Predictions from the KRYSTAL Ball

Based on the theories and phenomenon we learned about this semester I think that although the technological world has changed so dramatically throughout the years, there are still several theories and phenomenon that will continue to apply in the future based on pure human nature. I do not think that people will stop trying to impress others by shaping how others perceive them, thus the impression management model will always hold. Because of people’s desire to be perceived favorably by others, I also think that people will continue choosing a medium that best matches their intentions and gives them the best opportunity for selective self-presentation (Media Richness Theory). They will also continue to choose an appealing virtual self-identity or avatar online whether or not it actually resembles their true selves. Additionally, I think that people will continue trying to immediately form judgments of others by quickly coming to conclusions and thus holding the Hyperpersonal model, CFO perspective, and SIDE theory constant.

On the other hand, I do think that many theories and phenomenon will change based on society’s push for using technology for nearly everything. I do think that with many organizations going global these days and with the costs associated with flying executives into a central location for meetings, technology use for business transactions will increase. I think that businesses will use technology, such as a live virtual environment, to try and keep business transactions similar to FtF interactions. Thus parts of the Media Richness Theory will change as the amount of rich information processed and the associated costs will determine the medium at which transactions may occur. The richest medium companies may end up using could be a live virtual environment to actually see their employees instead of FtF versus using a lean medium like a program similar to IBM’s Second Life where there are avatars. I assume that there will be a bigger push for virtual classroom technologies in the near future.

Overall, I enjoyed this course. However, I wished that we were able to relate the class theories to having the internet accessible in certain organizations based on how it affects worker productivity. I think it would have been beneficial if we applied the class theories to organizations by discussing options companies could take in restricting or allowing internet use by providing some example case studies. This correlation would have directly related to my ILR major and would have significantly increased my interest in the course. I also enjoyed learning how to blog as this was an online technology that I was very unfamiliar with.

11: Strange But True

Something that happened to a stranger a week or so ago is a good example of online-to-FTF interaction.

I was waiting for the TCAT bus at about 8:00PM last week when a girl approached me and asked if I had any money. I thought this was quite strange, and I asked her why she needed it. She began to tell me about an interaction that occurred between her and a student at Cornell. She told me that she was from Michigan and she met a kid on MySpace, and he sent her a bus ticket to come visit him at school. She went on to say that she met him at his frat, but he kicked her out when she refused to have sex with him. She needed money because now she didn't have a way back to Michigan, but unfortunately I was unable to help her, and directed her to the campus police.

This was a very unfortunate occurrence for the girl, but I think she could have used better judgment than to visit a complete stranger hundreds of miles away. She may have felt she knew him better than she did, and that is what led her to believe she could trust him. This goes along with Ramirez and Wang's view that switching from CMC to FTF can result in negative views and disappointment. The male at Cornell obviously had different expectations, and they were clearly violated. The girl's expectations were also violated, as she didn't expect the relationship to be sexual. Ramirez and Wang's ideas were upheld in this situation.

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11. O ... Crap

This semester I met a guy in one of my classes while trying to form a group for our final project. I had one person in my group already and just needed one more person. I got emails from a couple of dudes who still needed a partner for the project but I chose this one dude in particular because he was senior computer science major and the project was a CS project. I corresponded with him very briefly over the course of two days and then we met as a group to discuss the project. I must admit that I was slightly disappointed when I met him. The determining factor for me choosing him to be in my group was that he said he was a senior CS major. A former CS major myself, I know the rigorous workload that professors demand of their CS students. I figured that our project would be a piece of cake for him, a break from his real CS work. I thought he would be a “super-programmer”, someone we could just throw heavy problems at and who would be able to solve them with no problem. After or initial meeting and following work sessions, I realized that he was no more capable to write code and problem solve than anyone else in the group.

I think my reaction could best be described by SIDE. Even though I had never met him, I associated him with the highly intelligent CS majors I have met in the past. This made me build him up to be some sort of programming genius before I met him. I over attributed him as a overly intelligent guy since the only thing I knew about him was that he belonged to that group of smart CS majors.

This contradicts the long-term vs. short-term factor discussed in the Ramirez & Wang paper. The paper predicted that with a short time in CMC only a few expectations could be made so the corresponding FTF would be about “filling in the blanks”, while a long time in CMC would allow for many expectations to be made the corresponding FTF would be disappointing since many of the expectation would probably not be met. The only characteristic that interested me was his programming skills and when they weren’t above average I was disappointed. The theory did not take into account that in certain contexts only a few characteristics would be of importance and even the few expectations that were made could lead to a negative experience.

