Introduction
On February 25, 2008 Fatxkat posted a video of herself and her friend on youtube.com. The video consists of two young overweight women dancing in their sport bras, short shorts, and soft hanging bellies to Shakira’s “no fighting” song in a TV room. She had 704,274 viewers, 421 of which rated her video as a favorite. At the bottom laid 680 comments which fell within one of the 4 categories of thoughts:
1) people who expressed outrageous surprise and qualified them as very confident
2) others insulted them with highly derogatory phrases
3) some were sexually attracted
4) many supported and defended them against other attacking commentators
It was interesting to see that most of the negative or sexual comments came from male named profiles (and thus I assume were written by men), and the shocked and celebratory viewers had more typically female names (and thus I assume were written by women). Aside from the different perspectives between sexes, there was an overall battle between those who were happy that the status quo of female beauty was finally challenged by these girls who carried themselves as comfortable as top models vs. those who were firmly against such challenge. The author rarely responded to comments, and when she did they were brief, light-hearted, and witty. I assess from the video and her comments that she seems very comfortable with her body, she smiled a lot in the video, was energetic and had playful movements, emphasizing her awareness of her weight (as she tumbled her belly left and right while expressing that she weighed 165lbs).
Analysis of Her Electronic Space
But I move on to examine her blog, which is linked to her video. She keeps herself partially anonymous, but describes herself as a 19yr old, “fat,” “very white,” “blue-eyed,” “brown-haired” girl named “Kat.” She begins her blog on the day of her birthday, and states she started it in order to discuss “…lame ass shit that happens in my life that doesn't really affect anybody else, but you all get to find out anyway.” It appears that although she seems self-assured in her video, in writing she has a lower sense of self-worth and is thus trying to connect with others. She follows a pattern which involves writing something negative about her life, makes a joke, and then coats both with a positive comment. She does not show high levels of neuroticism, but she is painfully sarcastic. She describes the confrontations her two other friends are battling with, yet she does not get involved in them, she is neutral, and therefore does not have an aggressive behavior.
She writes as if she were speaking out loud, but acknowledges that no one is reading, and thus is only writing to herself, but is hopeful others might care. This hopefulness is a positive attribute (views the glass half-full), along with her humorous and creative remarks, and would consequently qualify her for high levels of agreeableness. She seems easily excitable, writing hooray and yay every so often. Along with her creativity and humor, she can be poetic ex: “that’s the beauty of the internet, you cannot unsay, but you can untype.” She also shows a degree of comfort with her sexuality since she makes several sexual remarks. In addition she brings a sense of randomness to her typing as she injects a dialogue of someone ordering a MarioParty videogame at a fast-food establishment, as well as spending several paragraphs on confusing details about her rent payment.
Such self-involving comments, imagination, and sarcasm makes me think that she is someone that openly speaks up among her circle of friends, but has low levels of extroversion overall because she mostly interacts with her 3 friends and doesnt have much to talk about in her blog. But she does like tanning, dying her hair blonde, and buying clothes, which are common activities in America’s popular culture. But she did post a video of herself that rejects social norms, which shows she doesn’t really care what others think of her.
She demonstrates high levels of openness to experience by mentioning that she is moving in with her friends into an apartment in Japan. She also pictures herself dancing around and rubbing her “fat” around the rooms before actually filling them with her belongings, which tells me that she is not a very conscientious person, and thus her romantic free-lancing explains that she is not as concerned with tasks as she is with having fun. But she is organized since her and her friends have planned out the themes for each room.
