AYO Technology- Predicting the Future

"Baby it's a new age, you're like my new craze..."

Considering the fact that the Internet is changing at such a rapid pace, with the heightened use of richer mediums of CMC and the reconstruction of social norms, the future of Psychology of Social Computing may reflect some of these changes. However, despite the rapid pace at which social computing is changing, theories such as O'Sullivan's notion of Impression Management, will still remain relevant. As richer mediums are explored to enhance the social networking experience, it is apparent, that the need to manage our impressions will still remain. Albeit, with the influx of webcams in conjunction with programs such as SKYPE complete reinvention may not be as easy of an option.

In addition, the notion of internet "addiction" will inevitably remain with the coming years. While, new empirical evidence may arise that may attempt to discredit the theory, the truth of the matter is, considering the wide spread cases where internet "addition" has and continues to leave its mark, such does not seem very likely. It is my belief that as the Internet continues to evolve, new avenues of "addiction" will begin to rear their ugly head. For example, take "Facebook mania". I bet that no one would have thought this seemingly innocent website would be the source of procrastination and addiction to college students. However, in less than a year, Facebook has undergone some pretty hefty changes, with the addition of third-party applications, the Newsfeed, and status indicators. What should also be taken into consideration is how such additions have also brought up heated debates about privacy and user rights.
response to the nature of the changes. For example, as more and more information becomes readily available online, through social networking sites, new issues/technologies will emerge, leading to a revaluation of present theories and discussion.

Thus, I anticipate that as the Internet changes new issues will emerge, based on the public'sproprietary rights to such "uploads" may become a source of conflict. I know that currently the idea that deactiving one's Facebook or Myspace accounts does not completely "remove" one's information from the cyberworld, is rather troubling for many. In addition, as employers are becoming more Internet savy, this comes as a major concern to students who are about to enter the workforce. Additionally, the PC and laptop, are not the only technologies that will have to be considered in the coming years. Now, with the advent of devices such as the iPhone, internet "addiction" will be taken to a whole new height. As the line between the real world and the Internet is continuously blurred, it will become harder for concepts such as gender and identity and visual anonymity to remain salient. For example, while certain cues were heavily relied upon to denote gender classification and identity, new devices, such as microphones which alter the sound of your voice, do not allow for such cues to be as deterministic.

Finally, as my time in this class has come to an end, I think that what is missing is a section on exploring the new issues and theories that have arisen recently. While, I think that a good deal was included into discussion of present theories, I would have liked to focus more on what researchers are currently discussing. Given that the class is so large, I'm not sure how feasible this would be, but I think it would be nice to have an experiment element linked to this course. Otherwise, I enjoyed this course, and would highly recommend it to my friends!

Bonus Assignment – Experimenting with the Internet

The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.

-Eric Schmidt

In a recent article a Michigan woman named Nancy Makin claims to have lost 500 pounds by going on an “Internet Diet.” While excessive computer use has been linked to obesity, she says that because the internet allowed for anonymity she was able to make friends through chatrooms, which gave her motivation to start slimming down. As an obese woman she found it difficult to interact with people in person and only left her home eight times in the past 12 years. It was only when she began having a social life online that she decided to stop using food to deal with her feelings of isolation. "Anonymity was key," she said. "They couldn't look at me and judge me based on how I looked."

As a fairly recent phenomenon itself, the internet has grown rapidly in use and influence. While the internet environment has been continuously changing as technology evolves, we find ourselves confronting significant new issues as a result. Some theories such as the CFO perspective predicts that due to the lack of cues in CMC, the use of the internet will only lead to underdeveloped and negative impressions and relationships. Yet while there are instances in which this is the case, the experience of Nancy Makin is a prime example that shows that not only do people form intimate relationships online but that the internet will continue to serve as a medium that can connect and influence users. Theories such as the social information processing theory (SIP) that rejects the view that the absence of nonverbal cues restricts the capability to exchange social information will continue to be supported. Another phenomenon that will always hold is interpersonal attraction online. According to McKenna’s relationship facilitation factors (identifiability, the removal of gating factors, interactional control, being able to connect to similar others, getting the goods), the internet will actually increase relationship development. In the example of Nancy Makin who could not interact ftf due to her physical appearance, the removal of gating features such as physical attractiveness allowed her to form relationships online.

Yet while many theories/phenomena will continue to hold as the internet and our uses of it changes, there are also many that are bound to change. Wallace predicted that the eyeball camera will become widespread enough that soon enough most people will have one and the choice to turn it on or off to reveal yourself will be part of the impression one makes. As we can see, Wallace was wrong, at least about the installation of cameras. While the use of video interaction has increased, it is still not popular enough and most likely will not be prevalently used, which shows how much internet users value anonymity online. Yet while users appear to continue to value anonymity, users are now being forced to reveal their identity. For example to be able to post up comments on Wikipedia, users must now identify themselves to increase accountability. If this is applied to all websites, it is most likely that the social support groups online will become less popular because according to Walther & Boyd, part of the reason why online social support groups are appealing is because it is anonymous, whether it is perceived or real. Depending on how the issue of the freedom of speech on the internet is resolved, the future of online spaces remains unpredictable.

The existing theories and phenomena will also continue to change as technology changes. One example that is bringing about new issues is the use of virtual reality to help patients with psychological disorders. A new, high-tech system was designed to treat military veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder by creating a “virtual” world that simulates the sources of combat stress. Not only is this being used on veterans but also on patients with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It is a significant discovery because now not only is it critical to study how the internet affects behavior but also how the computer can be used to intentionally change one’s psychology in reality.

As for Comm245, while there are recent developments that were not discussed in class there is just one issue that could have been touched upon, which is the relationship between internet use and learning. I always wondered whether the use of the internet has increased the capacity to learn and retain information or if computers are now the new brains. Yet while we did not discuss this issue in class, I learned one lesson that would help me approach the issue. I found that the neither technological determinism nor social construction can adequately explain the internet because it lies somewhere in the middle. It appears as if the more one explores psychology and the internet, the more we find that there are still many characteristics of the relationship between the internet and its users that we cannot fully understand. Perhaps the reason why there is still so much more to figure out is because the internet is still being experimented with and we’re just lucky enough to be the participants.

The Glass Ball

The Internet has been in use for just under two decades now, and we’ve already witnessed sweeping changes in the way online communication is conducted. Tim Berners Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, had simply wanted to facilitate the sharing of documents among physicists at CERN back in 1990. Today, we have email, instant messenging, streaming video, and social networking sites. Businesses, schools, government agencies, and ordinary citizens around the world rely on the Internet for communication and information exchange. As we make progress, the web will continue becoming richer as a communication medium, and it will permeate society to an even greater extent that it does today.

This has implications for several of the theories we’ve discussed in class this semester. For one, the CFO theories will become even less relevant than they already are. The increasing prevalence of avatars, VoIP, and video conferencing technologies means that CMC is rapidly outgrowing the “text-only” environment it was once restricted to. (Some might even argue that CMC can match FtF even without additional cues.) As more and more online spaces gain richness, media richness theory will begin to make less sense. You will choose a richer media to communicate with those you know really well (i.e., FtF). Text-only spaces will be relegated to communication with outsiders (perhaps people you’ll only talk to once or twice). The synchronicity of the medium shall largely determine which online spaces are used for efficiency, at least when communication is one-to-one.

However, text-only online spaces will never really become fully extinct. USENET, established in 1980 and still thriving, is a testament to this assertion. Chatrooms and forums are convenient for large group discussions among a community of members, where added richness would just distract from the content. In fact, the text-only nature of social support groups is even an advantage when people want to avoid embarrassment. Therefore, it will ultimately possible for theories like the impression management model and McKenna relationship facilitation factors to stay relevant in predicting text-based relationships and interaction.

The hyperpersonal model and SIDE are also likely here to stay for a long time. Humans are essentially prediction machines: we are wired to generalize, draw conclusions, and make predictions about our environment based on what we know. When we know just a little, we will inevitably make all our predictions based on that bit of knowledge. Greater richness will not much change this fact; even in FtF we make generalizations about people based on their appearance, age, gender, race, voice, etc. Were this not so, prejudice, discrimination, and stereotypes would not be so ubiquitous.

