Do our online impressions form as a result of who we say we are or what others interpret?

Ahoy all.

So this weekend I spend a good deal of time on IRC talking to various people seeking to answer an interesting question. When we are conversing with others on the internet, do their impressions form when we tell them who we are? Or are others sharper than that and able to detect whether we are masking our identity? For the purpose of this experiment, I decided not to change anything about the way I interact with others, because if I did act differently, then I would be lacking a good control to compare my results against. Instead, all I did was mention (casually) that I was male sometimes and female others. Other than that, I carried the conversation as I normally would speak to an absolute stranger that I had never met before. I generally carried out my conversations for about 20-25 minutes so we would have enough time to get to know each other while still giving myself a chance to speak with roughly 15 different people, nearly evenly splitting the number of times I said I was male and female. I first spoke to about 4 people telling them that I was a male so I would have something to compare my responses against. Then I spoke to about 4 as female, then 2 more as male so I could make new observations, and finally about 5 more as female. Also, I spoke to males only just to preserve the variables that were introduced.

My results were quite interesting. In some cases, I found that my answer didn't make much of a difference to the people that I was talking with. In the majority of cases when I said that I was male, there was nothing really extraordinary that I observed. Comparatively speaking, the other people were sometimes less interested unless we found some common ground to talk about like Linux or something like that. Other hot topics included mostly academic topics like careers, majors and other things of that nature. I tried dipping into sports a big, but didn't get very much a response at all.

On the other hand, when I mentioned that I was female, I had a small variety of responses. The majority of who I mentioned I was female to tried to hit on me. Their passes were varied in degree from slight to moderate, but for the most part, it wasn't too heavy. Most of the people I spoke to seemed to be the shy with their comments, making comments that were more sexually immature than sexually imposing. I considered it harmless, especially since I knew that they probably wouldn't have mentioned it if I didn't say I was female. But more significantly, and more generally, all the people I spoke to when I said I was female seemed to be more interested in talking. Even if they didn't make a noticeably flirtatious comment, they seemed to be testing the water, intrigued as to why a female would initiate a conversation with them, possibly hopeful for some future gratification or something of the nature. This is in contrast to the responses as I was male, when my responses were much more terse and succinct. Of course, there were a few that were either so subtle or not responsive at all that it didn't seem to make a difference as to what sex I introduced myself to them as. These few generally seemed more shy and introverted, and less likely to produce a response. Their responses were equally terse as the ones I received when I said I was male.

As to whether they could tell whether I was male or female, some seemed to lose interest in talking to me when I didn't respond to their innuendos. Nobody really questioned whether I really was female (or male for that matter, thankfully), but they did seem to think that I wasn't exactly a conventional female that regularly went around in the IRC realm. The fact of the matter is that when you act the same way whether it's as a male or female, I think that it can still be difficult for whoever you're talking to to be really sure which you are. Of course, if you make openly explicit comments that say whether you're male or female, (regardless of which you really are), then there will obviously be no doubt as to your identity. These are indicated by my results. When you simply state which sex you are, it seems that you more seem to change your partner's impression of you, but it is not very easy for them to tell unless you tell them. This strongly supports the hyperpersonality theory where the reactions are largely based on little information, and I gave them extremely little to work with. In the majority of my conversations, I talked of little more than my location and career. Their extreme responses are definitely caused by the fact that I said I was male or female and that I am in college (which was basically implied when I spoke of my school-related affairs).

Interesting results - I think in future attempts, I might want to divulge more about myself to see how much I have to say when my results start to diverge.

Until later.

ashish
(I don't like capitalizing my name)