemed to be talking, and as this was my first time I was not quite sure if I had even entered the chatroom correctly. Though I knew I was totally anonymous, which probably encourages most people to just start a conversation with a random person, I decided to wait until someone else spoke first. As it seemed this may take a while, I started checking my email and stopped paying close attention to the chatroom. When I saw that someone had spoken I was pretty excited for my first chatroom conversation! The person had even spoken directly to me, the newest person in the chat, because I saw that I was addressed by my screen name! I assumed that this seemingly assertive person was going to be friendly and extraverted. I was about to respond when I saw that there were already four IMs from the same person. After the initial “hey [screen name]” there was an “asl?” followed by “ok..don’t answer” and then “nvm.” I was definitely taken aback by this person who so quickly judged and dismissed me after my initial slow response time. This consequently led me to rate this person low on agreeableness before I had even participated in the conversation.

Despite the rudeness, I chose to respond. I shared my Age-Sex-Location (ASL), asked for this person’s ASL, and gave a short apology for not responding fast enough. After two minutes of silence, I asked if this person was still there. After another long pause, my chatroom “buddy” finally asked, “so…do you like how it feels?” Not wanting to start an argument, I just explained that I had missed the IM because I was checking my email. This comment only seemed to put this person in an even worse mood. We only spoke for a few more brief moments because it seemed to me that my “buddy” wanted to start a fight. I tried to calm the situation and just start from the beginning by inquiring for ASL once again. Yet all of the responses I received were very short, accusatory, and uninformative. When I finally told my “buddy” that I did not have time for this, he or she snapped at me and signed off.

Though our conversation was very short, I was definitely able to form an impression of this person using the Big Five Personality Traits, with the exception of conscientiousness. I still do not know the gender of my “buddy,” nor anything else for that matter, so he or she is definitely low on the openness factor. My “buddy” absolutely lacked agreeableness as demonstrated by his or her continual criticizing; this had been my first impression and it held constant through to the end. While I would not describe this person as sociable, he or she was assertive and highly emotional which are also signs of extraversion. And finally, I think my “buddy” sits high on the neuroticism scale due to his or her insane instability and irritability. It is rather ridiculous that my brief, yet highly turbulent conversation could lead me to make such strong negative impressions just as Walther’s Hyperpersonal Model illustrates. I had very few characteristics on which to base my impression, yet I still managed to interpret them and then stereotype the rest. With the little information that I had, I used over-attribution processes to form a very exaggerated image of an angry, unstable, and antisocial person. I am just hoping that my next chatroom conversation is a little more civil than my first.

Meeting a Stranger

As I searched the Internet to find a psychological space to interact with a target, I began to get slightly nervous thinking that I was going to have to approach a stranger. I thought the best way to approach this assignment, and not appear as a “weirdo,” was to find someone interested in the same things as myself. So, I went on America Online and found the discussion board section. As I was searching what appeared to be an endless list of discussions boards, I found one that was titled Britney Spears. I thought the people who wrote on this discussion board would be nice girls and easy targets to approach. I posted a response to a comment by cherrylove244. I also read her profile, which did not provide much information, but showed a picture. The picture was of a female about the same age as myself. I waited a few minutes for her to respond to my comment, and when she did not, I nervously IMed her. I Instant Messaged her some standard comment about Britney spears being crazy, and she responded. She IMed back “heyyy” and agreed to my comment. The fact that she actually responded to some random IM, made me so excited and I automatically thought that cherrylove244 was a really nice girl. Our conversation continued, and I asked her how old she was. Cherrylove224 said she was 23 and asked my age and gender. I nervously asked her where she went to college. I was so nervous because I felt weird, even in an Internet setting, asking this girl who seemed so nice online personal questions. She answered my question within seconds and we continued chatting for about 20 minutes. My short conversation with cherrylove244 has parallels with terms and theories we discussed in class and in the readings.
First, in the Wallace’s The Psychology of the Internet, she states, “We seem almost paralyzed in a social interaction until we know these two simple facts” (p. 22). The two simple facts she refers to are age and gender. I agree completely with this point. I looked at cherrylove244’s profile picture and found out she was a female in her twenties. Her gender and age are the sole reasons as to why I chose her as my target out of all the other people on discussion board. One of the first questions cherrylove244 asked me was my gender and age. My experience falls under the hyperpesonal model. I definitely played into the over-attribution process. I thought cherrylove244 was extremely warm and kind. I had very little basis for these thoughts about her, only a discussion board post and a brief instant message conversation with very small pauses. The fact that she actually talked to me, and answered my questions with no rude replies, gave me these impressions of warmness and kindness. The development aspect of the hyperpersonal model exists outside the boundaries of this assignment because we had a very short amount of time to complete the assignment. I only had one conversation with cherrylove244, not many over a long period of time. The selective self-presentation aspect of the hyperpersonal model played a role for me during this assignment. I did read cherrylove244’s profile and she provided a single picture of her and very little other information. She only allowed others to know or see what she wanted them to know or see about her. She showed viewers a single attractive picture of her. She did not provide any information as to whether she was witty or intelligent, just that she was relatively attractive. The hyperpersonal model focuses on less breadth and more intensity, and this is a fair conclusion to my impressions during this assignment.

Scarred for Life

Whoever told you that you could be whoever you want to be probably never anticipated how true those words would prove to be in Internet chat rooms. After spending the last hour and a half browsing through chat rooms and meeting a variety of different people, I am in utter shock. For the sake of preserving the integrity of this blog as well as your own innocence, I am going to censor some of the crudeness that I experienced during my adventure into the virtual world. Nevertheless, my conversations were quite a ride that made me squirm even though they only comprised of a few details here and there.