Advances in technology may blur the boundary between virtuality and real life. Imagine glasses or visors which augment your view of the world, allowing you to digitally interact with other objects and people in your physical environment. (Simple electronic glasses have already been attempted for basic vision correction.) Would Internet addicts still be considered as such if online devices became as necessary as hearing aids or contact lenses?

Serious lying online will become less common overall, for two reasons. First, as newer generations become more familiar with the Internet, they will realize that online interactions are highly recordable. For serious lies, many people currently don’t realize that IM conversations can get logged automatically, search engines will crawl websites, and corporate email is routinely stored in backup. Second, increased richness means that online communication will feel less distributed and less visually anonymous. Theories we have developed about lies (social distance theory, feature-based model, etc.) will continue to apply, but less strongly than they used to.

Looking forward, one might envision a convergence of theories from general psychology and sociology and the theories proposed in a social computing psychology class such as this one. This would not be surprising: as technology enables richer forms of communication in various dimensions, it lets us inch ever closer to a true FtF interaction (while retaining the option of communication in leaner psychological spaces.)

One issue that we didn’t really touch upon in this class was privacy. The dawn of the Internet (and Web 2.0 in particular) has granted us access to a huge network of information and people. People are eager to broadcast to the world, throwing out tons of information about themselves online. In other contexts, much of this information would be considered personal/private matters, so why do people relinquish it online so easily? This is particularly noticeable in personal blogs, social networking sites, Twitter, AIM profiles, etc., where there is a broad but mostly anonymous audience. More importantly, what are the consequences of this large-scale self-disclosure, in terms of both how the public perceives you, and how you respond? We have been told time and again to censor our Facebook profile, lest employers stumble upon our unprofessional traits. Perhaps one day, people will casually overlook these things, realizing that everyone has a multifaceted lifestyle and it is nothing special. Private life self-disclosure would become the norm, and no one would feel the need to partition their self-presentation into professional, casual, and personal categories.

Bonus Assignment - Anonymity and Online Harassment

As the Internet becomes even more of a ubiquitous presence in our lives, the relationship between social psychology and online interaction will continue to grow. It is likely we will become increasingly dependent on it as a utility as time progresses, to the point where a good number of very basic services (such as banking and shopping) will only be done electronically. With the steady increases in dependency and level of access come previously unseen phenomena, as well as old issues upgraded for the current age; some of which are, indeed, problematic.

Recently, the blogosphere has been in an uproar over the suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier, who was reportedly the victim of "cyber-bullying" at the hands of Lori Drew, a friend of the family whose daughter went to school with Megan. Drew posed as a boy named "Josh Evans" on Myspace and proceeded to become well-acquainted with Megan under the scrutiny of the girl's parents. Some time passed, and the messages suddenly became disparaging, then hateful; eventually culminating with a statement that said the world would be a better place without her, to which the girl promptly committed suicide. There are conflicting reports as to what originally sparked this situation (some say Megan was the classic school bully, still others say she was merely targeted for being unattractive and emotionally unstable), but the prosecuting attorney has decided not to press charges against Drew, since a) there is no legal precedent for the situation, and b) it cannot be proven the words of "Josh Evans" are, specifically, what drove Megan over the edge.

Patricia Wallace in The Psychology of the Internet addresses the issue of 'trolling' in relationship to establishing superiority and group cohesion (101). In a lot of ways, the issues are similar; however, most trolling usually occurs at random in a relatively isolated environment, leads to flame wars, and fizzles out in a short amount of time. In this particular situation, you have consistent and targeted psychological manipulation of a minor by an adult posing as a peer. Because multi-use/level services such as Myspace and Facebook didn't exist at the time of publication, it stands to reason that this phenomenon is undocumented. However, she postulates that the relative anonymity lent by computer mediated communication is directly linked to whether, how, and to what degree individuals express aggression. Could this have a hand in how far Drew chose to take the Josh Evans persona, originally intended as a joke? Following that, how responsible is she for Megan's death?

A simple Youtube search for 'cyber + bullying' yields a myriad of results, most of which seek to inform the casual user about the phenomenon. The sheer number of hits implies that this phenomenon is not uncommon, to the point where special interest groups are urging Congress to pass legislature that would define harassing someone over the internet as a punishable offense. If a law is passed, it will have far-reaching implications for online interactions as well as free-speech laws in general. As far as the course is concerned, despite our in-depth discussions of the effects of anonymity on self-presentation, I believe that the topic of cyber-bullying will become more and more of an issue as most of our world moves into the online arena, and should be addressed in further depth.

Bonus Assignment: 2020: A Space Odyssey

Its no secret that the internet is growing at unfathomably rapid rates, and that soon we will all have high bandwidth access available all the time, anywhere.  The implications of a truly omnipresent internet are complicated and difficult to predict, even for the short term.  I believe as the internet becomes a greater presence in our lives, the psychology of social computer will merge with social psychology.  The principals that hold true in the real world will be the ones that stick around the longest. 

For example, the fundamental attribution error will always exist.  That is something that is ingrained in our psyches and won't change regardless of our medium of communication.  But lets look at some of my favorite theories from the semester.

Hyper-personal.  This theory seems to have become the go-to theory for 245.  I'm not sure how, but maybe because it is so easily applicable and we've all experienced it before.  Regardless, I would expect this theory to get modified in the future.  As the internet becomes more high bandwidth, and the use of videos and pictures becomes the default (as opposed to text) the number of cues available online will begin to match those in f2f.  I would believe this would lead to a decrease in over-attribution as people would have enough cues to make an accurate judgement.  On the other hand though, I would expect an increase in selective presentation.  Being able to portray yourself differently than you do in the real world is one of the draws to the internet, and as so the technology will have to answer it.  Digital cameras already have the ability to make you more photogenic.  The newest version of iChat lets you video chat with fake backdrops you can set. I'm actually playing with it right now, its really really cool.  So people will get a better idea of who they are talking too, but people will also have more tools for deception.  

I also would predict an increase in problematic internet usage.  People are already addicted to information, and turn to the internet for their fixes.  As it becomes an even larger part of our lives, the community gets larger, and the capabilities increase, and it becomes more available, I anticipate more people having a hard time distinguishing between their real lives, and their digital ones.  At the same time, people might experience information overloads, as they can never really leave the office, or have a moment to themselves, all sorts of other psychological disorders could become associated with being plugged in at all times.  On the other hand, online support networks would be more available, and people might be able to get the help they need right there on the internet. 

I think this class covers a wide variety of theories dealing with interaction online.  I think the course could be improved by covering the subject in ways other than the theoretical.  If we learned about how experts apply these theories, and what their implications are in the real world, for example how programmers design systems as a result of findings.  I also think it would be cool if we learned more about what's going on in Professor Hancock's top secret deception facilities.  

Thank you blogosphere, we've had some great times.  I appreciate your insightful comments, witty posts, and the aid in understanding dense academic readings.   

bonus assignment

In the future, the internet will become more and more prominent in everyday life- both having to do with relationships and not. I recently read somewhere that online shopping has sky-rocketed over the holiday season this year as compared to past years. And it’s not even December 5 yet. People would rather stay at home and shop then go out in the cold, traffic, crowds and look for gifts. The internet is the “one stop shop” without even having to leave the house. You can find anything and everything for that special person. The internet is easy. That, I think, is a big part as to why it is so important in many people’s lives. Whether it’s a relationship you are in, or an object you need to buy, or news you want to read, the internet has it all. And in the future, who knows what amazing new things people will come up with in the online world. It’s mind blowing to think of the possibilities. I think most of the theories we discussed in class will continue to be a factor for a long time in the online world. No matter how much more technologically advanced we get, people will still treat rich and lean mediums the same way. People will still find it often times easier to talk and share things about themselves online rather then in person. People will lie about their height or weight or college degrees or personality in order to be accepted and in order to not be lonely. People will fall in love, fall out of love, make business deals, argue and agree. And this will happen all online. But people will still interact outside of the online world. Still have families, settle down, have neighborhood bbq’s, go to church, the grocery store and the gym. School will still be a place where kids learn how to behave and interact with peers. Don’t get me wrong, this will all still happen. But there will be a constant theme- an overriding power which is rapidly beginning to show its force. And that, my friends, is the internet: Email, chatrooms, AIM, blogs. It will all become more present and even more part of everyday life. The challenge for the future will be to keep those face to face interactions strong and not let everything turn into CMC.

