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?