Primarily, the first things that I noticed when I logged on were everyone’s user names. Whether they were simple like Alyssa or Corey23, or cut right to the chase like 22/m/cali; each told me something right about the person right before I even talked to them. Some decided to be more improper with their names, and I did have quite a chat with tonguealways1st who was one of the more decently appropriate user names that I saw. Nonetheless, this aspect of online chatting falls under Walther’s Hyperpersonal Model and the over-attribution process. This theory states that the few cues will lead us to making stereotypes about that person and will lead us to base entire judgments on the information. I immediately formed biases and opinions based on their user names which further influenced whether or not I wanted to start a chat or avoid one with a certain person within the first two seconds.

The next thing I noticed were the icons the user’s used to represent themselves. These ranged from smiley faces, to lips, to skulls, to six packs, and to girls in thongs. These pre-selected symbols also lead me to form an impression of the person right away, which again is part over the over-attribution theory. However, the use of these icons also somewhat falls under behavior confirmation theory. The person who chooses to be the women in the less than modest bikini will start acting like a woman would wearing such a revealing bikini and the guy with the skull will most likely act like a tough guy. The icons are actually symbols revealing an aspect of their personality that they wanted to portray and fulfill in the chats.

Unfortunately, my actual conversations with the few people I did talk with went from polite formality quickly to vulgarity and I was forced to end the conversation immediately; however, I did learn how to get a feel for people immediately. I was able to form quicker judgments and act upon them without giving myself a second chance to get to know the person better, as opposed to what we often do in reality.

Assignment #2: Muffin the Cat

As I have not entered a chat room since I was 12 years old, I had some difficulty initially finding one. I searched “chat rooms” on Google and came to a free chat room sponsored by Google called ParaChat. After creating a false name and then sending “what’s going on?” to the room, I instantly started receiving private instant messages from people in the room. It took a bit of screening through the names to find Orrin. For some privacy and a bit of fun, I changed my name, age, location, and profession to Michelle, 27, Florida, and a professional gymnast and coach. Conversing with Orrin (38, male, Seattle) started out with very general topics such as the beginning question, “a/s/l?” Once he saw I was not a “kid” like the rest of the people in the chat room, responses became longer and more detailed but topics were still very general. After some time, Orrin became a bit random—out of the blue he mentioned that he had the “coolest pet” named Muffin who was a 17 year old cat—but was very respectful of the fact that I did not want to talk on another instant messenger program or tell him the city I lived in. When he joked around he used a lot of emoticons and eventually “spilled the beans” that his real name was Alen and not Orrin. He also shared similar interests in many of my made-up hobbies and never hesitated to add facts about himself that I never asked about. I had to eventually sign out of the chat room when he kept asking more detailed questions about my made-up profession. Of course he made sure to provide me with his e-mail address and ask if I would be online again tomorrow night before signing off, but accepted my answer of “not knowing where my life will take me come tomorrow.” That way, I did not have to personally worry about breaking a promise.

Although our conversation was fairly long, I do not feel as though I really got to know Alen. I did however, form a positive impression of him due to traits he portrayed that I appreciate in a man—lightheartedness, humor, and respect for me. This would most likely resemble Walther’s Social Information Processing Theory (SIP) because even though I chatted with him for over an hour, the depth of information I actually learned about him was minimal. In SIP, impression cues are put into a verbal channel by typing and reading thus taking more time to transmit information than face to face interactions.

Christian Faith Chat

The psychological Internet space that I entered for this assignment was a chat room called Teenspot.com. There were specific chat rooms for different topics of interest. The one that I entered was named Christian Faith. The chat room was fairly simple to sign-up for. All that was needed for this site was to enter basic information about name, age, gender, email, and at least one other email that they can email to about there site.

Once I entered the chat room I observed the conversation that was going on at the time. To my surprise, they were not really talking about the Christian faith. In particular there was this one person, emotional_babe, who was particularly inappropriate for a chat room supposedly dedicated to talking about the Christian faith. I decided to target that individual and proceeded to ask if this individual was a Christian and what the purpose of their comments was. Emotional_babe continued to type inappropriate comments that basically offended me, as a Christian. It did not seem like the person was taking anything seriously and made comments that seemed like they were intentionally made to offend me. At one point I asked emotional_babe if he/she was being serious with the comments that were being made. I frankly thought it was ridiculous.

My impression of emotional_babe was definitely negative. I thought he/she was offensive, rude, and just illogical. I think that the lack of context cues definitely played a role in just how fast and intense emotional_babe’s comments were. I could not tell how sarcastic or serious emotional_babe was being and since he/she did not express what emotions he/she was feeling, it was very difficult to get a read of how I should be taking the comments. Reduced social context cues definitely played a major role in my impression of emotional_babe. From the Hyperpersonal model, there were many factors that played in my experience. There were simple profiles that we were allowed to make before entering these chat rooms which falls under the selective self-presentation characteristic. I’m also guilty of using the over-attribution process in that I assumed this person was being an inconsiderate person that was saying things purposely to anger me. Those were the main attributes from the Hyperpersonal model that applied to this situation. Therefore I believe that my impression falls best under the category of the Hyperpersonal Model.