Overall she seems like a very warm person, but it is still unknown if her confidence is rooted from an invisibility complex she suffers from, and thus by flaunting her negative traits people cant’ make fun of her since she already makes fun of herself. Or she views criticism as superficial and believes that other things are more important to focus on and therefore disregards what others might say. In this case my impression is more in line with a HYPERPERSONAL prediction since she is portrayed as highly confident. This may be an over-attribution due to selective self presentation since we only see her through the materials she posts such as her video and her 3 entry blog. I think there is more to Kat, but only one side of her story is portrayed. By doing this exercise, I realized this. Analyzing Kat’s blog more in-depth, one can see that there are more layers to the onion.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Instant Messaging With A Stranger
For my psychological space I used my AOL account to enter a chat room named "Just for fun," which I used to tell a stranger to instant message me. Within minutes of posting my screen name, two strangers, both male, instant messaged me. As a side note, my AOL account is clearly female. I chose an instant message psychological space because I wanted to have a synchronous conversation with a stranger. I chose the specific target "tbtoastpimp2" to hold a conversation with. However, I spoke with the other stranger as well, and found it interesting that when both strangers asked for my age/sex/location and I said that I was 20 (I didn't think that anyone would want to talk to a 16 year old), they both replied that they were 20 as well. What are the odds?
In terms of the "Big 5" personality traits, I reached the conclusion that "tbtoastpimp2" was extraverted about certain topics. He was willing to elaborate on his occupation and school. It is hard to tell if he is conscientious because he said that he was "working and gonna go back to school," and later said, "I love my job." However, this does not say much about how hard working he actually is. He seemed to be agreeable because he responded appropriately to my comments. We generally had the same opinions, and had the same common interests. In terms of neuroticism, he seemed to have a laid back personality. When I asked him if he went on the chat rooms often, he replied "no, just really bored, and its nasty outside right now, so im watching tv and on here." However, I understand that this is a limited analysis of his personality because we did not disagree on anything in the conversation, so I did not see a moody or anxious side of him (if he has one). It was hard to tell if "tbtoastpimp2" was open to experience. We discussed a variety of topics including school, his occupation (bar-tending), greek life, friends, and more, but these topics were all familiar to him. Although I can speculate about "tbtostoimp2's" personality, I understand that my conclusions are limited, especially considering that he was a complete stranger, and that we only talked for twenty-five minutes.
An example of the limitations of CMC is that when "tbtoastpimp2" initiated the conversation, he said "hola." This can be interpreted as "holla" (slang for hello) or as "hola" (Spanish for hello). I chose to interpret it as "holla," and based on the syntax of the rest of the conversation, I was correct in my assertion. Based on the overall conversation, my impression of "tbtoastpimp2" was more in line with the Hyperpersonal Model by Walther in 1996. As discussed above, although I could speculate about "tbtoastpimp2's" personality, my conclusions were limited, and therefore my breadth was limited. I was only able to judge him on a small amount of characteristics based on a twenty-five minute conversation. Also, during the conversation I realized I was judging the stranger on everything he wrote, which led to exaggerated and intense impressions of him. This also fits in with the Fundamental Attribution Error. For example, when I ended the conversation, his goodbye consisted of "ok babe, ill ttyl, muahz," which left an intense, and slightly negative, impression on me. His send-off was a dispositional attribution; his way of saying goodbye wasn't what I would consider normal, and therefore, by the end of the conversation I didn't think that he was normal (even though we got along throughout the conversation). I thought it was strange that after only twenty-five minutes, he felt that we were close enough to communicate like close friends. This also proved to me that intense impressions go both ways.
Questing with a Night Elf
For this assignment I chose to look at a space I’m very familiar with. I chose to study someone from World of Warcraft (WoW), a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG). I’ve played this game for about 2 years. My main purpose playing it is to advance through the game and not so much for the social interactions. The interactions in this space are very task oriented, basically people only get together to complete quests or take on challenging monsters. Few people in the game actually engage in real role playing, but there are many other different factors that make this virtual environment interesting.
In WoW you can form parties in order to explore the game with other people. I decided to look for someone to do a couple of quests with. I found someone with the nickname Strydessa who was willing to complete a few quests with me. Strydessa’s avatar is a female, night elf who has reached the highest level possible in the game. Something that people notice in WoW is the type of armor that you wear, the better armor you have the more hardcore of a gamer you probably are. Strydessa’s armor was of the best type, which told me she spent a lot of time playing the game with many other people. The avatar’s gender doesn’t really tell me much about the person behind the keyboard, most people know that a lot of guys tend to pick female avatars because other guys would be more polite to them by giving them money, or even just because it is something better to look at in your screen.