11 Take me down to disappointment city

For this assignment I decided to look back on an online relationship I formed before coming to Cornell. Like many students in the Facebook-era, I friended various students a few weeks before leaving for orientation that were coming to Cornell from my area, or who would be living in my dorm, or, as in this case, had very similar interests as myself. After we exchanged a few messages, poked each other, and wrote on walls, we had established somewhat of a relationship. And honestly, I liked him. I was really looking forward to this cool, funny guy that had a pretty good taste in movies. A few weeks after I came to Cornell and got settled in, we decided to meet up at Appel for dinner. I was amazed at how different a person can appear online compared to face-to-face. He wasn’t especially awkward or anything, he just had this quality about him that I absolutely can’t stand – he thought he was really funny when he wasn’t. He laughed at his own jokes, which we were constant, and bad at that. On top of that, the couple of favorite movies that we shared, was pretty much it. He hadn’t even heard of The Office, which is pretty much unforgivable in my book. Overall, I was disappointed with our face-to-face meeting based on our online interactions.

I would say that my experience makes a lot of sense in terms of the hyperpersonal model. During our computer-mediated conversations, visual and sound cues are eliminated; thus, I never had to undergo his excessive laughing at his own jokes. Also, he is able to spend more time choosing his words and could steer the conversation away from topics he didn’t know much about, which again affected my opinion of him. I only saw the best of him, resulting in an exaggerated opinion of him. I’m sure I came off similarly to him, and I don’t know if I was as much of a disappointment, but we haven’t really spoken since besides an awkward hello every now and then.

The timing of our relationship played a definite role in the modality switch. I would classify our relationship online as long-term, especially when compared to the brevity of our face-to-face relationship. This makes sense according to Ramirez and Wang’s research results. This study showed that “[p]articipants evaluated the social information more positively and uncertainty-reducing following short-term on-line associations but more negatively and uncertainty-provoking following long-term ones compared to remaining online.” In other words, I spent so long talking to this boy that I formed grossly positive opinions of him. I was almost bound for disappointment, but don’t worry, I haven’t turned my back on Facebook yet.

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11 Playing the Middle Man to Make People Happy

I had a hand to play in helping a relationship leave the CMC world into the FtF world. My friend, whom we shall call Jane, met my other friend, whom we shall call James, through instant messaging before meeting in real life. When Jane was sitting at my computer, I received an instant message from James. Jane thought she would be funny and started talking to James while I was distracted with other things. I returned to my computer to discover that I was now in a homosexual relationship with James. I told Jane to talk to him under her own identity. Afterwards, she Facebooked him and proceeded to communicate with him over her own instant messaging name. Eventually, over the summer break, I organized a get together for James and Jane. When they met, it seemed like a positive experience.

The uncertainty reduction theory predicted this outcome. According to the theory, more information prior to meeting the person FtF leads to more positive outcomes. James and Jane both had access to each other's information through Facebook. They saw their common friends, tagged pictures, and interests. This led to the establishment of common ground and expectations prior to meeting FtF. SIDE theory did not play a role on this occasion due to the lack of desire to keep individualizing characteristics hidden. Both Jane and James put up more personal (less group related) information on their Facebook profiles, maintaining openness in their individual images. The Hyperpersonal model also did not affect the transition of the relationship from online to real life. Since I knew both James and Jane, I corrected any exaggerated images one party might perceive of the other. For example, when Jane noted that James appeared tall in his pics, I explained that he was in fact relatively short. By moderating their impressions, the exaggerated preconception due to online interaction was avoided.

When switching from CMC to FtF, the expectations were not violated. This is contrary to Ramirez and Wang's proposal that the transition may cause unmet expectations that result in a negative outcome. The time between meeting FtF and meeting in CMC was about 7 months, a considerably long term relationship. According to Ramirez and Wang, this long term relationship would have led to a more negative outcome, but James and Jane both had a positive outcome.

Assignment 11: First GF

For this blog I've chosen to discuss my first girlfriend, whom I first interacted with online. It all started when I joined a community based around a fantasy series novel.

I was hanging out in the community's IRC channel and talking random internet small talk with a nice girl on there. After a while we figured out that not only were we both living in the same town, we were also going to the same high school. At this point we had been chatting via the fantasy community for a good 4 months or so and were starting to feel more and more comfortable with each other. From then on the relationship escalated into a more FtF prone relationship.

When the relationship switched from being primarily CMC to primarily FtF, there were not many problems. We met and started dating regularly. Our first FtF meeting was really not very awkward at all. We were well acquainted with one another at that point.

According to Walther’s Social Information Processing(SIP) Theory, the non-verbal cues that are lacking in CMC will be adapted into the verbal channel over time. I believe it is safe to say this is what happened here. As the months passed online, we developed the same types of impressions of one another as we would have FtF, it just happened over an extended period of time as explained in SIP. In fact, several of the ways in which we had used emoticons/actions within the IRC setting translated quite easily in a FtF setting. For example, in IRC using /me [action] makes it appear as though you are performing an action in the channel/query. We had a long tradition of greeting each other with /me tacklehuggleglomps and so on type of string within CMC and when we finally met FtF, it began with a form of “tacklehug.”

