I have participated in fantasy sports drafts several times before, but never with complete strangers in a “Public League”. The league I joined is one of thousands of free leagues conducted on Yahoo.com. Although the league was free to join, the commissioner prospective participants “apply” for a team to attract users who would take the league seriously even though it is free. In my brief “application” I stated my name, what state I am from, my favorite team, and my experiences doing fantasy leagues in the past.
In the draft chat room, users are identified by a self-selected team name and click a button to make a pick when it is his or her turn. Nobody is required to use the chat feature, but I found myself in conversation with about 5 of the league members throughout the draft.
The one user who I found myself intrigued with most based on first impressions was identified by his team name “Jettts”. After, I selected Patriot’s quarterback Tom Brady in the 3rd round of the draft, the user “Jettts” wrote, “Overrated”. The Jet fan never wrote “good pick” like other users did, but was much more prone to making a rude comment such as. “Overrated”. In short, he did not have an agreeable personality and tended to express disapproval of others rather than approval.
Jettt’s was very open about sharing personal information such as how he grew up in Florida and his story about how he became a Jets fan. Since the commissioner already knew some personal information from the “application”, users were probably more prone to reveal the personal information that was already revealed to the commissioner. Most shared information was football-related but still fairly personal.
As for extraversion, “Jettts” was quick to voice his opinions of the league participants and NFL players/teams. This related to a fairly high-degree of neuroticism since Jettts wanted to get his opinion noticed in the quickly flowing synchronous chat. As for conscientiousness, part of fantasy football is trash-talking and mind games, which relates to how people chose to display their comments.
I do have an undeveloped impression of “Jettts”, but it is not entirely explained by Cues Filtered Out perspective. There is a lot missing with the lack of facial expression or tone of voice in a chat room, but there are other cues online about a person’s personality. For example, a person who took the full 2 minutes for each of their picks was labeled indecisive but a person who took a mere 10 seconds was labeled decisive. Situations like this were more cause me to form more intense impressions of people than CFO perspective would suggest.
My first impressions of “Jettts” most closely fits the Hyperpersonal model. The breadth of the conversation was contained to the subject matter of the chat room, but the opinions and comments “Jettts” made were immediately and often with exclamation marks which made the intensity of the comments resonate and allow me to form impressions of him. Selective self-perception was involved because the information available to form his identity online was the information he decided to reveal. I also believe Jettts felt a need for behavioral confirmation. He knew I thought of him as a die-hard Jets fan so he felt the need to make pro-Jet and negative comments about the Jet’s rivals.
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3 comments:
Hopefully I’ll say something more interesting than Tara up there :). I thought your idea about “Jettts” seeking behavioral confirmation was an interesting interpretation of the encounter; however, I would be interested in how others in the chat room were responding to his pro-Jets comments. Were others paying much attention to his claims? I think an important step in the behavioral confirmation loop is how others treated him. Once he established himself as pro-Jets, were the others treating him that way? If the others responded to his jabs and fed his behavior, it would perhaps explain why he was so outspoken.
However, if none of the other owners were fueling Jettts’ fire, would it necessarily be an example of behavioral confirmation? In that case, it could just be an example of an extreme personality trait.
Hey Daniel,
I found your experience very intriguing. It seems to fit very well with the Hyperpersonal Model of Walther we spoke about in class, as you stated in your post. Although I agree with Jettts about Tom Brady, I see the model in use when you stated that Jettts “did not have an agreeable personality”. You based your judgment of his entire personality on the few comments of his you saw throughout the draft. Walther’s model states that you are using the over-attribution process and overestimated his traits due to the lack of information you have on him.
It is very interesting to see this model in effect in real life in a place as unexpected as an online draft. One does not think about all the online personalities that would be shown there. I can see how after taking this class you may begin to analyze everyone you meet online. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, we shall see.
Oh the diehard fan! While I agree with your analysis of the situation, I think it would be interesting to explore how much the fact that you were in fantasy football league affected Jettts presented self. When it comes to a passion, people's personalities can flip completely. I know that one of my uncles is a pretty mellow guy for the most part, usually quiet, easy going and open, but put him in front of the World Cup finals with Brazil and he turns into one of the most extroverted persons I know, eager to talk about and criticize the game. He'll barely sit down for the whole match. It would have been intriguing if you could have convinced Jettts to divulge some more information to see whether his actions were a result of Football craze or his real normal personality.
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