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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