In conclusion, as predicted by SIP the switch between CMC and FtF that occurred with my first girlfriend had no adverse effects on our relationship. This is because of the adaptation of non-verbal cues over the verbal channel that occurred over our extended period of CMC. It is interesting to note, however, that at first we did not know that we were communicating with someone whom lived nearby. This could have caused for more use of selective self-presentation, or deception. However, there were no negative effects from this, and we had a very happy few years of high school after the initial FtF meeting.

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Assignment 11: From Facebook to Dating

An example of a relationship that started online and left virtuality is the story of my friend we will call Nancy who began interacting with a person we will call John prior to transferring to Cornell. As I described in Assignment #5, before I transferred, I too joined a facebook group entitled “2005 transfers.” The group was a way to see who else would be living in the transfer center, where people were transferring from, etc. John was also a person transferring to Cornell and their interaction started with the traditional facebook friend request, then led to instant messaging. When John and Nancy arrived at Cornell, they were friends for a few weeks and then started dating.

Nancy and John’s interaction supports Berger and Calabrese’s Uncertainty Reduction Theory. Berger and Calabrese predict a positive outcome for leaving virtuality. According to them, the more information that is disclosed, the greater liking and intimacy. This is true in the case of Nancy and John. Nancy explained to me that when she first talked to John online she thought that he was a nice person but never thought that they would end up dating once arriving at school. As she got to know him better and John disclosed more, she realized that they share a lot in common and once meeting face to face their friendship strengthened and later turned into dating. Clearly their progression shows that as they disclosed more about one another and got to know each other better, attraction and intimacy increased.

Nancy and John’s interaction fits with the factors discussed in the Ramirez & Wang’s paper. While Nancy and John began instant messaging at the end of the summer, their CMC communication would be considered short term. When meeting face to face, Nancy’s expectations were violated in a positive way. Talking to John online she thought he was nice and would be a good friend but thought that their interests did not align to the point that she would consider dating him. When they met face to face, she realized that they both had a very sarcastic and funny sense of humor that did not shine through online. Interacting face to face, she was able to find out more details about John’s life and realized there was more to John than visible through their CMC communication.

11 cmc leads down a 2 year road

My good buddy in high school started going out with a girl and the relationship started online. It's a pretty convoluted story, but basically the girl was going out with another guy in our high school, and she had seen my buddy from afar, and thought he was "adorable." Those are her words, not mine, and we still give my buddy crap for it to this day. Either way, when she and her then boyfriend broke up, she got my buddy's aim screenname and initiated a relationship that way. There had never been any face to face interaction before, and he actually had no idea who she was before they started interacting on aim. They kept up this aim interaction for a little over a month, and then finally at the beginning of the summer they decided to meet up. In their online interactions they had exchanged pictures of each other (these were the pre-facebook days)and gotten to know each other pretty well, mostly through talking about mutual friends and music. I remember him telling me that when he talked to the girl online, she seemed very funny and sarcastic, and he was also shocked at how she would not use typical short hand IM slang and spelling like wut up or lol, but instead made a point of typing very eloquently. When they met in person, she obviously had a very extensive vocabulary, and was a very smart girl, but didn't come off as pompous and full of herself as he thought she would. Apparently, they hit it off great because they ended up dating for 2 years.

I think this goes against Ramirez and Wang's idea that switching from cmc to ftf can cause negative views of a person because expectations were violated. In this case, the long term interaction was not evaluated negatively, and actually a ftf meeting increased the level of attraction because she was not as pompous as he thought she would be. From everything I've heard, there was little awkwardness even from the beginning. I think this falls further in line with the Uncertainty Reduction Theory from Berger and Calabrese. When they interacted online, they disclosed enough information, and this increased the level of intimacy, which led to an increased level of attraction. The information and high degree of self disclosure online led to a positive interaction and high self disclosure in face to face. It also probably helped that there was not a high level of deception in their photos.

11: Getting a Friendship Out of CMC

During my high school years, I played many computer games with my friends. One of the games was Starcraft, which I played almost every day. At one point, my high school friend introduced me to someone, Pat, who she met through Starcraft. When I first talked to Pat online, we found that we shared a lot in common, such as having similar cultural backgrounds and similar music tastes, and we started to talk to each other online everyday. After a several months, we talked about meeting in person. Then about a year after we first talked online, we decided to move our relationship offline and meet FtF. At first, it felt slightly awkward but within minutes that we started talking to each other, we felt it was the same as talking online.