11: This is embarrassing

If there is one regret I have in my life its getting involved with someone online. Not only did all my friends mock me relentlessly for having a myspace “girlfriend”, but also they haven’t stopped reminding me of it four years later.
Taylor was the answer to all of my prayers, or so I thought. I was in 10th grade and a card carrying member of the lonely hearts club. So when a random girl from the town next to me left me a friendly message, I was intrigued. She and I had similar tastes in music, and she thought I was cool. That was really all we had going for us.
Over the next few week’s we talked a lot online and even on the phone for a bit. We didn’t really have deep conversations, but she was very friendly, and I was okay meeting her in town for pizza after about a month, because we got along so well online.
This is a textbook example of the hyperpersonal theory. The hyperpersonal theory has five elements, and Taylor and I hit all of them.

1. Over-Attribution Process: Fewer cues lead to exaggerated impressions.
Because we met on myspace, and than moved onto instant messaging, I didn’t have much to judge this girl on, and so I gave her the benefit of the doubt, and thought she was cool.

2. Developmental Aspect: Better relationships form over time
Without my knowledge, our interactions developed straight into a relationship. Before long “<3 Steve” was in her AIM profile, and I had nothing to do with it.

3. Selective Self-Presentation
If anyone’s ever had “The Angles”, it was Taylor.  Meeting her in real life was a total shocker.  I was so suprised by the way she looked, nothing else really mattered.  I was already ready to leave.

4. Re-allocation of cognitive resources: you focus so much on what you type, you don’t really pay attention to anything else.
Its true. I thought a lot about making myself sound cool. I thought so much about that, it didn’t cross my mind that she might be doing the same.

5. Behavioral Confirmation: if someone thinks you are X, you act X.
I wasn’t aware of this, but looking back it was probably true. The more Taylor liked me, the more likable I acted. I was nicer to Taylor than I was to any of my real friends.

So online, Taylor and I were great for each other. We had very little in common and weren’t aware of the pitfalls of myspace. Once I met her, however, I was confronted by someone who was far far less attractive than the girl I thought I had met online. It was immediately I decided to end this relationship, realizing I had walked right into what I thought only happened in jokes.

11: My Crazy Mormon Friend

How can one put into words my friendship with Alexander, aka Dess, the crazy Korean Mormon from California? Dess is a missionary by daylight, and building-climber by night (he has been on mission for the past two years in Wyoming and Colorado spreading the word, and has also been to the rooftop of Baker Tower by means I will not disclose here). I met Dess on the Class of 2008 website 3 1/2 years ago. Back then, the website was a social tool for pre-freshmen to get to know each other based on common residences, majors, etc. Now the Class of '08 website has catapulted itself into a forum for keeping seniors updated on events culminating towards graduation. While viewing the website as a prefrosh, uncertainty was at its highest as I perused profiles similar to those found on Facebook, minus Scrabbulous. However, when I found out Dess was one suite over from me in Low Rise 7, the uncertainty between us began to decrease as we exchanged messages over the website, as well as IMs over the summer. Clearing up the gray area between two people via communication led to a greater affinity to my new friend.

The Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT), from Berger and Calabrese, states that the uncertainty reduction process leads to greater attraction between two people. This can occur through greater communication between the two, and ultimately the meeting of two people FtF after using CMC for some period of time. The more information is exchanged between partners, the more they will know each other, and if they get along, simply put, they'll like each other more. A myriad of cues are given FtF that are not available over CMC, such as appearance - after meeting Dess Ftf I know that he is not a slob, or doesn't wear a leather jacket with spikes coming out of it. Rather, he wears a t-shirt and jeans just like everybody else, or white buttoned down shirt and nametag when he's doing missionary stuff. One can also deduce race FtF - I already knew he was Korean from his last name, but when I saw him, then I could make sure. Carrying on a conversation in person can give one an idea of how the other person carries themselves - Dess was a little awkward at first, but weren't we all awkward as freshmen? One is also more able to tell whether another individual is happy, depressed, angry, or complacent FtF rather than its needing to be stated directly in words. When I met Dess online, I already knew that I liked the kid, but after meeting him FtF we became better friends as we were more familiar with each other. Today, Dess is one of my closest friends at Cornell, and I wouldn't have it any other way.


Comments:

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Enemies Falling In Love

I read a story online where an individual in high school was falling for a girl who had absolutely no interest in him. She believed the rumors circulating around the school about him, and although the article does not say what they were, I the impression that they were not working in favor. These two individuals had never spoken and he got the impression that she hated him. One afternoon he found a personal ad of hers online so he decided to make a new email address and began to chat with her, telling her nothing but the truth; other than his name of course. He then tried writing her an email from his old address asking if they could meet and get to know each other. She quickly declined saying that she had a boyfriend. What she did not know was that her "boyfriend" was him. Shortly after this happened she asked him online if they could meet sometime. He was extremely nervous but agreed to meet. They arranged a time and place to meet and as he walked toward her table she did not believe and and actually asked him to recite the poem that he had written for her. They actually sat down, shared their first kiss and fell in love, and have been ever since.
This story is consistent with how SIP theory leads to relational growth online. Also, he was honest so when they met there relationship grew even more. If he had lied about himself or said things that were not true in order to impress her the relationship probably would have failed or been "jarred". This also relates to the hyperpersonal model because often online relationships lead to inflated impressions of one another. Their relationship was different because of the honesty and trust that they had developed of one another. They were able to do this because they did not engage in actions such as selective self presentation. This story shows exactly how a relationship can develop online if the participants are honest, which is very difficult to do online.

Assignment 11 - Meeting my boyfriend online: revisited.

As previously stated here, I had known my significant other two years prior to us ever meeting face-to-face. We first met on a video game discussion forum and, after that community disbanded, continued to interact over AIM and later, via phone. When we finally decided to meet during spring break my sophomore year, it was slightly awkward for the first few hours until conversation drifted to more mutual subjects of interest; after that, it felt no different than any of the numerous other times we had spoken before.

Walther's Social Information Processing (SIP) theory is applicable here. SIP contests the notion that the absence of non-verbal cues restricts the effective exchange of social information and, instead, places an emphasis on the adaptation of cues to the channel over time. It assumes that, even though impression formation develops more slowly in CMC than FtF, over time, it will not be more or less impoverished in either mode of communication. In this case, we had both formed rather strong impressions of one another in the two years before we communicated face to face and didn't expect those perceptions to be otherwise modified by a change in medium. They were not, possibly because we had both maintained a policy of being perfectly honest, so we knew exactly what to expect the entire time. Also, because we had known each other for so long, a significant amount of social information had already been exchanged.

Ramirez and Wang's hypothesis (long-term online relationships taken offline will be overall negatively impacted) is incorrect in this case; our relationship has only improved by meeting offline, even though both of us were apprehensive of meeting face to face due to having heard various horror stories. The modality switch did little but create a slight uneasiness as both of us wondered whether or not one was negatively evaluating the other based on the increase of social cues. Again, perhaps our mutual honesty was the key here, as we managed to avoid the over-attribution process described in the Hyperpersonal Model (limited social cues obtained via CMC are exaggerated); false and unrealistic expectations on the part of one or both participants seem to be why most online-to-offline relationships fail.

A.11 - Student Twenty Something

Having lived overseas, the high school I was accepted to back home in Toronto required I complete several research projects to fulfill certain provincial education standards and checks the summer before starting the 9^th grade. Due to the task being somewhat daunting for an almost 9^th grade student I was assigned numerous advisors in various fields; history, math, science, etc. I had one main advisor who I collaborated with determine my research topic and prepare for a 10-15 minute presentation at the end of the summer. Since I had yet to move to Toronto my relationship with my soon to be teachers began through the internet via email and specifically designed forums for the project. Despite some technical hang ups, I posted my questions on the forum for my teachers, emailed my thoughts, and read their responses. Over the course of the summer, I begin to develop what I thought was an understanding of the people I was communicating with.