Lonely in California

After popping in and out of miscellaneous AOL chatrooms, I found one titled SoCalFriendsNLovers. Like most of the other chatrooms, I found this one relatively boring. It featured 35 screennames, yet only about 3 were actually talking. Frustrated and wanting to get started on this assignment, I decided to Instant Message one of the members, DARRYLTorrance.
He appeared to be very friendly as we began our conversation talking about southern California. I noticed that he was open; he was willing to discuss the city he lives in, which is also a part of his screenname. After telling him the general area I grew up in, he seemed dissapointed that it was so far from Torrance. It's actually an hour drive, which I thought was not far considering I'm actually in New York.
One thing that came to my attention was his excessive use of emoticons. Looking back at the conversation, I counted 8 in all. Most of them were the big cheesy grin, usually in repsonse to something I said with which he agreed. This gave me the understanding he was in a good mood, despite complaining a few times about the fact that he was bored in Torrance.
Then, he asked about my taste in music. I told him I am a big Dave Matthews fan, and he seemed to like that. He even began offering suggestions of bands to download. This confirmed my impression that he was agreeable and open.
My theories I found were in line with the Cues Filtered Out Theories. Based on the fact that he was in a chatroom gave me the impression that he is lonely. He confirmed this by mentioning that he was bored with the city he lives in. In addition, his use of emoticons gave me the feeling that he was easily amused. My impression of him was relatively neutral due to the lack of verbal cues.

Assignment #2: Chatting over Chess

For years I have been what can only be described as a "chess geek." I love it. I spend hours at a time playing speed chess with friends on the Commons. I am not even very good, but the game is in me. Because of this, it comes as a surprise to many of my friends that I have never been involved in playing online chess or trolling the many discussion boards and chat rooms abound where my kind tend to hang out. So for this assignment, I decided to give it a shot and see if the outcome could have been predicted by any of the impression formation theories on CMC which we have looked at thus far.

I chose to focus on a chat room, because I use IM quite a lot -- for work as well as in my personal life. Luckily, Yahoo Games has a vibrant community of chess players who can play each other (and chat in the process) relatively anonymously. After fumbling around to find an opponent, I located my target; a player who seemed eager to socialize and chat for a while after he humiliated me on the chess board for several games. I decided to be myself and really try to connect with this person, and in the end I could see that almost all of the elements of the Hyperpersonal Model came into play.

I was immediately struck by how quickly I was able to make rather strong impressions about this person. To be sure, this contradicts the developmental element of the Hyper-personal Model. We were almost instantly able to interact with the same level of understanding as when we said goodbye. I believe that this can be attributed to the fact that both of us were obviously experienced chatters and felt very much at home communicating in this environment. I was able to make attributions right away and I suspect that he was able to do the same of me.

My new friend was very open about his life. He seemed not to hold anything back as he revealed a great deal about his background and experience. He was clearly conscientious: a motivated and detail-oriented individual, which I could see in his passion for the game and his work. While I wouldn't feel comfortable to assess his extroversion (who knows how he'd act in "real life") I did feel that he was quite an agreeable person as he seemed very interested and made me feel quite comfortable as we chatted. I found it impossible to determine anything about his neuroticism.

I made some assumptions based on what I knew about him. He was a chess geek like me, and a very good player. He was probably very smart. I made my presumptions blatant in our interaction and it was clear that both of us fed upon this fact, exemplifying the behavioral confirmation of the Hyperpersonal Model. Further, I realized very quickly that my assessment of his traits were very exaggerated and obviously stereotyped. I could almost visualize the caricature of a chess-playing computer whiz. This SIDE-derived over-attribution fed what was clearly a cycle in which my intense impressions were obviously egging him on.

While the development of my impressions were perhaps even faster than they would have been face-to-face, every other element of the Hyperpersonal Model seemed to be evident. The more computer-mediated communication is integrated into our lives, the more adept we will become at using it. As we as a society become more adjusted to CMC, I wonder if future research in this area will demonstrate a faster adaptation to forming impressions on a grander scale?

Assignment #2: To Believe or Not to Believe?? (Meeting people through chatrooms)

I chose to randomly join a chatroom on Yahoo! Messenger as my online space, but no one was talking in it. As a result, I left and attempted to find a new chatroom. As I was searching, I received an IM from one of the screen names that was in the chatroom I left. Within the first minute, I was asked ASL. After a brief exchange of background, I found out his name was Hisham and he was a 37-year-old male from Egypt. He asked what movies I liked to watch and what I like to do in my spare time. From those questions, I noticed the first sign of one of the Big 5 personality traits, extraversion, by his assertiveness and his interest in trying to get to know who I was.

Hisham then asked what I would like to know about him. This question made me think Hisham was open to others. I proceeded by asking him some questions. He is a civil engineer working for an oil company. In addition, he likes reading, dancing, and sailing in his free time. He is also married so I asked why he would be meeting people online if he has a wife. He said he loved chatting and asked if that was bad. I said no and he responded by saying he likes open-minded ladies. Although this man only knew my fictitious age, sex, and location, he inferred from my response that I was open-minded. This is an example of the over-attribution aspect of Walther’s hyperpersonal model. From the minimal social cues available to him, he has already made an assumption about my personality traits. Then he adds me as a friend and suddenly changes his screen name to what I assumed was his full name.

I formed the impression that Hisham has a warm personality. His responses and his actions definitely show signs of openness and extraversion. He wasn’t afraid to ask questions about me and answered the questions I asked. He talked about his wife and 3 kids. Also, when I mentioned how I liked to travel, he excitedly agreed with me and listed all the different countries he had visited, which showed agreeableness. However, it was hard, due to the limited social cues, to judge on conscientiousness and neuroticism.

