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.
2 comments:
Your experience also seems to agree with Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT). Even after long-term interaction online, both of you must have picked up new cues when meeting in FtF for the first time. If none of the new information gained had a significant negative valence (which I venture is the case), you now know more neutral and/or positive things about the person, increasing your attraction. At the very least, meeting and conversing in FtF allowed you to confirm that the other person actually was honest and didn’t lie about himself. This indirectly reduces your uncertainty by providing you with confirmation for everything you had to take his word for online.
I found it interesting how long and short terms were defined in the Ramirez and Wang paper. Short term was considered 3 weeks interaction where as long term was around 6 weeks interaction if I understood it correctly. In my opinion, their ‘long term’ seems more like a ‘medium’ term, especially in comparison to the two years you spent interacting online before meeting. In essence, for the short term, meeting offline would provide a grounding point boosting attraction as now finally something solid about someone else could be formed. For their long term, what I would call intermediate, one may think they know the other, but meeting in real life may very well conflict with those ‘I think so’ thoughts. Whereas, your application of SIP over 2 years definitely hit the spot. The sheer amount of time allowed you to generate a strong, solid, close to the truth image. In the end, I would say that both you and the original Ramirez and Wang hypothesis are right, simply the Ramirez and Wang hypothesis should have said intermediate term rather than long term, after all 6 weeks in the grand scheme of things is nothing.
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