However, after meeting some of my teachers a couple days before the big presentation I had an overwhelming sense of confusion and distance from people I had been talking to all summer. Suddenly it felt as if the summer had just started and my questions seemed awkward, and it was weird talking to these teachers. What happened in the shift from online to the real world?

My experience seems to reflect what Ramirez and Wang hypothesized and found consistent with their study that when moving from long-term computer mediated communications (CMC) to face to face (FtF) there will be additional social information evaluated negatively and uncertainty provoking rendering the switch overall negative. It seemed as if the knowledge I thought I know about my teachers was naïve, incomplete, and inadequate. As a result, when real life filled in the gaps, there was confusion and somewhat of a withdrawal.

The hyper personal model could help to explain what had happened. During my time communicating through CMC, all I knew of my teachers were their responses to my questions, I did not even have photographs of who was teaching me. As teachers are expected to be, their responses were polite and helpful. Due to lack of conflicting information, the over attribution process develops. They were polite and helpful so they must be really polite and helpful. This was reinforced throughout the summer, but when I met them in real life their politeness seemed stiff, formal and the help; just enough to get by. I was a simple 9^th grader, among many others taking up valuable summer time, so it seemed. The extra visual information tempered my reactions. In addition to hyper personal another effect could have also played a part. In a sense, I was self-centered. Emails were directed to me. I was having real conversations with my teachers. In reality I was student number twenty whatever out of thirty whatever. After meeting in real life, it was clear that the teachers’ priorities were elsewhere and understandably so.

As it stands, my experience seems to lend support to the hypothesis of Ramirez and Wang, after a relatively long online relationship, moving offline has an overall negative effect on the relationship.

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Assignment 11 - An Online Relationship Gone Bad

For this assignment, I will use the story of one of my best friend’s online relationships to demonstrate the hyperpersonal theory with relation to online relationships leaving virtuality. For the sake of this assignment, I will call my friend “Jade” for anonymity purposes. Now Jade and I were great friends throughout elementary and middle school. Once we separated and went to different high schools, we still kept in touch and I became Jade’s source of comfort and support through her tough online relationship.

Jade and I were juniors in high school when she told me of this boy she met in a national religious youth group newsgroup that facilitated interaction for chapters all over the United States. Over time, she became involved with a boy named Marc from Jacksonville, Florida. I was never a fan of online relationships because they always creeped me out, not knowing who could potentially be on the other end of the computer. However, I had no choice but to support my friend and hope for her safety. After about a year of communicating through email and instant message, Jade and Marc established a strong friendship and talked about deep feelings and emotions that they did not disclose to anyone they had met face to face. When it was time for their youth group’s national convention that year, they couldn’t wait to finally meet each other. From Jade’s point of view, even I admired Marc and put him on a pedestal based on the wonderful things Jade had pointed out about him. She thought he was spiritually gifted and concluded that he was perfect and nothing could change her feelings about him, not even a meeting face to face.

On the day of the convention, Jade and Marc planned to meet after an orientation meeting and I was shocked when I received a call from a hysterical Jade, extremely disappointed after her initial meeting with Marc. I think that the hyperpersonal model definitely came into play for Jade and Marcs’ relationship because Jade had initially painted an exaggerated, flawless picture of Marc in her mind and set high expectations for their meeting. She automatically wanted to believe that he was a great, wholesome guy just because he was a part of her religious youth group. Because of their limited virtual means of communication, they were able to carefully filer their information sharing and choose how they wanted to present themselves. This led to a disappointing first meeting because they were, for the first time, forced to interact without control over information disclosure. It turned out to be a challenge because both Jade and Marc had such strong feelings for each other just from talking online that they were devastated when they didn’t turn out to be the people they expected/wanted to be. This was a perfect example of the hyperpersonal model and in light of the theory, it is a shame that these exaggerated perceptions and expectations had to lead to a negative, disappointing outcome.

http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/2007/11/enemies-falling-in-love.html

http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/2007/11/she-blocked-him-when-myspace-love-goes.html

11 Meeting A Friend IRL

One relationship I’ve had that started online was with a friend that I was developing a website with. We met each other online on a social news site and talked for many months as friends. After a while we realized that we were both interested in web design and decided to meet up. I got in the car and drove to meet him and was surprised by what I found.

Upon meeting, I initially liked him less than I had online. I’d say the hyperpersonal model definitely rang true here. Online I had thought of him as being very intelligent, and in person I still thought he was intelligent, but perhaps not quite as intelligent as he appeared on the Internet due to selective self-presentation. However, after some time I began to like more. I developed increased (platonic) attraction toward him, but for completely different reasons than the ones that had made me like him initially online. I would chalk this up to uncertainty reduction theory. So what happened was that I initially liked him less than I did online because of the hyperpersonal model, but in the end I began to like him more because I traits that weren’t apparent online.

In the end we decided not to go forward with our web project, or at least it is on backburner currently, but I still would consider my experience of meeting him online to be a positive one. My advice for those meeting someone for the first time would be that if you don't like the other person as much as you initially thought you would, don't treat it as a write-off, just take a deep breath and go out for a few beers and after a few more hours you may end up liking the other person even more.

Assignment 11: Awkwetch

“Hi Vivian,

My name is Justin and coincidently, our mothers take the same bus to work everyday. I'm glad to see that another person goes to Cornell from back home. Apparently, our mothers exchanged our phone numbers, but I thought that calling a complete stranger was kinda awkward and sketchy. SO, I thought that emailing you would be a good idea since email is a trendy, modern less awkwetch (awkard + sketchy) way to communicate. Pardon my randomness.

So how do you like your first year at Cornell? My mother tells me you are in ILR, I am in architecture myself (third year). I hope you aren't too stressed and that your experience here is well worth it. I'm sure your spring break was a much deserved and restful one.
If you aren't busy, we should meet up some time over coffee and I can tell you about what you should expect at Cornell in your later years. Hope to meet you soon and if you need to contact me, my number is (917) 288 - 1967 and my AIM sn is nyczjust2nice. I'm usually in Rand Hall.

Talk to you soon,
Justin”


This was the first of many emails I received from someone who is now a good friend of mine. We began by conversing through email. Although he offered his screen-name and cell number, I wanted to get to know him a bit more before meeting him. After two weeks of emailing perhaps twice a week, our relationship moved to AIM. We talked daily, for about a week, sharing life stories (usually about our mothers who are extremely chatty!), before actually getting together, in person. When we met, we immediately hit it off; it seemed as if we’d been friends for years! I believe that URT (Berger&Calabrese 1997) can explain our relationship best because of the positive outcome that resulted from increased information about the other.

URT says reducing uncertainty will lead to attraction. My friendship with Justin began slowly, first with a few emails, but with every email he seemed even friendlier, always offering more information about himself. In the first email, as you can see, he disclosed very general information that he went to Cornell, was in AAP, and in his third year. He also offered to share advice, which seemed like a very nice thing for someone I didn’t know to offer. I knew he was from around where I lived because our mothers take the same bus, but I really didn’t know much else about him. With each conversation we had, I found out a little more about him. Sometimes we talked about family, other times we talked about our classes—regardless of the topic, I found myself often agreeing with the things he said or relating my experiences to his.

After about one month of CMC communicating, Justin and I finally settled on a convenient time for both of us to get lunch. When we met, we immediately hit it off. Communicating through email and AIM definitely led to that comfort of feeling like we had been friends for years! Everything mentioned or said in our CMC conversations seemed to hold true in FtF conversations. After meeting in person that first time, we started to talk less on AIM, but we got together in person more. We would make plans through email or AIM, and continue our friendship through weekly lunches and coffee meetings. As URT says, our relationship leaving virtuality had a highly positive outcome. After forming a relationship in CMC, our relationship moved successfully to FtF (aka Real World). URT was right in that the more we reduced uncertainty about the other, the more we wanted to know about each other, and the more positive the outcome of our friendship had.