My impression of Hisham follows Walther’s hyperpersonal model rather than the CFO perspective. He seemed to have positive and warm traits like outgoingness, openness, and friendliness, however, he may have purposely selected desirable cues to present to me (selective self-presentation). With selective self-presentation, it is easy for one person to develop exaggerated and stereotyped opinions of the other. Because I portrayed him as having many positive traits, he may have changed his behavior to confirm my perceptions of him (behavioral confirmation). Also, since our conversation lasted for only 30 minutes, my impressions were based on the minimal social cues from his questions and answers so my assumptions about his personality may have been intensified. Since we only communicated once through CMC instead of FtF, I felt it was difficult to confirm the impression I have formed about him. Through more chat sessions, I could learn more about Hisham and maybe by the third session, be able to characterize him like I would a person I met FtF. (developmental aspect)

Chatting with "College" Students: Assignment # 2

I visited the 'Free College Chat Room' (http://www.chat-avenue.com/collegechat.html) a few times this past weekend to gain some perspective on the world of online chat rooms. Honestly, the last time I visited one of these 'chat rooms' must have been 7th or 8th grade, when I thought it was cool (or funny?) to pretend that I was an 18+/F. So the actual act of interacting via chat room was a bit unfamiliar, and I would say, noticeably uncomfortable at first. Still, once I convinced myself that none of these people had any idea who I was, nor was it at all likely that we would ever meet; I started to loosen up and interact with a range of characters.
"Sailor Girl," or as she told me later, "Kristen," was the first person I made direct contact with. The very act of switching from 'group chat' to direct chat in private instant messaging is an interesting online phenomenon in itself. You have the aggressive instant messengers, who after making immediate contact in 'group chat' quickly ask for "a/s/l" in a private message. And you have the more laid-back, passive instant messengers who are content with chatting in group chat until a real connection (if you can actually have one in quick instant messaging conversation...) is made. I'd categorize myself as the latter, although after interacting with "Sailor Girl" for 15+ minutes in group-chat I started to grow irritated with the constant interruptions and asked her if she'd be willing to talk in private instant messages.
It's interesting, but when "Sailor Girl" said "umm...sure" I felt a sudden jolt and feeling of excitement. I didn't even know this person, had no idea what she looked like or how many other people she had privately messaged that very day, but the fact that she was willing to accept my invitation invigorated my senses. I wouldn't say it was necessarily on-par with face-to-face acceptance, but it was still fairly intense.
"Sailor Girl," a native of Chicago who loves Chinese food, was a bit hesitant to share personal information with me at first, so I did most of the talking at the beginning. But even as she resisted my original overtures, I remember feeling an intense feeling of excitement, of intrigue at just how easy this was, and potentially—how much I could get out of interacting with people online. And then, just when I was thinking about asking Kristen for a picture, she threw a bombshell at me: "You know, I was lying before...I'm not really 20. I’m sorry, I'm actually 14."
I just stared at the screen for a second, and then remember starting to chuckle. "What the heck is wrong with me?" I thought. How could I have actually thought I was starting to get to know someone I had never seen? Why did I think we might “have something” when I had barely interacted with this person for more than 20 minutes? I didn't even bother responding to her, and quickly signed out of the chat.
Looking back, I think my experience resonated with Walther's Hyperpersonal Model. Interacting with Kristen, I never got a real feel for the 'breadth' (or detailed nature) of her personality. I knew where she was from, vaguely what she (might have) looked like (brown hair, blue eyes, 5/4, slender build), and her favorite movie (40-year-old-virgin) and favorite food (Chinese), but I didn't have much sense of how she carried herself, what her voice sounded like, or anything really about her actual personality.
Yet, I found myself making real intense impressions about her, that in retrospect (especially upon learning she had lied to me), I didn't have any right making. For example, I assumed that she was playing hard-to-get when she said "umm...okay" when I asked her if we could privately chat, instead of considering the fact that maybe she was just hesitant to talk to a complete stranger. Or when she told me her favorite movie was 40-year-old-virgin I immediately assumed she was a funny/good-natured person. When she told me she was 'slender,' I pictured a skinny, good-looking brunette who was my age. The intensity of my judgments, in hindsight, were totally unmerited. But they were still there.
The experience, in and of itself, was a good learning experience. I don't think the online chatting world is really my thing, at least at this point in my life. There's just too much unknown out there, and I don’t like the idea of spending time talking with someone who might be lying to me. Still, it is very interesting how willing I was to make intense judgments about someone that I knew absolutely nothing about. The Hyperpersonal model, I think, comes the closest to explaining my judgments and reactions.

You can get a lot out of pool. Yahoo! Pool that is.

I interacted with “dark_ages_agent” over several games of Yahoo! Pool. He is an 18 years old male from Singapore, studying at MDIS (Management Development Institute of Singapore). He is interested in business as well as the Medieval ages. He is Asian and not a native speaker of English. He is a seasoned veteran at Yahoo! Pool and he is willing to forgo sleep in order to play it. He also plays a lot of pool with his friends. He is cool and reserved, maintaining the “dark, mysterious” sort of appearance. He is a very emotionally stable individual, rating low in terms of neuroticism. He is mostly calm and collected, showing great control and emotional reserve in various situations. Although, he was easily confused at times. At first, he is bit extraverted, showing reserve in using the chat feature. However, he gradually seemed more introverted. His style of play showed high marks for conscientiousness and low marks for openness. Throughout our time together, he showed high characteristics in agreeableness. The preceding impression of “dark_ages_agent” was formed over the course of about an hour and a half of engaging him in conversation and playing games of pool.

I discovered most of his social information by probing him for answers. He responded to my inquiries for age, sex, location without much hesitation. I revealed that I knew someone who went to school in Singapore in order to attain information regarding his school and major. From his Yahoo! Games profile, I learned that he has played 1035 games, winning 614 and losing 421, with 21 abandoned games. By checking all game statistics, I learned that he plays Yahoo! Pool exclusively. As a basis for comparison, I have played 40 games, winning 10 and losing 30. Obviously, he was not a newbie at this game. From his profile page, I was able to view his posted profile pic:

I initially formed a cool, dark personality model, on which my later observations might have been biased.