We started doing our quests and I realized that this person was very talkative. At the same time she was also very demanding, which was not to my liking. The person also seemed to be very careless and did a lot of things without consulting with me first, which resulted in us having very bad communication and in result we died a couple of times. Strydessa did apologize to me the couple of times we died. I didn’t get upset about dying, I rarely do ever get upset and I had just met this person so even if I was, I wasn’t going to show them. After we were done with our quests, I asked Strydessa what her real gender was, Strydessa told me she was actually a guy who lives in Ohio. This of course did not come as a shock to me since it was something I expected. We said thanks to each other and left the party we formed.
My experience with Strydessa allowed me to form an impression of this person’s character. Strydessa didn’t seem like a neurotic person, from the actions and the way Strydessa expressed herself I could deduce that they were very laid back and somewhat careless. The way Strydessa acted also led me to think they were extroverted, she/he was very talkative. I can’t really rate the person on openness since I didn’t really spend a long amount of time talking to them, and our conversations were mainly task oriented. I also can’t rate this person on agreeableness, since we didn’t have the opportunity to discuss things that needed an agreement, but I found this person to be very careless about their actions.
I feel my impressions were in line with the Hyperpersonal model and the SIP theory. When I first saw Strydessa’s avatar I had the impression that this person was going to be a very serious, task oriented player who might want very little social interaction and focus more on the task at hand. I put a lot of weight on one of the few cues the game gives me, which was the armor they wear. I assumed that very good armor meant a very good, serious gamer. But, as we interacted more I came to realize that this was not true. The way Strydessa behaved when we were questing together suggested to me that they were very careless and I felt that if I had spent more time or perhaps done more serious stuff with them, I would have eventually disliked this person. The hyperpersonal model explains my immediate impression of Strydessa, while SIP theory explains why overtime I would have eventually gotten annoyed at this person.
"Donovan": Into the Deep
“Why don’t you try my friend’s web comic? The main character of the comic is himself and he can always use new readers.” Not knowing whom this person was, I was intrigued of my friend’s idea of learning about a person through a comical representation of his life and decided to give it a try. Half an hour or so later, I was able to make some clear remarks on “Donovan” through not only the visual representation that he has given to himself but the choices of topics and words he uses in it.
The very first panel of the first comic that was drawn shows a male with dark hair, holding a can of soda smiling happily. The second panel shows the male drinking the can of soda. The last panel shows a skeleton holding the same can of soda with an angry face. The comic proceeds with jokes of the sort that varies between everyday observations (Seinfeld-style), puns, video games, derogatory jokes, and alcohol consumption. Not knowing anything about this person (only that he is a friend of my friend), my first impression of this person throughout the beginning of the comic was that he was a fairly young white male from a small town and had little experience outside of a stereotypical “gamer”.
I decided to proceed to learn more about this person through the web comic in hopes of changing my negative opinions of “Donovan”. I eventually went through about 200+ comics in the span of that half an hour and more topics were exposed. It appeared to me that he was indeed rather young (not having started college yet at the start of the comic) and was rather liberal in his personal views. There was more to “Donovan” than I had initially thought. My impression of him changed from somewhat negative and put off to seeing a more intimate side of his ideas, views, and even an innocent side of him. The words that he uses and the topics that he chooses portrays a young person about to enter into a larger unknown world (my guess was starting college) and is using comic relief to subset the fears he may be experiencing.
I think my impression formation of “Donovan” follows in line with the hyperpersonal model. Some of the characteristics I have associated most from the hyperpersonal model are the over-attribution processes and re-allocation of cognitive resources. In the beginning, I learned few traits about this person, judging “Donovan” by the jokes he uses in his comics. I formed a fairly negative impression of him right from the beginning because I lacked so much information about him. However, since I am at home, reading something on print, without the distractions of his social cues, I was able to process the content of the comic. This may actually in result give me a different interpretation of him because my feedback would not affect his (possibly negative) reactions to my immediate feedback if we were conversing face to face.