It was (almost) love at first click

One day, my friend Sarah revealed to me that had been talking via instant messaging to Josh, a boy she had met online a few months prior. Sarah and Josh’s relationship began on a videogame website where she had posted a question on one of the forums and he had responded with a joke. After a couple of messages, Josh and Sarah exchanged screen names and started communicating on a regular basis. Their friendships lasted for over a year and then they began dating junior year of high school and before they met, the couple decided to attend the same college after graduation. Sarah and Josh finally encountered face-to-face during orientation, on their first day at Delaware State.

The virtual stage of Josh and Sarah’s relationship extended all throughout high school. They sent each other pictures, emails and talked on the phone every night. The relationship moved from friends to couple over a long time, giving Sarah and Josh time to get to know one another in different situations and at different times. When they finally met, Sarah revealed to me that it felt like they had always known each other face-to-face and that there wasn’t any uneasiness or awkwardness. They instantly began to hold hands and Sarah moved into Josh’s dorm room the next week.

The Social Info Processing Theory (Walther) explains Josh and Sarah’s interaction. SIP rejects that the absence of non-verbal cues restricts the capability to exchange social information and states that over time cues are adapted to the verbal channel. Here, the key is time. Although impression formation develops more slowly in CMC than it does in FtF, after a while, it will reach the same level in both environments. Like in my friend’s case, the relationship extended long enough in a CMC environment that by the time it left the virtual world, it had reached the same level of relational development it would have if they had met in person from the beginning.

Overall, leaving virtuality and entering the FtF world can sometime lead to positive (Uncertainty Reduction Theory) or negative (SIDE) outcomes. In the case of Sarah and Josh, the outcome was neutral. Meeting FtF did not change their opinion of each other, rather it confirmed what they already knew about each other. This is because their relationship had matured so much that by the time they met in person that all barriers had been destroyed, doubts had been eliminated and they had become so comfortable and honest with each other that selective self-presentation, the risk of over-attributing (hyperpersonal) or generalizing (SIDE) were not issues anymore.



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http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/2007/11/11-meeting-friend-irl.html

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Assignment 11: When MS Goes Wrong

My friend “Charlie” was very much into online chat rooms back in high school. It was in one of these chat rooms that he met a girl named “Sarah”. They met randomly one day and enjoyed talking to each other, so they exchanged screen names began to chat on AIM. For more than a year he and Sarah spoke almost every day. Over the summer break between our junior and senior years of high school, he found out that Sarah was coming to the area to visit family near New York City. They arranged to see each other in the city and he was ecstatic about the chance to finally meet her.

When he got back from their meeting in the city he was very disappointed. He told me that Sarah was nothing like what he had expected. She had been so outgoing when they were chatting online, yet she was very shy in person. As they were talking face-to-face he realized that they did not share as much in common as he had thought. Additionally, he said that she was not as attractive as he had expected. The experience was a very powerful one for him and afterward he and Sarah chatted less and soon stopped communicating altogether.

Charlie’s experience fits very well with the factors and results of the Ramirez and Wang paper. Because he and Sarah had been chatting in the CMC environment for more than a year, their relationship can be considered a long-term association. Ramirez and Wang found that when a modality switch occurs from CMC to face-to-face for long-term associated partners, the results are that the social information will be more unexpected, more relationally important, evaluated more negatively, and will be uncertainty provoking.

The social information presented to Charlie in the face-to-face meeting pertaining to Sarah’s personality, along with the fact that he found they had very little in common, was definitely unexpected and important to the relationship. This can be explained by the fact that, over their long period of correspondence, Charlie had developed an idea in his mind as to what Sarah would be like using the principle of the Hyperpersonal Model. The idea here is that the few social cues he was given in CMC were exaggerated into stereotypes and (in this case) perceived as common ground. Also going along with Ramirez and Wang’s results, the new social information he received in the face-to-face interaction only proved to provoke uncertainty by going against his previous beliefs that Sarah was outgoing and gorgeous and caused him to evaluate this new social information more negatively, eventually leading to the end of their relationship.

I commented on:

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She Blocked Him: When Myspace Love Goes Wrong

My friend met a guy on Myspace about a year ago. He was a participant on MTV’s show “Yo Mamma”. Shortly after his 15 seconds of fame, she discovered that he had a Myspace page. One day she randomly sent him a message, commenting on something she noticed on his page. As the days went by, their interactions became more frequent. Online, his persona reflected the same confidence, intelligence, and wit that he presented on television. She made concluded this based on the content of his page. He had an eclectic taste in music, was well read, and seemed to be very social. She also discovered that he lived not too far from her on the Lower East Side. They ended up meeting in Central Park on their first date. To her surprise, he was a lot more easygoing and reserved than his online and television persona led her to believe. Also, he did not seem as witty and did not make as many sharp remarks in person. Instead, he was quiet and did not really have anything interesting to say.
Based on her experience, leaving virtuality fit with the factors and results discussed in the Ramirez & Wang paper. According to their study, individuals who first met FtF interactions and then shift to CMC exhibited “enhancement” effects during their relationship development. Individuals who met at first in CMC and then shifted to FtF interaction exhibited disappointment and negative effects. Since she was dissatisfied with the guy upon meeting him in person, it is apparent that her relationship supported this theory. After she and the guy started talking more in CMC and decided to finally meet, (i.e. shift to FtF), the relationship took a toll for the worse.
Her experience also supports Walther’s Hypersonal Model. Walter states that CMC factors lead to inflated perceptions of partners because in CMC one can selectively self present themselves. Because of such selectivity in what is presented in CMC, when one abandons CMC and shifts to Ftf they lack this same degree of control over what information is being presented. As a result, their impression of the other person is "deflated", which leads to disappointment. The guy was able to selectively self present himself on Myspace and TV, and exaggerated his positive attributes. Although my friend hoped for a love connection, what she ended up with was a lousy date and a wasted outfit.

Assignment 11

It was the summer of 2004, and I was getting prepared to begin my freshman year at Cornell University in the College of Engineering. I received an email informing me about the Cornell University Class of 2008 website. Excited about beginning college, I visited the site to see what it had to offer. Users were able to search other members of the Cornell class of 2008 based on name, residence hall, and college, just to name a few search criteria. I began chatting online with a member of my class who was in my college and living in my dorm. We found that we had a lot in common, and decided that we would attend some orientation events together once we arrived at school. After moving into our dorm in August, our relationship moved from CMC to face-to-face. It was interesting, since we already knew so much about each other after chatting for several weeks on AOL Instant Messenger. We ended up having a couple classes together. After that first semester, we didn't have many classes together, and drifted apart. Over the last three years at Cornell, we see each other from time to time, and say hello, but that is about it.

The shift in our relationship from CMC to FtF aligns with Walter's Hyperpersonal Model. Once we met face-to-face, we found that we were not as similar as we had thought when we were talking online. FtF communication allowed for more of our characteristics to come across, ones that were not apparent in the online environment. And as we learned more about each other, we drifted apart.

Corresponding with the findings of Ramirez and Wang, we were both disappointed that we did not have as much in common as we had initially thought (online), and drifted apart. This could be interpreted as a negative effect. This individual was nice and there was nothing wrong with them, but the relationship that we formed online before meeting face-to-face did not translate in the real world.



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Assignment 11: Coming to College

Our study of online relationships this year has focus primarily on distinguishing between computer mediated communication (CMC) and face to face(FtF) communication. In the latest article we examined by Ramirez and Wang the interaction of the two was considered, primarily when a relationship moves from CMC and the online world to FtF and the real world. One such personal experience I had was my freshman year here at Cornell. Like many freshman, I knew very few people at the school before arriving. Not wanting to leave my social life to chance, I took advantage of a newer tool that the internet offered: Facebook.

Using Facebook I was able to find and contact other people with similar interests and backgrounds. One person in particular I talked to a lot through CMC, hoping that the online correspondence might bloom into a friendship once we arrived on campus. Through his profile and text communication, I formed an impression of him, mostly based on what personal tastes and interests he had and other social cues I picked up. When we finally met on move in day, I was very surprised to find we were fairly different, and the friendship did not go very far beyond the occasional dinner in the dining hall and friendly “hellos” when walking on campus.