Our long-term CMC association contradicts Ramirez and Wang’s claim that expectations of someone can be violated by switching from a CMC to FtF setting, causing a negative view of the person. They claim that a long-term association via CMC will be “(a) evaluated more negatively and (b) uncertainty-provoking relative to interacting via CMC.” Although when we first met, it might have felt quite awkward, we were able to pass that feeling when we started to talk to each other. I realized he was the same FtF as he was online and he felt the same way about meeting me. Our awkwardness quickly disappeared and we felt comfortable around each other. I found that meeting in person just verified my impression of Pat that I developed from talking to him online. I did not develop any negative view of him at all, contrary to the results of Ramirez and Wang. In addition, I did not find it hard to move our friendship offline. When we talked online, we did not have a problem self-disclosing information about one another and we grew very comfortable with each other.

Our relationship supports Berger & Calabrese’s Uncertainty Reduction Theory. It predicts a positive outcome when relationships leave virtuality. Pat and I self-disclosed a lot about ourselves online, which led to greater intimacy in our friendship. We developed a strong social attraction with each another and it allowed us to have less uncertainty when we finally met in person. We were able to remove any doubts we may have had about each other by meeting in person. Also, we had visual cues FtF to learn more about how we act and behave.

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11. I don't know who woulda thought of it, but ultimate frisbee and SIP kinda go together

New Note 10

Ahoy.

For this post, I think I'll talk about a friend of mine that I first talked to while I was a senior in high school looking for colleges to apply to. My friend referred me to a friend on the ultimate frisbee team at Tufts because I was curious about what it was like for them. Our communication at first was entirely through email. I made the first contact, sending him a message where I basically introduced myself, telling him about how things were going in high school and what ultimate was like at our school.

At this point, I was very self-conscious of myself and everything I was saying because after all, I was talking to someone 4 years ahead of my in life and I was supposed to be seen as a delusional, overenthusiastic kid in high school at the budding apex of his life where he gets to see what college is really (supposedly) like.

Definitely felt the hyperpersonal theory kicking in, with some potential behavioral confirmation too. I immediately made a bunch of judgemental prejudices about myself and the person that I was talking too, long before I would even receive a reply from him. I thought I was going to be perceived as a weird little kid with no real understanding of what college was like, I was talking to a senior, ripe with almost 4 years of experience at the college level. Contrary to behavioral confirmation, I fought against this and tried to sound as down-to-earth and level-headed as I could.

When he replied, I learned that he was really chill and nonjudgmental. A lot of the perceptions that I feared and tried to fight against beforehand seemed silly at that point. I think this could be considered as a fast-paced SIP reaction. After communicating together a few times, I learned that this other kid wasn't as negative as I thought he could be (CFO too, almost). Our relationship grew more relaxed and I quickly forgot all those stupid predictions that I made. I started acting a little more naturally because I wasn't that worried anymore. This is similar to SIP theory in a way, because I felt coldness towards him at first and then this coldness eventually thawed, or defrosted or something.

When we finally met, our communication through email definitely proved to make things a little closer. We were brought together by ultimate and knowing a little bit about each other beforehand didn't hurt either. We tossed a few times with each other and it was great. I suppose this is a continuation of SIP theory because it was yet another occasion of communicating with each other, this time face to face, and every successive time, it grew friendlier and friendlier. Though we never met to talk too much, our relationship definitely evolved through phases of hyperpersonal and SIP effects.

11: eHarmony and URT

My neighbor, David, and his wife, Amanda, are a good example of a relationship that started online and then left virtual reality. After David got divorced he decided to move to New Jersey, in the house next to mine. He was 32 years old at this time and wanted to start a new life. However, with his new job, he did not have time to meet other women so he decided to join eHarmony.com. After months of searching for the perfect someone, he finally found Amanda’s profile and decided to contact her. They communicated via email for about 2 weeks and then started IM chatting regularly for another 4 weeks. After 6 weeks of this CMC communication, they both decided to meet each other and go on a real date. David was a little hesitant at first since Amanda was a mother of three children, but because he had made such a good connection with her, David decided to stay with her. Finally, after two good years of dating, they decided to take the plunge and marry each other. It has been another two years since they have been married and the couple is happy as ever. They were even asked by eHarmony to be on one of their commercials.

The story of David and Amanda leaving virtuality and becoming closer in reality fits well with Berger and Calabrese’s (1975) Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT). URT predicts that “the uncertainty reduction process leads to affinity or attraction.” Therefore, when couples who meet online and then meet in reality disclose more information about each other, they will show greater liking and intimacy. In David and Amanda’s case, when they both able to see each other and find out more about themselves, they started liking each other more and were able to stay together for a long time. For example, when Amanda told David about her three kids online he was a little scared. However, after meeting Amanda and her kids in person, he was more comfortable and started liking Amanda more. He had always wanted to be a father and Amanda’s kids were a perfect start. Therefore, the more information disclosed by David and Amanda in reality, they were able to understand each other more and were able to form a tight bond.

David and Amanda’s relationship’s positive outcome after leaving virtual reality truly exemplified the URT and the advantage of CMC technology.