Many of my conclusions were made by analyzing his sentence structures and textual communications. I came to the conclusion that he didn't speak English at the native level through awkward use of words such as “i gt a pool clan outside which i am inside too.” At first, I spent most of my time trying to maintain active conversation with him, while he gave me concise, short answers. This led me to his extraverted appearance. I decided to give up conversation midway into the duration of my observations as a test for his response. This time he sent longer lines of communication, leading me to his more introverted rating. Throughout the game, I complained about my awful shots. He responded with lines such as “gd try.” Consequently, I rated him high for agreeableness.

The rest of my conclusions drew from his style of play and situational behavior. When I was clearing the table, with only the 8 ball left to sink, he responded with a cool “gg” and accepted his defeat. When he won, he answered in the same way. This emotional moderation during victories and defeats lead me to his low mark for neuroticism. In addition, his straightforward shots and apparent planning showed his conscientiousness in his drive towards victory and his lack of openness in his uncreative shots.

I found that I was more in line with Walther's hyperpersonal model. When he first answered “asl,” my first impression was the stereotypical, reserved Asian male teenager. In this case, my initial assessment was close. In the end, he was more social than I initially thought. That was a direct result of getting to know him more over time, as described in the developmental aspect. His choice for a profile picture is an example of selective self-presentation. He is maintaining the image of a darker personality. With respect to reallocation of cognitive resources, I felt that I gave much attention to his style of play in place of the cues in face to face interaction. As I mentioned previously, my later observations may have been affected by my initial impression. However, it might also be the case that those observations serve as a confirmation.

Music To My Ears? Assignment #2

As a musician, whenever I need some advice or troubleshooting with a problem I’m having, I consult the plethora of forums that are available on the web. Probably the most useful is FutureProducers.com. On this site there are the typical forums with threads where users can post questions, answers, comments or anything else they feel like contributing. There is also an option to send somebody a private message, or ‘PM’; this is the feature that I chose to utilize for this assignment.

I am one half of the local hip-hop group TynovA & Kwest. After completing our first full-length album, we chose to invest in a new microphone. The mic we had before was decent and got the job done, but we decided to upgrade. I had recently been having a little trouble configuring the new mic’s settings to our liking, so I decided I should navigate the FutureProducers forum in search of answers. This turned out to be the perfect chance to do my research for this assignment, while possibly solving my problem at the same time.

I decided to search the forum looking for another person who had used the same microphone, and my quest turned out to be successful. This user had talked about the microphone in the past, so I figured he might be able to help me. I had never spoken to him before, but his user name and location gave something away to me; I realized I knew who this person was - to a certain extent. In the past I had heard some material from a relatively well known hip-hop group from Milwaukee. Their music sounded really good, and I deduced that this user happened to be a member of said group. I never disclosed to him that I was aware of this, thus insuring that he wouldn’t alter his personality or responses.

When I first initiated the conversation, I told him of my dilemma and asked if he had any advice or if he could help in any way. His response was thorough and extremely helpful. He was courteous and polite and relayed his past experiences to me. He also gave me tips on how to maximize the microphone’s performance, going into great detail about some of the technical points. He was very open and very helpful. I probably could have ended the conversation there, but I decided to ask him some more advice. I picked his brain about the mastering process and we talked a little bit about our experiences with making our first albums. Overall he was extremely thorough and provided me with a abundance of information, while asking nothing in return.

I would categorize the interaction that took place under the Social Identity Deindividuation Theory. While my ‘friend’ and I seemed to get along very well and had a lot in common, this could easily have been the result of having minimal cues. The musical context of our discussion is what most likely attracted his interest to help me and with little other information about me, led him to go in-depth and to be very helpful. We met through this common interest, and with no negative cues to be received, we developed a possibly exaggerated sense of similarity.

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Assignment 2 -or- No Wonder Willy Wonka Hates That Guy

I chose, for my target of study, a member of the Yahoo! Messenger Movies chat room that went by the screen name of Slugworth. At first I attempted to engage Slugworth in a one-on-one conversation, so I could get to know them better and form my impression. However, this proved to be more or less impossible, as Slugworth enjoyed passing the time in the chat pointing out to nobody in particular how stupid everyone was. Just about any opinion about a movie, or even a general comment offered by the rest of the chat room was immediately rebuked by Slugworth as both moronic and ignorant. Surely he was the only true authority regarding movies.

After observing this Slugworth for about twenty minutes, I felt confident I had a good grasp on their general personality. The first and strongest opinion I formed about Slugworth is that he was undoubtedly male and just as undoubtedly a teenager. At least in my mind, only an adolescent male could exhibit the degree of generalized antipathy I saw in Slugworth. Furthermore, I believed that he was something of a loner in real life, and that the behavior he was exhibiting in a chat room (the ultimate haven of anonymity) was just his general skulking attitude taken to a whole new level. In the safety of the chat room, he did not hesitate to inform anyone and everyone how stupid they all were. It seemed to me that he was definitely the kind of person who in school would sit alone in the back and smirk inside about just how inferior all his classmates were, if only because they didn’t realize how smart he was.

Looking back, it was really interesting how quickly I dismissed Slugworth as just some maladjusted kid that had the youthful “I hate everyone” mentality. He, of course, must have scored low in terms of Openness, Conscientiousness and Agreeableness. But when writing about this, and thinking about what we discussed in class, my opinions definitely fall under the umbrella of the Hyperpersonal Model. I was so sure of my diagnosis of Slugworth’s personality and yet I had only been able to observe him in a very limited space for about twenty minutes. It was definitely weird to experience that increased intensity that the Model predicts, especially because I’ve probably done it hundreds of times before without even realizing it.

