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.