Assignment 11

I too was once a pre-frosh checking out the “Class Of 2009” discussion board. However, I was late jumping on that bandwagon so the interactions that I had with a few of the other ‘09-ers could only be categorized as short term. I chatted on the discussion board and briefly in a few instant messenger conversations with some of the students coming from my area. Our conversations were mostly about basic personal information and interests and how excited or nervous we were about starting school. When I met the people I had talked to, most were by coincidence and not a planned meeting. This was actually very positive and the CMC interactions served as an ice breaker and a sort of pre-formed bond that made the face to face encounter more exciting and positive than it may have otherwise been. Being that the CMC interactions that I had with these people were short term, I did not have as much time to build up expectations or get to know them on a deeper level that would possibly have over a longer period of time. I didn’t feel like there was a lot riding on the first meeting and the coincidence factor helped because there was not time to be nervous or think about what they might be like or form expectations.

My experience fit with the factors Ramirez and Wang discussed. The short term contact I had with these students via CMC preceding our face to face interaction lead to a positive evaluation. Most interactions proved to have violated expectations that, in accordance with Ramirez and Wang’s results, were positive violations. For example, one of these students, who is still a good friend, was very nice when we talked online and after our CMC encounter I expected her to be very nice but not much more in person. My expectations of her being a relatively “vanilla” person were violated, in a positive way, when I met her face to face and found that she was extremely funny and animated, a trait that did not translate in CMC. Meeting these students I was able to form reliable impressions based on a greater number of verbal and non verbal cues and make evaluations not tainted by idealized or over attributed expectations. Some of those face to face interactions were so positive that they lead to many subsequent meetings and happily, lasting friendships.

11. This Will Be, An Everlasting Love...in a crack house

Everyone knows the risks with online dating. They know that people can lie and turn out to be the complete opposite of what they expected them to be, but still the hopes that their soul mate is online looking for them is too tempting to turn down. So what happens when you do meet that person that turns out to be that person with a couple of loose screws that everyone warns you about meeting online? Just ask Kman.

Kman saw a woman’s profile and corresponded with her on the phone and Internet for weeks until they finally set a date. Regardless of the danger signs, which now seem obvious to him, like her avoidance of her divorce, how she always sounded drunk on the phone, and her insistence on him spending the night before they even went out, he decided to give her a chance. When he showed up for his date, she, her ten-year-old son, her mom, and her husband’s brother promptly greeted him. But wait, it gets better. They then proceeded to have a photo shoot where everyone got a chance to get a picture with him. Needless to say, the rest of the night did not get any better, after he learned that, yes, she was still married, but her husband was in jail for robbing a bank, twice, for crack money. Lets just say that the date ended early while she made one last attempted by appealing to his… manhood.

Kman should’ve have stuck by the three strikes your out rule. I want to look at the warning signs Kman noticed in relation to some theories. First, the Social Presence Theory and Reduced Social Context theories together state that CMC will lead to impoverished, often negative impression formation. In this case, the limited cues Kman picked up on like how she always sounded drunk and wanted to get to know each other at a tavern turned out to be red flags after all. These were factors that she did not do a good job at hiding from him which leads me to the Hyperpersonal Theory which states that we rate people based on fewer characteristics (breadth) with more intensity. When they finally left the virtual world, these characteristics and warnings were loud and clear. Even though these theories say that we get limited cues in CMC, Kman’s nightmare definitely proved that these limited cues can be all you need to throw someone in the loony bin.


Read his story for a good laugh: http://onlinedatingnightmares.com/datingstories/index.php?PHPSESSID=ba10e45498439976f2c0956690f86c4a&topic=4.0

Assignment 11: FtF Letdown

For this assignment I decided to write about an online relationship that left virtuality that was in the media. I found a website that was all about stories from people who had tried starting a relationship online; some worked out and some did not. http://www.internetdatingstories.com/stories/index.php?id=128&category=3 is the website.

According to Anne, who posted the story, the man she met online contacted her by e-mail, and after a few exchanges they began talking on AIM and the phone, where they clicked, so they arranged to meet. When the man came to pick up Anne, he sped and turned up his ska music way too loud to avoid conversation. The only thing he did say was that ska was the only kind of music that mattered, even though Anne was a music major and he told her that he loved Vivaldi and classic rock as well. The rest of the date when downhill, as he was very rude, which came as a shock to Anne since he spoke so eloquently before they met.

Anne’s experience is similar to what would be predicted by the hyperpersonal model. Based on the eloquent emails this man sent to her and his supposed love of Vivaldi, she probably thought he was very sophisticated and shared her passion for music. When she met him, however, this did not prove to be the case and he turned out to be rude only liked bad music. Although in Anne’s story she didn’t give the exact amount of time they had been talking before meeting FtF, I got the impression that it was in the short-term. For this reason, she was only a little disappointed that this man turned out to be a jerk; she was not heartbroken or anything, and she came to the smart conclusion, "if it seems to good to be true...it probably is."