Assignment 1, Observing a Blog

I feel that the psychological space of blogs is a good way to observe someone. If I were to interact with someone in chat room, my actions could influence their behavior, and prevent me from getting a clear view of their personality.

I read “The Mountain World,” blog of writer and mountain climber, Dougald MacDonald. Since he writes almost every day and each of these entries receives many comments, I decided he must write a solid blog that would be good for the assignment.

Knowing he climbs mountains for a living, I assume he is not neurotic. I made this assessment by the content of his blog, however, not how it was written. Although, I didn’t sense any neuroticism in the way he wrote either.

I’d rate his extraversion on the low side, because his blogs seem to be more factual, about the measurements and features of mountains, than about personal feelings experienced during the climb.

The way he spoke about the issue of throwing rocks off of a mountain to clear the way, its justifications and consequences, and his experience with this task, made him seem a little more personal and open.

Since I did not interact with Dougald directly, it was tough to judge his agreeableness, but he listed many friends and colleagues that he climbs with. The fact that he seems to get along with all these people suggests that he is rather agreeable. His ability to carry on a non work-related conversation about inflation with a colleague speaks to how friendly and pleasant he is.

Dougald takes his work very seriously and tries to be as precise and successful as possible when he attacks a mountain. In terms of doing the right thing morally, he admitted to throwing rocks off of the cliffs even when he knows the dangers it poses, but since he does it only when necessary and seems to be careful about it, I’d say he has a strong moral conscience.

Looking back on my description of Dougald MacDonald, I had a limited number of cues on which to base my opinions. Thus, I imagined things to mean more than they really do. For instance, I took his mention of other climbers he works with to mean that he has many colleagues whom he climbs with regularly and are his friends and, therefore, he his a very agreeable guy. In actuality, however, this just means he works with other climbers. The way I took small cues to mean so much certainly puts my opinions in line with the predictions of the Hyperpersonal Model.

Meeting His Standards

Up until yesterday, I had not been in a public Internet chat room for at least 7 years. My days in the “AOL Kids Chat Zone” are well over, as I turned twenty just a few days ago. In honor of my recent exit from teen-hood, I decided to enter ICQ’s “20-somehting chat” where I met my target—Brandon. We exchanged our Age/Sex/Location in the main chat room (he was 24/M/FL) before he sent me a request to go into a private chat. After our hour and a half conversation, I developed a first impression of Brandon which encompassed various aspects of the five-factor model of personality.

Brandon seemed fairly conscientious, aiming to be thorough in all his questions, responding to my comments thoughtfully, and clarifying his emotions by frequently using emoticons. Throughout our conversation Brandon seemed to vary in agreeableness. He wasn’t pushy on what type of description I should give when he asked what I looked like and he seemed to be very laid back. However, Brandon wasn’t afraid to share his own opinion. After telling him I love sushi, he promptly responded with an “EW!” (blatantly expressing his divergent opinion). I did not notice any signs of neuroticism from Brandon. He seemed happy and calm throughout the conversation and even when I “x-ed” out our chat by mistake he immediately said it was no problem instead of acting angry or annoyed. I believe Brandon is extremely open to experience due to his appreciation for singing, dancing, and music as well as his curiosity in learning more about me. He even mentioned that I could ask him anything about his interests since he is “pretty open. “ The fact that Brandon seemed chat room savvy led me to believe that he is very extroverted, looking to speak to new individuals online on a regular basis. He was outgoing and friendly throughout our conversation further supporting this notion. Although I am not confident that I can accurately measure Brandon on all 5 traits, I would rank him very highly on openness and extroversion.

My impressions of Brandon are most in line with Walther’s Hyperpersonal Model. In support of the over-attribution process, our online interaction led me to form an exaggerated positive impression of confident-outgoing-friendly Brandon from the fairly small amount of information I learned about him. It is likely that Brandon formed an exaggerated impression of me as well. When speaking casually about relationships, Brandon shared that he has very high standards and therefore usually doesn’t go out with a girl again after the first date. In contrast, at the end of our Internet conversation, Brandon was hoping to chat in the future and expressed that I must have “met his standards” in order for him to talk to me for so long. The Hyperpersonal Model can be applied to this situation to explain that Brandon made judgments on a few cues (hints of wittiness, intelligence, openness—to name a few traits I might have portrayed) and exaggerated them. Since Brandon had less information about me than someone he dated face-to-face, he created an exaggerated positive impression of me throughout our conversation that apparently seemed to meet his standards. Selective self-presentation and behavioral confirmation were making us both seem different than we may be face-to-face, leading both of us to present ourselves in certain lights and behave in certain manners in order to fulfill each other’s expectations of one another.

CFO Perspective of Chatroom

I entered a random aim chatroom that consisted of a few other people, but only one of them was actively responding. The other people would occasionally respond, but were preoccupied with other synchronous chatrooms and activities. Random users were constantly entering and giving their ASL along with a “wanna chat?” or a “check out my pics!” followed by their website. However, most of them quickly left the chatroom as they saw there was not much conversation happening. The people in the chatroom seemed to already know each other and were in the midst their own conversation, so it was difficult for me to get any chatting in. Thus, I was forced to take the initiative to make my presence known so that people would address me. I began by asking questions to get myself up to speed on not only what they were talking about, but also to get a feel of the personalities and who I would probably be speaking with the most. Most of my initial impression formations came from their screen names, which I later verified if they were as their screen name described. For example, one user had “military” in his name and another had “azn”, so I assumed and later confirmed that one was from the military and the other was Asian. After they responded to my questions, they began asking me questions. Since they had disclosed information about themselves; in return, they expected the same from me. After this mutual exchange of personal information, chatting came naturally.

