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)
2 comments:
I think this is a very interesting post. I was surprised that the person you encountered privately messaged you after leaving the chatroom to strike up a conversation. I wanted to point out, or ask you if Hisham's comment about liking "open-minded" women effect how you conversed with him after that statement in any way? Even if not intentionally, maybe subconsciously you became more open-minded with Hisham because he viewed you in that light, as we discussed in class about behavioral confirmation. I just that was an interesting aspect of your encounter that I wanted to point out.
Also, I definitely noticed the over-attribution process you had while conversing with Hisham. It seemed as though because he was very forward and somewhat aggressive with initiating the conversation and willing to share a lot of his own information, that you took that characteristic about Hisham, and generalized that he is extroverted.
Overall I thought you did a great job with your encounter and it was very interesting to read.
I found your experience with Hishman to be very interesting and the classification of your interaction as hyperpersonal to be completely accurate. I think your experience is a great example of many of the elements we discussed in class about the hyperpersonal model. Reading your post I too started to form an impression, based on the positive traits you listed, that Hishman was a nice guy. I think it would be interesting to see if you formed the same impression of Hisham if you had another conversation with him. I wonder if the lack of verbal cues caused you to form an exaggerated postive impression or in face he truly is an open, extrovert.
Post a Comment