11 JDate

The only relationship that I personally know of that began online and then eventually met in person (i.e., the relationship left virtuality) is that of my cousin and her husband. My cousin and her husband first communicated online through JDate. JDate is the most popular online Jewish dating community, and to join JDate, all one has to do is post a profile. Once one has a profile, one has the ability to share photos, email, chat, and IM with thousands of single Jews. After communicated through JDate for a week, my cousin and her future husband left the virtual world and met in real life. A year and a half later, they got married and have been married for two years.

In comparing my cousin’s and her husband’s relationship to theories we have studied in class, we find that this relationship is inconsistent with some theories and inconsistent with others. For example, their relationship is inconsistent with the Hyperpersonal Theory. There are five distinct parts of the Hyperpersonal Theory: over-attribution process, developmental aspect, selective self-presentation, re-allocation of cognitive resources, and behavioral confirmation. After an initial interaction, there is a reduction in the breadth (rate a CMC partner on fewer characteristics), but there is an increase in intensity (more intense/exaggerated ratings of the CMC partner). We can more directly see how the Hyperpersonal Theory is inconsistent with my cousin’s and her husband’s relationship. For example, the hyperpersonal model predicts negative outcomes for leaving virtuality (for my cousin this is untrue). The Hyperpersonal Theory states that CMC factors lead to inflated perceptions of partners (over-attribution). Also, the hyperpersonal model state that since one is online, the only information of the other person is what that person chooses to tell the other person, which are only positive traits (selective self-presentation). Connecting the above statements, one over-attributes the only (good) characteristics one knows of the other person. When the two people meet in real life, both parties are disappointed at what the other person is really like. In conclusion, this is a negative outcome. My cousin’s and her husband’s relationship is completely inconsistent with the Hyperpersonal Theory because neither were disappointed when they met in real life and eventually married.

Modality switch, or a shift from online communication to FtF interaction, reveals in some instances relationship-enhancing and in other instances relationship-dampening. In my cousin’s relationship, the modality switch lead to a relationship-enhancing situation.

Ramirez and Wang make the hypothesis: modality switch following a long-term association via CMC will provide social information that will be (a) evaluated more negatively and (b) uncertainty-provoking relative to interaction via CMC. Ramirez and Wang also make the hypothesis: modality switch following a short-term association via CMC will provide social information that will be (a) evaluated more positively and (b) uncertainty-reducing than interaction via CMC. These hypotheses held true when tested. These hypotheses also held true in my cousin’s and her husband’s relationship. They only communicated online for a week before they actually met. Their short-term association via CMC led to a modality switch that was relationship-enhancing.

11: Who's Ani Difranco?

Like many incoming freshman, my friend “Kate” set up her Facebook account the day she accepted to Cornell in December. So excited about her upcoming year, Kate instantly started to search other Cornellians. After carefully reading someone’s profile, she would choose to friend them if they seemed “cool” and enjoyed some of the same things she liked. One of the freshman guys she friended, “Chris,” really caught her eye based on the attractiveness of his profile picture, his favorite music and movies, and that he was on the football team. A few days after Chris accepted her friendship, he apparently found her to be quite interesting too because he instant messaged Kate the next time she was on AIM. Kate did not tell me about her conversations until May when she explained how awesome Facebook was and how she was so excited to meet Chris. After many months of chatting online and with move-in day quickly approaching, Chris and Kate decided to meet when they both got to campus. They exchanged cell phone numbers online but left their interactions strictly text-based when they were figuring out a time and place to meet. They finally met FtF for (a very short) dinner in Appel before classes started. This was the last time Kate would ever meet up with Chris as she was absolutely shocked when physical reality was brought into their relationship. He looked nothing like his attractive Facebook picture and could not carry on a conversation about their shared favorite music (i.e. Ani Difranco).

As Kate and Chris were in contact for about eight months, they had plenty of time to get to know each other past what was listed in their Facebook profiles. With their consistent contacting and increased self-disclosure, Kate began to feel very attracted to Chris. This example most closely aligns with Berger and Calabrese’s Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT) because with the more information she learned about Chris, the more she liked him. Naturally, she was expecting a positive outcome for her FtF meeting after leaving virtuality (as URT predicts) but was unfortunately let down. Based on the amount of information they exchanged about Ani Difranco online and how little Chris was actually able to talk about it in person led Kate to believe that he used search engines to his advantage. Thus, Kate fell victim to the costs of meeting and interacting with a random person online. According to Ramirez and Wang, “The combination of the increased control over message design provided by CMC, opportunity for selective self-presentation, and receiver susceptibility for overattributing characteristics maximize the likelihood of developing heightened expectations and idealized impressions over time.”