My initial search for people on Facebook on the basis of similar interests lends itself nicely to a Social Identification/Deindividuation (SIDE) model of online interaction. I looked for people that I could identify with and classify as the same “social category” as myself. With the friend identified above, this in particular was music and a more liberal political view. This combination immediately placed him in my mind right along with my group of friends back home, who all shared similar tastes. From this grouping, I formed a personality and look for this person based on my experiences with my friends from high school.

When move in day arrived, this initial impression was essentially shattered. He was very friendly, but had a much different manner than what I had envisioned from our text chats. Talking further with him removed him further from any social group that I could identify with. SIDE theory predicts that individual differences undermine social attraction. In moving from online to the real world, many of the perceived similarities that made us part of the same social group were dominated by the flood of new verbal and social cues that differentiated us. Based on this loss of group salience and increase in visual identifiableness, SIDE predicts a negative outcome when moving a relationship from CMC to real life. This prediction was supported by personal experience.

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#11: A Wired Love

Although there is a group of six cousins in my family that were born roughly around the same age and have always been very close, my cousin "James" has always been a little bit of an odd duck. His obsession with computers started early and he isn't a very social kid to say the least. He hacked our high school's computer system at age 14, dropped out of high school at age 15, got his GED and scored a sweet job with UPS that he's kept for about 4 years. During all this time, he never really had a clique or posse of friends, but he has had four different girlfriends. He's met each one virtually (one in a Yahoo chat, one through Fbook, and two through Myspace I believe). This Thanksgiving I had the pleasure of meeting and speaking with his latest girlfriend, "Jessie". No matter how uninterested or preocuppied I pretended to be, she persisted to describe to me in great deal the AIM messages her and James exchanged that led their relationship to where it is now. She also proceeded to tell me how she is only 17 years-old and wants to marry James and start having children as soon as she turns 18 in seven months. Hah.

With such a strong, strange relationship these two have, one must wonder, "How did they find one another?", "What effect did the medium have on their getting together?" and "Will they last long-term?"The most significant theories that I can connect James and Jessies' preference for online love to are Wallace's "Attraction Factors". Wallace states that four factors (physical attraction, proximity, common ground and disinhibition effects) account for interpersonal attraction online. Physical attraction is perhaps the most important variable. In FtF interactions, many people judge or stereotype others based solely on looks first, then "get to know them". However, on the internet, individuals aren't constrained by physically attractiveness and usually get the opportunity to get to know one another without the bias of fortuante or unfortunate looks. Proximity online flows from intersection frequency. I believe that James and Jessie were able to first interact because they were in the same Yahoo chat room. Secondly, their frequent AIM conversations helped them interact frequently and therefore become very familiar and comfortable with one another. The next factor Wallace discusses is common ground. Part of Jessie and James' attraction to one another is their shared beliefs. They both live in southern Virginia, they are both very conservative and both value family. These shared beliefs probably helped them initiate conversations with one another and kept their conversations flowing smoothly. Lastly, Wallace describes the internets disinhibition effects. Similar to the Hypersonal process, individuals are more likely to self-disclose online in a shorter time period than they are in FtF conversations. As McKenna stated, the internet is a great medium for the "removal of gating features". Although James is very shy in FtF conversations, he feels much more comfortable to be himself and self-disclose online once these "gates" have been removed.

Stalking Our Way to Best Friends

Thinking back to the way I met my freshman year roommate – who turned out to be one of my best friends and my roommate again this year – I can distinctly remember leaving virtuality and meeting her in person for the first time. My best friend from summer camp had told me that Melissa and I just had to be roommates at Cornell, and, seeing as this was my best friend speaking, I knew she’d be right. Though Melissa and I at first interacted via CMC only, we ultimately met in person and grew closer by the day. Using the Uncertainty Reduction Theory (Berger & Calabrese, 1976) to explain our growing fondness for one another, I will explain how leaving virtuality was, for us, a great success.

According to URT, the uncertainty reduction process leads to affinity or attraction. At first, all I knew about my roommate from our mutual friend was her name, where she was from and some people she knew. Next, I stalked her a little. We became Facebook friends and I checked out her interests, music tastes and pictures. I asked my friend to tell me as much as she could about my roomie-to-be, and ultimately, we started talking online regularly. I liked her more each time we spoke and I found us to be more similar to one another, and anticipated meeting her in person as I knew we were bound to have a fantastic freshman year together.

Finally, on the way up to visit Cornell for a weekend in the spring of our senior year of high school, Melissa and I met. We were right in all we had thought about one another and continued to discover similarities between us all weekend. From that point on, both our CMC and FtF interactions increased. We kept in touch and made plans, and by the time we got to school we were already great friends.

As the Uncertainty Reduction Theory says, leaving virtuality was highly positive for Melissa and I. We had developed an in-depth relationship via the CMC media and successfully moved it to the real world. The more we knew about one another, the more we wanted to know and the more we spent time with each other. Thus, the theory was correct in assuming that the process of reducing uncertainty is beneficial both online and off!

11. We kind of know eachother. Right?

Before freshman year, I met my college roommate online. A common friend of ours thought we would get along and our friendship began over instant-messenger. During high-school, we had been over this common friend’s house at the same time at a party and another time to play poker, but we had never introduced ourselves or really knew each other at all. Thus, our online conversations were the first conversations we had, even though we had a vague idea of who each other was. The first things we talked upon were based on common ground such as sports interests and common friends, but the theory that best describes how our friendship left virtuality (from the online-realm to the real-world) is SIDE theory.

SIDE theory takes into consideration two main factors: whether the person is anonymous and whether the person identifies as an individual or a group member. Online, when talking about common ground interests (one of McKenna’s factors) such as sports, we identified as individuals because for example, even though we both love baseball, he was a Mets fan and I was a Yankees fan, so we both held our individual identities. Using this example, I liked him because we both liked baseball, but less so that he did not root for the Yankees as I did. The first time we met to hang out together in person was at a party that a Cornell freshman hosted for other incoming Cornell freshman. The situation obviously brought to the forefront hat we had a lot in common with regards to our new in-group as Cornell students. We met new friends who were also attending Cornell, and talked about things that we both knew about the school.

So, we were not visually anonymous, and we shared a group identity when we met in person, while online we were visually anonymous and held individual identity. And, in fact, we liked each other more after our initial offline meeting. This is consistent with SIDE in the sense that we departed from our individual identities online and our in-group identities became more salient offline. This was likely due to the fact that we went to a party with all future Cornell students and that we expected positive responses from in-group topics such as discussion about the dorm rooms and sports teams. So, we had a positive impression of each other online, but liked each other even more offline, thus showing that our attraction as friends increased as we left virtuality.

Comm 245 Blue: 11- So I guess I'm your roommate....
Comm 245 Blue: Assignment 11: Coming to College

11-Meeting my best friend online...

A few years ago, I tried out for and made a soccer team that played international competition in Israel. The team was made up of girls from across the country, and most of us had never met before. A few weeks before the team got together, we were provided with each other's emails. Immediately we all began getting to know one another since we were going to be doing everything with each other for the month that we were going to be traveling together. Over those few weeks, I became close with many of the girls, solely by our Instant Messenger conversations. However, there was one girl that I developed a really close friendship with even before we had ever met. She is still one of my best friend's today.

I believe that this opposes the Ramirez and Wang study for many reasons. First, our entire friendship was based on the fact that we both knew we would be meeting each other within the next few weeks. This is different from many of the studies on CMC v. FtF relationships since most of those develop out of two strangers meeting online, and having the ability to meet in real life but it not necessarily happening. This was not the case for me, so with both of us already expecting to meet each other, we were very truthful and open about what we chose to speak about. Our eventual meeting and subsequent continued friendship was even better than it was in CMC rather than Ramirez and Wang's theory that our friendship should have suffered in a negative and disappointing way. It has been three years, and we are still extremely close.