The very first panel of the first comic that was drawn shows a male with dark hair, holding a can of soda smiling happily. The second panel shows the male drinking the can of soda. The last panel shows a skeleton holding the same can of soda with an angry face. The comic proceeds with jokes of the sort that varies between everyday observations (Seinfeld-style), puns, video games, derogatory jokes, and alcohol consumption. Not knowing anything about this person (only that he is a friend of my friend), my first impression of this person throughout the beginning of the comic was that he was a fairly young white male from a small town and had little experience outside of a stereotypical “gamer”.
I decided to proceed to learn more about this person through the web comic in hopes of changing my negative opinions of “Donovan”. I eventually went through about 200+ comics in the span of that half an hour and more topics were exposed. It appeared to me that he was indeed rather young (not having started college yet at the start of the comic) and was rather liberal in his personal views. There was more to “Donovan” than I had initially thought. My impression of him changed from somewhat negative and put off to seeing a more intimate side of his ideas, views, and even an innocent side of him. The words that he uses and the topics that he chooses portrays a young person about to enter into a larger unknown world (my guess was starting college) and is using comic relief to subset the fears he may be experiencing.
I think my impression formation of “Donovan” follows in line with the hyperpersonal model. Some of the characteristics I have associated most from the hyperpersonal model are the over-attribution processes and re-allocation of cognitive resources. In the beginning, I learned few traits about this person, judging “Donovan” by the jokes he uses in his comics. I formed a fairly negative impression of him right from the beginning because I lacked so much information about him. However, since I am at home, reading something on print, without the distractions of his social cues, I was able to process the content of the comic. This may actually in result give me a different interpretation of him because my feedback would not affect his (possibly negative) reactions to my immediate feedback if we were conversing face to face.
Meeting a friend of a friend on AIM
For this assignment i chose to talk to a friend to a friend of a fellow student summer student at Cornell and analyze and compare my impression of him and my friend's impression of him. The conversation took place over AOL Instant Messager (AIM) and lasted about one hour. I used my friend's AIM screenname for convenience, but made sure to inform the subject that i was not the owner of the screenname. I did not mention this assignment until the subject specifically asked me about my motives for talking to him.
My conversation with my friend's friend began with me introducing myself. The subject did not offer his name to me, although his screen name was similar to his name, but rather commented on my name's relationship to Neo from The Matrix. After a short sort of "trial conversation," about people who like like actors or have names similar to movie characters' names, we proceeded to the topic of music and remained on it for the majority of the conversation. Ironically, during the conversation the subject volunteered the name of a member of his band but chose to remain anonymous himself. He sent me his band's myspace page and after listening to his music I mentioned that I was not a big fan of it, especially the vocals. The subject then became defensive and we began to argue, albeit calmly, about the importance of vocals in music.
After about 45 minutes, the subject began to become suspicious of me because of the things I mentioned during the conversation were coincidentally some of the things that he felt very passionately about. It was very interesting to see that as more info was exchanged, the subject became very tense and suspicious of me and my intentions. I believe that this is because there is so much deception on the internet that thanks to the media and personal horror stories, youth are encouraged to be distrustful of people that they meet on the internet. After explaining my assignment to him, he proceeded to try to end the conversation by claiming that he was "sleepy."
When the conversation had come to a close, I went online and took a personality test to determine my impression of him when it came to the Big 5 Personality Traits. The results were as follows:
Openness: 53% - slightly open to new experiences
Conscientiousness: 13% - disorganized, undependable, negligent
Extraversion: 97% - sociable, friendly, fun loving, talkative
Agreeableness: 1% - critical, rude, harsh, callous
Neuroticism: 76% - nervous, high-strung, insecure, worrying
The traits were scored on a 1% (strongly disagree) to 100% (strongly agree) scale. Because there was no :insufficient information" choice, i was forced to select the neutral choice for questions that I was uncomfortable answering about the subject. This has caused my results to be slightly skewed in favor of neutrality. Because i was unable to answer many of the questions about openness, my experiment supported the hyperpersonal model. However, unlike the hyperpersonal model predicts, I was able to form an impression on conscientiousness. Also my impressions supported the hyperpersonal model's hypothesis that CMC impressions would be much more intense, with mine being mostly on the negative side.