Since that one dinner-date freshman year, Kate (now a junior) has been able to successfully avoid Chris in public but she occasionally sees him around campus or at parties.

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11 Freshman FtF

The obvious choice for a discussion on modality-switching in interactions and long- and short-term assessments is that of the interaction with one’s freshman-year roommate before actually arriving on campus. So that’s what I did. When I received my roommate assignment in the mail over two years ago, the first thing I did was look up Andrew on Facebook and friend him, without any hesitation. As it turned out, he wasn’t very big on the whole Facebook phenomenon and so our CMC interaction was somewhat limited, but we did talk enough for me to generate what I felt was an appropriate evaluation of Andrew as a person.

I would estimate that Andrew and I spent about two months prior to freshman year interacting sparsely in the CMC environments of Facebook and, even rarer, instant messaging. Based on this interaction, I had an idea of Andrew as a funny, sarcastic, and for the most part quiet person with the traditional Bostonian passion for the Red Sox. When we finally got to school and had a chance to really get to know each other in person, it turned out that my assessment had been pretty on target, with a few exceptions. He was in fact funny and sarcastic, and he did indeed have Red Sox fever, but what I got completely wrong was how he functioned in a social setting. He was very outgoing, and, despite his occasionally-off sense of humor, made friends very easily. Always eager to strike up a conversation about even the most inane of topics, he was very social and not at all quiet and shy like I had interpreted from our interactions in CMC.

I feel that my assessment’s inaccuracy represents a similar effect to what Ramirez & Wang found. Specifically, it fits with their finding that short-term online associations, when switched to the FtF modality, lead to a more positive evaluation of the social information available. Where before I found my future roommate quiet and somewhat apprehensive/apathetic in a CMC environment, I after found him to be outgoing and energetic, a much more positive evaluation of the social information I had to work with. My uncertainty about what it would be like to live with Andrew was also reduced as per Ramirez & Wang because I had much more reliable information about his personality and behavior from FtF interactions, rather than CMC ones.

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11: Hyper Expectations

Way back in September, for my blog post on McKenna’s relationship factors and Wallace’s attraction factors, I detailed an online relationship with a girl named “Jane”. In my first freshman semester at Cornell, we encountered each other through Facebook (similar music/movie tastes) and started a prolonged (two month long) series of instant-message conversations without ever meeting each other. When we finally had our first FtF encounter, a “date” which consisted of dinner and movie, the experience was pretty much quiet, subdued, and awkward. In my September 25^th blog entry, I attributed this to lack of a romantic “spark” and—to quote my former self—“The Hyperpersonal aspect of each others lives was removed and I guess we just seemed less interesting to one another”. As it turns out, this relationship certainly did follow Walther’s Hyperpersonal model, and additionally, as it was a long-term relationship (two months is longer than Ramirez & Wang’s definition as a period of four-weeks), a disappointment effect was certainly carried out.

The Hyperpersonal element of the relationship existed from the beginning. By Jane’s decision to contact me based on my Facebook profile, she was judging me solely on limited CMC cues—in particular, my carefully selected “Favorite Movies” and “Favorite Music”. This limited perception based on conventional signals which I could potentially embellish and lie about (but I would never, of course…) must have led to an exaggerated, positive view of me. After initial IM contact, I must admit I was guilty of the same Hyperpersonal view. Seeing Jane’s relatable interests and (selectively self-chosen) attractive profile picture—this was before the days of photos on Facebook—I immediately had incentive to reciprocate IM contact.

As we continued to exchange IMs, Hyperpersonal effects increased as we got along very well; disclosing more and more about ourselves. However, as stated above, things were certainly different when we left virtuality. There was no obvious disappointment; but it just seemed that we were not as compatible or as interesting as we were when we chatted through IM. Obviously, I can only provide my side of the story, but Jane was much quieter and she seemed to act in a much more inhibited manner than that of her online self and I’m sure I did not live up to expectations either—via IM, we all have time to be witty and calculating in our interaction. Also, because we were chatting for so long without seeing each other FtF, our expectations were likely too high and so the disappointment factor was increased—just as Ramirez & Wang predicted via their third hypothesis.

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11: From Facebook to Face-to-Face

I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that about 2 ½ years ago, I was one of the anxious Cornell pre-frosh who tried to make some new friends a little early on—online that is. In one particular instance, I decided to send a guy “Joe” a Facebook message since it seemed like we had very similar taste in music based on our profiles. Through ongoing messages we spoke about the Dave Matthews Band concerts that we were planning on attending that summer and other music related topics. Although we planned on meeting up at Cornell, our relationship never ended up leaving virtuality until 8 months later—the day before I left to go home for the summer. I went to go say goodbye to a friend, and sitting in her room was a guy that looked strangely familiar. Sure enough, I was introduced to Joe “from the football team.” Although it was clear that we both recognized each other, we both pretended like we never shared our online interactions. In a weird way, I was disappointed by our face-to-face encounter since my online perception of Joe was that he was more interested in music than sports and meanwhile my friend chose to classify him as a football player.