One person appeared to be the “leader” of the chatroom and was the one I conversed with mostly. He showed traits of extraversion and openness, while the less talkative people responded in a manner that did not affect the conversation much. Either they were preoccupied or they were more conscientious so they would reply with a general agreeable response.

My experience most closely reflected the CFO perspective in that from my point of view and the other party’s, our lack of cues in the CMC led to undeveloped impressions. Thus, we did not show much of our personality, which is the main reason why most of the people that entered the chatroom, left so quickly. The interpersonal probes, in this case, only consisted of age and occupation (username usually gave away gender), did not occur until much later when it was apparent that I was staying in the chatroom. In the beginning, I felt hostility from the rest of the group because they were already conversing amongst themselves and did not respond to any of my greetings. Due to the reduced social context cues they first received from me, they excluded me from the conversations, leading me to form a negative impression of the group. Over time, as the group began conversing with me more, my overall impression lightened and I saw the group as warm and friendly.

nvm ur fugly

I entered a chatroom (titled chatroom) and simply said “hello”. One person in the chatroom yelled at me for talking and as that happened one of the other people in the chatroom IMed me, so he became my target to observe. Our conversation was short and almost sweet, and I will summarize it for you now. He first asked if I was a girl. I answered honestly and said “yes”. Since he initiated the IM and asked the first question, he was showing several signs of extraversion. I then asked him if he understood why the person in the chat yelled at me, and he said he didn’t know, but also that he wouldn’t talk to that person. This made me feel that he was quite agreeable. So far I was finding this boy, nate00714 to be precise, to be very warm to me. I next asked him if he was a boy. He responded yes, and then gave me his ASL, and asked for mine. Offering information I didn’t asked for, showed me that he could also fall under the personality category of open. I gave him my ASL, again being honest, and while he seemed like a warm, nice guy, things were about to take a turn for the cold. He asked if I had any “pics,” and I responded by saying that my icon was a picture of myself. He said he couldn’t see the picture and asked me to send him some. I told him I didn’t want to send one, he asked why not, I said because I just wanted to chat, and then he said “nvm ur fugly.”

My target was clearly in control of the conversation and he clearly had an agenda that I could not fulfill. By the end of the conversation, he had fit into the stereotype in my mind of an online sexual being looking for his prey. There were just 14 lines to our IM, yet I was categorizing my target left and right. It appears that the Hyperpersonal Model was at work in my head.

I have no idea who this person is. He may or may not be a he. Especially after reading the article “The Strange Case of The Electronic Lover”, chat rooms make me very skeptical about what people say. Yet, I believed what he said and based on the little interaction we had, I had labeled him as a not too friendly boy looking for a girl to do cyber-sexual things with. This is all based on the small fact that he wanted to see my picture and his reaction when I wouldn’t give it to him. The over-attribution process was most definitely put into play when I analyzed this person. Although at the start of this conversation I was leaning to the positive extreme, this boys’ last remark made me feel completely negative about him. In just 14 lines being able to form such a strong negative feeling shows that my impression was quite in line with the Hyperpersonal Model.

Online Personality through Literati online scrabble game.

Ahoy all.

So I decided that it would be a really great idea to analyze the internet personalities of people that play scrabble. Now to be 100% accurate and politically correct, it wasn't Scrabble(R) that I was playing online, rather it was a variation offered by Yahoo! Games called Literati. Go to www.games.yahoo.com/lt if you're interested in knowing more about the game. It's the same concept as Scrabble but with different quantities of tiles and scores for each tile, which is a huge plus cause I really hate the Scrabble format thereof.

In any case, so in my experience, after several long games of Literati such that I couldn't bear to look at another Literati board, I have determined that there were a certain number of degrees in coldness or warmth in the opponent that I played. I am not going to bother numbering them, but they are in ascending order of warmth.

Before I go into my analysis though, it's important that I describe my own personality as a Literati player, because the plays that you make convey a certain amount of information as to who you are in the game. First of all, I must make it known that I'm quite seasoned as a Literati player. I've played both Literati and Scrabble a lot (but never with the aim of analyzing my opponent's personality). In the games I have played that were recorded, I have 4 wins and 1 loss (obviously, I don't play a lot of rated games; in my opinion it's extremely distracting). In my estimation, if I were on an account with few wins and several losses, then I would find it quite easy to settle into a game, seeing as my opponent would be more than willing to take on some fresh meat. In the other extreme, if it was made apparent that I had a lot of wins and few losses, it might be more difficult to find an opponent and that opponent would probably be more challenging than otherwise.

Additionally, when I play, I try to play defensively and conservatively unless going for a really big score. It's important to say this because someone that plays a different style than me will probably convey a different image to the opponent. I feel that my style conveys a great deal of coldness to my opponent because when I play, it seems quite apparent that my biggest aim is to either to score a lot (not that big of a problem) and not let my opponent score at all (which isn't nice really). I think if I played a different style, then I would have drawn out different reactions.

Now on to the analysis. As I said above, there are several degrees of warmness that I perceived in my opponent. Usually, I'm not the one to make the first comment (aha! guess my personality doesn't change that much on the internet), but if someone else speaks, I usually try to make a conversation. These are the tactics that I used to analyze their personalities. Here are my categories:

• First come the people that do not talk, do not communicate in any way whatsoever except for the fact that they play their tiles really quickly. And when they make pretty bad plays, it becomes apparent that they have no interest in playing a good game or meeting and communicating with another person. Instead, they're only interested in making their own plays, getting new tiles (hopefully just a bunch of really easy consonants), waiting for their opponent to make a play, and then making another word, reiterating the cycle.
  
  An even colder version of people in this group will take action if the game does not go on their own terms. Either they will leave on their own, boot their opponent (me) if they have the permission or make a verbal comment in the chat area.
  