My friends results were as follows:
Openness: 80% - enjoys new experiences
Conscientiousness: 17% - disorganized, undependable, negligent
Extraversion: 89% - sociable, friendly, fun loving, talkative
Agreeableness: 0% - critical, rude, harsh, callous
Neuroticism: 55% - neither particularly nervous nor particularly calm
The main differences between the two impression (mine and my friend's) were in the areas of openness and neuroticism. My impression revealed him to be unopen to new experiences because he was very stubborn about his beliefs during the conversation. Also, i perceived him to be nervous and suspicious because he questioned my motives about 3/4 of the way through the conversation. The other characteristics were very similar because my long conversation with him enabled me to find out a lot about his personality by observing his choice of words and the quickness/strength of his responses. If the conversation had been shorter the results would have been even more extreme than they were.
My conversation with my friend's friend began with me introducing myself. The subject did not offer his name to me, although his screen name was similar to his name, but rather commented on my name's relationship to Neo from The Matrix. After a short sort of "trial conversation," about people who like like actors or have names similar to movie characters' names, we proceeded to the topic of music and remained on it for the majority of the conversation. Ironically, during the conversation the subject volunteered the name of a member of his band but chose to remain anonymous himself. He sent me his band's myspace page and after listening to his music I mentioned that I was not a big fan of it, especially the vocals. The subject then became defensive and we began to argue, albeit calmly, about the importance of vocals in music.
After about 45 minutes, the subject began to become suspicious of me because of the things I mentioned during the conversation were coincidentally some of the things that he felt very passionately about. It was very interesting to see that as more info was exchanged, the subject became very tense and suspicious of me and my intentions. I believe that this is because there is so much deception on the internet that thanks to the media and personal horror stories, youth are encouraged to be distrustful of people that they meet on the internet. After explaining my assignment to him, he proceeded to try to end the conversation by claiming that he was "sleepy."
When the conversation had come to a close, I went online and took a personality test to determine my impression of him when it came to the Big 5 Personality Traits. The results were as follows:
Openness: 53% - slightly open to new experiences
Conscientiousness: 13% - disorganized, undependable, negligent
Extraversion: 97% - sociable, friendly, fun loving, talkative
Agreeableness: 1% - critical, rude, harsh, callous
Neuroticism: 76% - nervous, high-strung, insecure, worrying
The traits were scored on a 1% (strongly disagree) to 100% (strongly agree) scale. Because there was no :insufficient information" choice, i was forced to select the neutral choice for questions that I was uncomfortable answering about the subject. This has caused my results to be slightly skewed in favor of neutrality. Because i was unable to answer many of the questions about openness, my experiment supported the hyperpersonal model. However, unlike the hyperpersonal model predicts, I was able to form an impression on conscientiousness. Also my impressions supported the hyperpersonal model's hypothesis that CMC impressions would be much more intense, with mine being mostly on the negative side.
My friends results were as follows:
Openness: 80% - enjoys new experiences
Conscientiousness: 17% - disorganized, undependable, negligent
Extraversion: 89% - sociable, friendly, fun loving, talkative
Agreeableness: 0% - critical, rude, harsh, callous
Neuroticism: 55% - neither particularly nervous nor particularly calm
The main differences between the two impression (mine and my friend's) were in the areas of openness and neuroticism. My impression revealed him to be unopen to new experiences because he was very stubborn about his beliefs during the conversation. Also, i perceived him to be nervous and suspicious because he questioned my motives about 3/4 of the way through the conversation. The other characteristics were very similar because my long conversation with him enabled me to find out a lot about his personality by observing his choice of words and the quickness/strength of his responses. If the conversation had been shorter the results would have been even more extreme than they were.