Walther’s (1997) Hyperpersonal Model could be applied to my situation in order to explain why I had a negative face-to-face experience after leaving the virtual world. The Hyperpersonal Model explains how certain aspects of CMC lead us to form exaggerated perceptions of those who we interact with. Within this model, selective self-representation refers to the idea that in CMC individuals are in control over what characteristics they make available to others. Joe’s “favorite music” took up most of his profile, leading me to believe that he had a passion for music and it was one of the main things that defined him as a person. He chose to leave out other aspects of himself, such as his passion for football and his status as a member of a varsity team at Cornell. Furthermore, the over-attribution process refers to the idea that in CMC individuals may form an exaggerated impression of others based on the few things they know about the other individual. The music that Joe listed on his profile and the Facebook groups he decided to join was what lead me to form my impression of Joe: a laid back, friendly, concert enthusiast.

Online, Joe and I were able to carefully choose what we wanted to say to one another and spoke about the music we knew we were both interested in. However, face-to-face we had little to say to one another as two Cornell students who never crossed paths throughout our whole freshman year—especially since the Joe I had anticipated was hidden behind a football jersey.

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#11: How I met your mother

One relationship I can recall that started online and left virtuality is about a friend’s youth pastor. This youth pastor was very into the blogging site xanga.com and would like any another person, click on blogs of friends of friends who commented on each other’s posts. Somewhere down the line he came across his future wife’s xanga site (though he did not know it at the time). He thought her entries were very well written, amusing, and interesting. The youth pastor decided to comment on her post and that was the start of their online relationship. They would frequently read each other’s posts and comment. As time went on, they also started to use other types of CMC such as email and AIM which have more cues. I am not sure how long this online relationship lasted, but it was a significant amount of time. They finally decided to meet FTF after they felt that they had gotten to know each other fairly well. When they met in person, they got along very well and were attracted to each other. Long story short, they ended up getting married and are as of now, living happily ever after.

For this story, I would say that the Uncertainty Reduction Theory applies well. The URT states that the uncertainty reduction process leads to affinity or attraction and predicts positive outcome for leaving virtuality. I do not think there can be a dispute that getting married to a person you met online and ended up marrying that person is not a positive outcome. The couple definitely had plenty of time to exchange information as well as interact through chatting and emails which led to greater intimacy with one another through CMC. When they finally did meet, they felt the attraction just by the sheer fact that they knew so much about each other. They spent a lot of “time” with one another online as well as got to know how the other thought by reading each other’s xanga posts which are essentially journal entries. Because of this, I also believe that SIP could be applied to this relationship though the findings may suggest that SIP is not a good predictor of leaving virtuality. Nevertheless in the above case, SIP did in fact accurately predict that there would be a positive outcome from the online relationship that this married couple had.

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Assignment #11: From MySpace to Marriage

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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Assignment 11: Rare Success

My friend, “Jane,” started talking to someone she met on myspace based on her group associations and interests. After over a year of talking through CMC, Jane finally met her myspace friend FtF. They spoke everyday online and were able to successfully move their relationship offline. Contrary to the results discussed in Ramirez & Wang, their long-term association via CMC did not produce uncertainty nor did it negatively affect their relationship when they moved to FtF interaction.

One reason their modality switch did not follow Ramirez & Wang’s results is due to what the article refers to as the “turning point,” the threshold at which the expectancy violations produced are evaluated negatively or positively when meeting FtF. This point has the potential to alter the future path (continuance or end) of the relationship. Initially, Jane said that the first meeting was slightly awkward, but once they began talking, they realized that they were exactly as they had portrayed themselves to be in CMC, so conversing became much more relaxed and Jane found her partner to be just as interesting offline as she was online. Their modality switch was a success because, as noted in Ramirez & Wang, when they met FtF, the violations that were congruent with their past information reduced uncertainty between them.

After a long enough period of time of self-disclosure online, they had formed a close relationship so moving their relationship to FtF did not impact the expectancies of each other. Also, Ramirez & Wang defined their long-term association to be six weeks, while Jane had spoken to her partner for over a year. Jane notes that she doesn’t think it would have made a difference whether they spoke for three months or six months online before meeting because from their long-term associations, the impression formation of each other was not going to vary much.

Since her myspace friend specified in group characteristics in her profile, this led Jane to have a strong social attraction towards her, but she only knew her based on the shared interests they discussed online, so when they met FtF, the uncertainty about her myspace friend’s personality was reduced. Thus, as Jane discovered other similarities in her friend’s humor, mannerisms, behavior, etc., she liked her more. This confirms the positive outcome for leaving virtuality stated in the Uncertainty Reduction Theory, where the uncertainty reduction process leads to an affinity or attraction.

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