  However, their gestures are primarily nonverbal, but most notably, overwhelmingly cold. An interesting correlation is that they often are not very skilled opponents and often, they are novices, or people who have only joined because they're interested in learning some new game (but probably not committing to it). They could also just be killing boredom.
  


• Next come the people that make minimal conversation. Sometimes they will offer a salutation at the beginning of the session, say "gg [good game]" at the end or even "vgg [very good game]" if it's particularly close or enjoyable. They may also comment on a particularly strong play, for example, if you use all your tiles for a bonus. In terms of gameplay, their style is more sophisticated than the previous category as well. They are much more likely to make hook words and take advantage of simple and often obscure two letter words(like sh, et, re, etc.) to hook on longer scoring words. They are also more inclined to make words that are simply extensions of others like taking the word "ever" and adding "for" to make "forever" or something like that. In essence, all that need be told is that these players are much more resourceful with the board and sophisticated the words that they make.
  
  What I find important to note about these people is that they are playing out of interest in the game and possibly in finding a good opponent. Their skills vary across the board, but often they can be quite good indicating that they are committed to the game regardless of the outcome (more or less). These people are considerably warmer than the previous group in that they are much more inviting and seem more personable in their online identities. Personally, I am quite satisfied when talking with my opponent about the game. Otherwise I feel like either a big bully at Literati when I do well or well, let's just say the alternative doesn't occur that much, shall we? -chuckles-
  


• Finally comes the group of people that converse a lot during the course of the game. In fact, sometimes you and your opponent talk so much that gameplay stops. Clearly, both my opponent and I are most interested in connecting interpersonally. Again, these people have skills that vary greatly, but they can (and usually are) be more skilled than people in the first category. Their gameplay is quite similar to the people in the previous category.
  

In fact, these three categories can be separated through two simple traits. The first would be people that are impertinent to the game and largely antisocial. The second and third groups are people that are largely committed to the game, but the third group just happens to be more social/extroverted than the second. It also happens that you (or I, rather) rarely come across people that are social and impertinent.

It should be obvious that my impressions are largely hyperpersonality theory at play. There is no way that I can know so much about these people. However, I keep my impressions largely speculative. There are always games where you play a full game and say nothing until your opponent surprises you with a "gg" or something like that. So it's impossible to be certain whether your opponent is really in group one, but usually my impressions are accurate given the minimal feedback that s/he offers. As is with most CFO situations, there aren't many things to judge upon. Avatars are used in the simplest implementation, all font is a basic 12-point times new roman font (boring) and other than that, there's nothing but gameplay to judge by. Is it accurate to guess that the more you have played, the better you can judge on gameplay? It would be interesting, but I'm sure someone has already looked for it. But once again, my impressions reflect hyperpersonality theory and not CFO.

Thus summarizes my findings in internet personalities through the Yahoo! Literati game. There are two main categories for analysis. The gameplay, and the chatting. In the future, I might consider analyzing their behavior by acting differently myself, like playing a simpler game or being the first one to greet the other player instead. Maybe. I'm sure that when I become the next great Freud or Nietzsche, you'll see my paper on Literati gameplay and remember this post.

Ashish.

Sunday Euchre

I hate losing. So naturally, as I sat in front of my computer after getting destroyed in online euchre ten to three, I was far from happy. The worst part was that I thought I had played flawlessly; it was my partner who made the wrong throws at the wrong time that had eventually cost us the game. While I am no stranger to losing, this was the first game of euchre I had played with the hidden agenda of observing my partner with the goal of forming an accurate impression.
I learned how to play euchre a long time ago, and have grown to appreciate the game for the combination of logic, luck, and social environment. Before entering the yahoo euchre room, I was doubtful that an online experience could compare with playing a face-to-face game with three of your closest friends. Despite the chat feature that allows each player to talk via CMC in a synchronous manner, things like the animated deal make games much less personal.
As the game progressed I began to develop very strong, mostly negative, opinions about my partner. She threw her cards quickly, which made her mistakes all the more aggravating because it appeared to me that she didn’t allot any time to digest the stage of the hand before choosing which card to throw. However, it did make it appear that my partner was high in conscientiousness. Her constant apologies and comments after tricks made me place her high on agreeableness scale while low on extraversion. It was difficult for me to guess how open she was to new experiences, but the mental image that I conjured of her after a twenty-minute online euchre game was one that led me to believe that she rarely left her house and substituted online euchre games for actual interactions at the face-to-face level. After a few short hands, I felt like I was no longer playing with a faceless avatar, but rather a 40 year old soft spoken divorcee who lives at home with her 2 cats (a cat was the icon she used).
After only a short time conversing via CMC, I had formed a strong, negative opinion of my subject. This could be for a lot of different reasons. Firstly, I am a very opinionated person, regardless of the communication medium. Secondly, the result of the game itself, rather than our brief conversation exchanges, could have perpetuated and in fact caused the incompetence that I attributed to my partner. However, even after taking these factors into account, I believe that the hyperpersonal model best explains my experience. While the breadth of my impression was much smaller than if I was playing with my partner in person, the intensity of my impressions were magnified and stereotyped. In this case, my impression was skewed to the negative side of the spectrum. The Cues filtered out approach is consistent with the cold communication and negative impression that I formed during my interaction. However, my experience contradicts this theory due to the fact that, despite the lack of cues, I formed a very strong opinion of my partner rather than a watered down one. Finally, I found that when making my impressions, I did not account for the deception on the part of my subject. However, due to the fact that I was engaging in impression management myself, I know that it is safe to assume that the information I was receiving through the chat could have undoubtedly led me to form an inaccurate impression.