Another contradiction to this model is the notion of long term versus short term and how to define these. While my friend and I onyl conversed for a few weeks before we met, our conversations were really enjoyable, in depth and long. Some would look to classify this as a short term association, which would agree with the Ramirez and Wang hypothesis that short term associations in CMC will provide for social information to be evaluated more positively. But, on the other hand, others including myself would consider the interactions long term since not only did we interact a lot within those few weeks, but we also knew that our interaction would continue more long term offline since we would be playing on a team together. This interpretation of the interaction means that my situation conflicts with the Ramirez and Wang study since they predict that long term associations will provide for social information to be evaluated more negatively. My situation was and still is being evaluated positively.

I would agree with Joseph Walther's Social Information Processing theory in regards to my situation. While my friendship did initially develop online, Ally and I became closer and closer as we finally met and time went on. Our online conversations were extremely interesting, enjoyable, and we did learn a lot about each other, but it was not until we actually met and could experience things together that our friendship solidified. All of our initial online perceptions of each other eventually faded and were either confirmed or simply replaced with other feelings. I would not per se say that my impressions of Ally were "negative" online, but since we learned so much about one another in such a short amount of time, I hardly expected that we could have become closer. I expected that our friendship would dwindle, and the hyperpersonal model would take effect in that our extremely close friendship would start to perish as we actually met. However, I was wrong and to this day, Ally and I still remain best friends. This is why I think that the SIP model fits our relationship the best. While it does not necessarily show a contradiction between my online relationship and my offline relationship, it does show an online to offline success story!

http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/2007/11/11-so-i-guess-im-your-roommate.html
http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/2007/11/11-this-is-embarrassing.html

11 - Leaving virtuality, a relationship story

One of my closest friendships began several years ago on a Buffalo Sabres forum. While I was aware of my friend's existence within this space before we started talking, it wasn't until we both found out (in a thread unrelated to the Sabres, actually) that we were attending the same college at that time (he as an undergrad, me as a high school senior taking classes), and were in fact taking the same class (at different times in the day, however). After this, we exchanged our AIM information and frequently chatted online. Given the fact that we lived very close to each other, we decided to meet up one day at the college. This was several months after we first began conversing on CMC. Since then, we frequently correspond with each other both on and off line, and we have a very close relationship.

This experience goes against Ramirez & Wang's study which states that meeting a person face-to-face with whom you've been communicating via CMC leads to an enhancement effect, and that this effect results in disappointment and a negative overall effect. The study also concludes that time is an important factor and that short-term associations that leave virtuality will experience more positive effects. As for long-term associations, the effect will be more negative. As I mentioned, my friend and I are still extremely close and get along very well. My impression of him did not suffer a negative effect, despite the fact that our relationship could be considered a long-term association according to the Ramirez & Wang study.

The theory that most supports my online-offline relationship is Berger and Calabrese's Uncertainty Reduction Theory which suggests that more information about a person online will lead to more liking and intimacy in the relationship. The overall effect of leaving virtuality also tends to be positive. As my friend and I conversed online, we found more in common with one another, and we often had long, enjoyable conversations. When the relationship moved offline, our impressions of one another did not change, nor did our interactions.

In addition to this theory, however, I do believe things like McKenna's attraction factors also come into play. For example, my friend and I were drawn to each other because we had common interests--the Sabres and the college we were attending. Also, the fact that we could identify ourselves as members of two distinct groups (both of which we would consider in-groups) suggests that our relationship supports the SIDE theory. SIDE predicts that when moving from individuality into an in-group, the interaction tends to be more positive. This was true for our initial meeting, and was further backed up by the fact that we both decided to first meet each other face-to-face at the location of one of our groups (the college).

11 Friends through Facebook

I met a friend through Facebook over summer before attending Cornell as a freshman. Online he struck me as a confident person who prefers excessively orderly and regulated interactions. I made this assessment mainly because he uses proper capitalization and punctuation more often than people normally would on informal communication spaces like IM and Facebook. Through his Facebook profile, I discovered that he and I were both members of the incoming class of 2009 at Cornell, and we were both attempting to major in computer science. This lead me to believe that he and I had a lot in common we could talk about.

We then met by chance when we both enrolled in the same chemistry lab time slot during our first semester. I learned that he was much more easygoing and casual than I had initially suspected. Furthermore, he seemed to stand out as a smart kid even among Cornell students, and he did share my enthusiasm for all things computer science. Needless to say we became good friends soon thereafter.

This relationship is most consistent with the hyperpersonal model. The hyperpersonal model predicts that expectation violation caused by the CMC-to-FtF switch will cause the initial impression valence to switch. That is, a negative CMC impression will become positive when exaggerated negative impressions are downsized in FtF, and a positive CMC impression will become negative as the person cannot live up to the exaggerated impressions in FtF. In my case, I formed a negative impression on CMC (excessive orderliness). This impression was outright rejected when I got to know him in FtF. As predicted by the hyperpersonal model, my impression of him became positive once I realized his negative trait was almost non-existant.

My experience also directly contradicts SIDE. My friend was part of the same group as I was (Cornell, freshman, computer science), and yet this similarity did not destroy our friendship in FtF. The timing of the switch from CMC to FtF might explain this. Since we were new to college life, it feels more important than usual to reach out to your peers for friendship and support. This is especially true if such peers share your intended major. Had my friendship with this person left virtuality later in my college career, I would not have valued our similarities as much. Then perhaps the SIDE prediction would manifest: individual differences would cause a negative outcome for leaving virtuality.

The period of CMC interaction before leaving virtuality was about 2-3 weeks. This is closer to the “short-term association” category used in the Ramirez & Wang study. Ramirez & Wang predicted that a short-term association would lead to a more positive evaluation and a greater reduction in uncertainty when leaving virtuality. My impression did become more positive and uncertainty was reduced when I met my friend FtF for the first time, so my experience supports the conclusion reached by Ramirez & Wang.

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11: from online to a new house

A relationship which first formed online and then moved to face to face interactions is my distant cousin and his wife. It all happened on match.com. My cousin at the time was already in a marriage, and he was sneaking this “online affair” on the side. Once he realized that he had fallen in love with this new woman, and out of love with his current wife, he asked for a divorce, and went to meet up with the new love. Our family was shocked and appalled that anyone we knew would do such a cruel thing to another human being, let alone a partner in which they had had two children together. From what I can tell, my cousin and his new wife are very, very happy. They have a great life together and seem to enjoy each other’s company immensely. This shows that moving the relationship from computer mediated communication to face to face interaction allowed the relationship to move to the next level. Clearly intimacy and social interaction online were not problems for my cousin and his love. The article by Ramirez and Wang talked about face to face interactions being made better in “early” stages but more strongly negatively effected in the “late switching”. There seemed to be nothing negative about Bill and Carol’s switch from online to face to face interactions. It has been five or six years now and this happy couple remain in good spirits and company. Our family is shocked that this relationship has lasted, but I guess we are happy for my cousin and his new wife. However, our heart goes out to his first wife, who clearly never saw this “online affair” coming until it was too late. But as scaring as this is for her, it must be a tiny-bit reassuring to know that her ex-husband found “true love” online and not just a little fling that didn’t last for long. This relationship supports the Social Information Processing Theory which talks about time and adaptation as the key elements. This theory says that with enough time, impressions over CMC can be as strong as Ftf interaction. With enough time, Bill and Carol formed very lasting impressions which caused sparks to fly and a deep love to form.

Hayleigh Hotshot Meets Second Life

For the tenth assignment, I chose to experience Second Life for the first time. Yee and Bailenson performed a study on the Proteus effect: the effect of transformed self-representation on behavior. Their main assertion is that our self representations are a significant and instantaneous impact on our behavior. Specifically, they claim that the appearances of our avatars shape how we interact with others. Keeping Yee and Bailenson’s studies in mind, I strategically constructed Hayleigh Hotshot to give me credible grounds for analyzing her appearance’s effect on my behavior on Second Life.

I purposely made Hayleigh Hotshot noticeably attractive with desirable attributes. At the same time, I tried to make her somewhat similar to me in real life so I could observe any differences with my behavior on Second Life and my behavior in real life. At first, when I was going through the tutorial, I was a bit frustrated because I didn’t understand what I had to do and I didn’t get a chance to interact with anyone. Soon enough I found that once I was off the initial island, there was never a dull moment in my Second Life experience.

