I felt a little awkward going online to seek out a "target" to do this assignment on. I did not know what kind of chat room would be the best to go to, so I ended up using the AOL chat room and wound up talking to this 23-year-old guy named Jon, from West Point, NY. He was very open and talked to me and told me pretty much anything about himself freely. I did not have to offer facts about myself so much and yet he would still share things about himself to me. He told me things such as where he lives, to what his parents’ occupations are, to what he aspires to be, even down to his nicknames. I was caught off-guard as to why he, or anyone, would talk so openly to an online-stranger.
During the conversation I felt like the social information was lacking because the conversations were text based CMCs and not face-to-face where one could see how Jon was actually acting and how he presented himself through his body language, pitch in his voice, how he handled himself, etc. My impression I took away from him was more based along the lines of Social Information Processing (SIP): assuming that through time, by the looks of the information gathered just in one sitting, I could know this person well through CMCs. I seriously think that if I had asked him for his address he would have given me it no ifs, ands, or buts. I find this notion very interesting and almost absurd. Why do people feel so compelled to open up to someone and so trusting toward people they do not know and could potentially be a stalker or someone dangerous?
It is hard to make such judgments from such a sort period of time. If this were an assignment that were to be run longer, or had other aspects involved with it, than it would allow one to make better assumptions and potentially have concrete evidence as to whether these conversations really play out to be SIP, or Hyperpersonal. However, my target would not fall under Cues Filtered Out predictions since the impressions were not neutral, negative or really undeveloped (aside from the social cues lacking which goes with the SIP assumption).
So, will we ever really know Jon? According the SIP this could be the case after a certain amount of time through CMCs. But I think I will stick to the old fashioned way: face-to-face.
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4 comments:
I wonder if part of Jon's openness to share information about himself was his way of presenting an "ideal self." Also, due to the fact that it was CMC, perhaps he felt the need to tell you more about himself because you can't pick up on the cues you would normally have in face to face communication. Aside from his openness, though, did you form any impressions based off of the four other traits? I'd be curious to know if you found him to be more or less neurotic, for example.
By the way you describe Jon, it almost seems as if he is rather lonely, desperate to make a friend or even just to talk to someone. This is where alot of his openess could come from. Also, Jon's openness could be due to the fact that chat rooms provide enough anonymity that he knows you two will probably never meet. This would give him the ideal opportunity for him to describe his "ideal self," as Karen mentioned above. But it is quite curious what exactly makes a person feel so safe disclosing themself to a perfect stranger.
You made it quite clear that Jon is a very open individual(atleast in this setting), but what is he like based on the other four personality traits? It seems like Jon is also quite extroverted(atleast in this setting) due to the fact that he had no problem answering your questions, even though you didn't have to disclose any information about yourself.
~Will
To some degree I believe your impresions do fit the hyperpersonal model. He was very open online and that makes you believe he is a very open person in real-life although you did mention that is difficult to know for sure without social cues. It is possible this person feels more comfortable chatting online then in real life. The part of your conversation that does suprise me, as Will commented as well, is that is was prettymuch a one-sided conversation. You were forming an impession about him as he disclosed information about himself, meanwhile maybe his impression of you was that you are a good online "listener" and he was very comfortable talking with you. While John was probably presenting his "ideal self" what self-image were you trying to present to him?
I agree with Daniel, it does appear that some of your impression fits the hypersonal model. But something else I found interesting, is that you believed that he was an open person, which I assumed made you automatically think that he was honest too. Did you ever consider that he could be lying. Why would someone devulge that much personal information? --maybe because they're making it up. The truth is, he could be a sad person trying to portray his ideal self, or he could be someone bored and messing around online and thought that this might be a fun persona to play around with for the day. Since Jon gave you so much information and did not ask you to reciprocate did he get you to trust him?
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