Now it may be that I was more confident than I normally would have been in real life because, looking at my avatar, I felt ‘pretty’ and I guess the other people behind the avatars surrounding me caught on to that spunky confidence right away. Through one of their studies, Yee and Bailenson observed that participants who had more attractive avatars exhibited increased self-disclosure and were more willing to approach opposite-gendered strangers. My experience was consistent with this observation. In real life, I am usually shy when I interact with the opposite sex and it takes a long time before I am willing to open up to others. It was somewhat a surprise to me that when I went on Second Life as Hayleigh Hotshot, I immediately acted more attractively. From my experience in high school and college, I assumed that girls who were approachable and bubbly generally appealed to the opposite sex. Therefore, when others approached me in Second Life, I was very open and honest, disclosing personal interests that I never would have in real life.

Another factor that affected my behavior was the fact that I am 4’11 in real life, but I made my avatar 5’4. Oddly enough, those extra five inches did quite a bit to boost my confidence. Yee and Bailenson observed in another simulation that taller avatars were more confident in negotiation-oriented situations. In a way, I was more confident and took on the attitude of feeling like I was entitled to special treatment and a greater amount of respect from others just because I was taller. I definitely noticed that I got more attention from avatars of the opposite sex than female avatars that were shorter than me. I was also a lot more confident than the shorter female avatars.

In conclusion, Yee and Bailenson’s simulations surprisingly lined up with my experiences on Second Life. I was surprised because when I read the article I thought it was ridiculous to think that the appearance of an avatar could influence one’s interaction with others in an online environment. The Second Life and Yee and Bailenson’s studies opened my eyes and made me aware of the reality of online environments and the effects of self-representation on individual behavior, self-disclosure and inclination to interact with the opposite sex.

http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/2007/11/assignment-10-not-my-second-life.html

http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/2007/11/10-free-warcraft-for-ex-cons.html

Assignment 10: Feared and Revered

I decided to play the MMORPG, City of Heroes, where the game space is fashioned like a metropolis that you would find in the comic books. The purpose of the game is to join forces with other heroes to defeat various villains throughout the game. Over time, with the completion of missions, you will level up which advances your superpowers. The central location is the courthouse where the other superhero characters congregate to meet each other. Sometimes people are sitting there trying to find other people to play with, other times you can find people just socializing or dancing with themselves. At a certain time of day, you can even find the avatars engaging in a costume contest. The superheroes ranged from figments of peoples’ imaginations to archetypes of famous superheroes, such as Superman and Wonderwomen.

Upon starting the game, you must start your own superhero. I decided to be a vampire, who decided to turn into a Superhero—similar to a female Blade. I tried to make her look like a Vampire through giving her gray skin, red eyes, and dressing her in bad-ass gothic clothing; she wore tight black leather pants, tall boots, and a shirt with lots of straps all over it. Also, I tired to make her superpowers match her character; I gave her the power of dark melee, because vampires often have super-strength and they are magical creatures, and I gave her the super-jump power because over time she would learn how to fly, another aspect characteristic of vampires. Since I did not feel like finding a team, I asked my friend to play with me. He made himself into a Juggernaut-type character and off into the game we went.

When I entered the game, I felt more like a villain than a superhero. My costume was dark and dreary and Paragon City was a bright place filled with colorful people. I instantly felt the effects of behavioral confirmation. Behavioral confirmation is “the process whereby the expectation of one person case another person to behave in ways that confirm the perceiver’s expectations.” The majority of the characters did not approach me, I am assuming because of my evil appearance; which in turn, lead me to be more antisocial. My partner and I stayed away from the populated areas and I just assumed my role as the aloof evil character. Only some of the other malevolent characters would shout random comments. It became apparent at that point that there were certain group norms for this psychological space. The stereotype was that the dark or evil looking heroes were solemn, unfriendly, completely unapproachable, and were often rude. You could tell the difference in the characters by looking around the courthouse. The “dark” heroes were often somberly grouped together and they showcased their powerful dark magic; whereas the other “typical” heroes were socializing and dancing. As I tested the waters, I found that it was easy to be initiated into the typical hero group—you just had to be friendly.

But I did not want to be part of the typical heroes, I wanted to be a dark hero, feared and revered. My reason for this desire is the fact that I was trying to portray a vampire, how would anyone ever believe I was a vampire if I was prancing around and smiling like a nymph. Therefore, I changed my behavior to mimic that of the dark group: I did not dance, smile, or laugh and I kept my conversations short and quick. My next step into being accepted was leveling up my dark magic powers, so I could be recognized. In this case, it is difficult to discern whether my behavior followed SIDE theory or the Proteus Effect. SIDE theory argues that “factors that lead to deindividuation, such as anonymity, might thus reinforce group salience and conformity to group norms,” whereas Proteus effect emphasizes “conformity to individual identity cues.” Although I was conforming to the local group norms of the “dark” heroes (SIDE theory), the behaviors that I decided to replicate were based on my vampire avatar (Proteus Effect).

Assignment 10 - Not my Second Life

In Yee and Bailenson's article "The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed Self-Representation on Behavior (2007)," a pair of studies were conducted during which individuals were assigned an avatar that was either attractive or unattractive and made to interact in a collaborative virtual environment. Each user is aware of only "their" version of the digital rendering; in other words, the target may perceive their avatar as attractive, whereas a perceiver sees the target as unattractive. This was done to minimize the possibility of behavioral confirmation (in this case, mutual perception of attractiveness and both target and perceiver responding accordingly).

The basis of the Proteus Effect is the expectation that individuals will conform to the behavior that others expect them to have based on the stereotyped identity of their avatars. Yee and Bailenson put forth three hypotheses:

1st Study

-Interpersonal distance - according to Burgoon's (1978) nonverbal expectancy theory, when attractive individuals violate 'nonverbal expectancies' (e.g. moving into someone's personal space), "the positive valence that is created can be socially advantageous." Assuming attractive individuals are more confident, they would more readily approach others and stand in closer proximity than individuals perceiving themselves as unattractive.

-Self-disclosure - because attractive individuals are more likely to be extroverted and more friendly, they would be exhibit higher self-disclosure and volunteer more information about themselves overall.

2nd Study

- According to literature on attractiveness, taller people are perceived to be more competent, more desirable romantic partners, and possess leadership qualities. The third hypothesis assumes that individuals with avatars in the tall condition would behave in a more confident manner.

To test these hypotheses, I entered the game Second Life, a 3-D virtual world that is almost entirely user-built and populated by millions of individual players. Since there is no specific goal or purpose of the game aside from exploration and interaction with others, I figured it would be the ideal space.

I created my avatar to be very stereotypically attractive and completely unrelated to my actual appearance: blond hair, blue eyes, slender and relatively tall. Once I found a decently populated area (it didn't take long), in most cases, I didn't even have to initiate conversation since other users approached me almost immediately. According to Yee and Bailenson's first hypothesis, I would be more likely to stand closer to those I interacted with. I definitely stood closer to other people than I ever would face-to-face, however, I would say that this has less to do with the attractiveness of my avatar and more to do with the fact that a) the controls were slightly awkward, and b) there were so many players in this particular area that my avatar kept getting "bumped" in one direction or the other, so the closeness was usually unintentional.

In terms of self-disclosure, I am not prone to divulging information about myself to strangers online or offline, so no increase in this area occurred. With regards to height, I doubt this can be accurately assessed given that the point of the game is to approach others and communicate and, in my case, others more readily approached me. Any increase in confidence can be attributed to the fact that this was conducted in an online environment, and various other theories predict a higher degree of extroversion and self-disclosure based on the relative anonymity inherent to most online spaces (Joinson 2001). What's also notable is the fact that I was able to choose my avatar, customize it down to the finest detail, and was perfectly aware of how it appeared to others whereas the individuals involved in the Yee and Bailenson study were pre-assigned avatars. In short, these theories seem to apply situationally and seem to be a better predictor of the behavior of others (note how readily others approached my avatar - this may be due to attractiveness on some level). Either way, there are too many variables involved in this case to be able to support or negate what the studies proposed.

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