Her Own Little Stage
For those who may not be familiar, the website LiveJournal.com is, as defined by Wikipedia, a “virtual community where Internet users can keep a blog, journal, or diary.” While I don't use the site myself, several friends of mine do, so I decided to visit one of their journals and see if the person had any LiveJournal friends that were people I did not know. Indeed, a girl aliased “theatergirl62” had a public journal, titled “My Own Little Stage,” and going in I knew nothing about her other than her college (Princeton). I decided to go to a random point in her journal and read a couple of entries, noting my thoughts relating to the "Big Five" traits after completing each one. I rated each on a scale of -2 to 2, representing Strongly Disagree – Strongly Agree, with N/A indicating I can't make any claim, similar to the Hancock experiment. I've included some actual excerpts from her journal to support my conclusions, which is why this post is as long as it is.
Entry 1: March 3rd 2008, 1:03 AM
“This past Tuesday night I got sick... when we got seated and started discussing, though, I started to feel really, really nauseaus and dizzy. I excused myself (seriously thinking I had to throw up or faint), sat in the bathroom/called mom (who says more likely a stomach bug than something related to my blood-giving), laid on the floor for a few minutes, nothing happened... got up really slowly, noted how pale/yellow I looked in the mirror, and went back in to class...tried to focus/participate, but had to excuse myself a 2nd time a few minutes later and then decided I was just going to head for McCosh because I was feeling pretty awful.”
“After several training steps (tours, a special training tour, much memorization, etc.) I tried out to be a Princeton Orange Key Tour Guide this Saturday by actually giving a tour (and being graded on it, basically). I just found out about 2 hours ago that they picked me!! I'm officially an Orange Key Tour Guide!!”
“Yes, Mom bought the ticket today. I'm officially going to visit Michigan Boy (aka Israel Boy) and all the other cool people out in Michigan. I'm kind of scared, not gonna lie. Well, excited and scared. (Into the Woods, anyone? Anyone?) EDIT: 1:47 AM: oh my goodness I just realized I told my Mom the wrong dates; I have the wrong date tickets to MI... Shoot... I shouldn't be too worried about it; we'll fix it over lunch tomorrow, but right this second I'm so stressed over it. I'm looking for a replacement flight... the best pair of flights out and back is like twice the price with the change fee in it. CRAP. Mom's not going to be happy with me... And I can't afford to pay any of it right now. ;alkwjflw;ke Shoot.”
Thoughts:
I immediately attribute her a high level of neuroticism from the last paragraph – in this random entry she displays emotional instability, freaking out about a trip to Michigan. She's first anxious about the trip itself and then even more anxious about buying the wrong tickets. The use of the phrase “;alkwjflw;ke Shoot” is particularly effective at conveying her anxiety. Also, her calling her mother from the bathroom in the first excerpt suggests feelings of vulnerability, and again anxiety, which further emphasizes her apparent neuroticism.
Surprisingly, the first excerpt also reveals quite a bit of conscientiousness as well, which is normally harder to detect. She knows she is extremely sick, yet returns to class, trying to focus and participate, which suggests significant dedication to school. Extraversion is hinted at with her happiness at being selected to be a tour guide, and her going to take a trip to visit “Michigan Boy,” but not strongly. There is no suggestion of agreeableness or openness.
Neuroticism: +2
Extraversion: +1
Openness: N/A
Agreeableness: N/A
Conscientiousness: +2
Entry 2: March 6th, 2008, 3:33 AM
“Brief work rant:
AHHH SO MUCH WORK AND SO MUCH FLOOD REHEARSAL/PERFORMANCES AND THEREFORE SO LITTLE TIME TO GET WORK DONE.
Also, I HATE HAVING NO TIME TO DO READINGS. They just take too long. Even/especially when they're interesting (like my Linguistics and Religion readings) or fun/cool (like my Atelier readings)... asd;lfkjawe crabby right at this moment 'cause it's almost 4 AM oops I should have been asleep hours ago.
That is all.”
Thoughts:
This makes two consecutive incoherent text mashings (in this case, an “asd;lfkjawe”). Interestingly, this entry does nothing to change my initial thoughts, and simply reaffirms my previous judgments – this girl is clearly, at least to me, both extremely conscientious and extremely neurotic. The whole entry interrupts work, and is regarding her stress over not being able to do readings, another academic priority. Her abandonment of grammar and words further emphasizes the neuroticism (it conveys anger, stress and anxiety). Her mentioning of theater rehearsal/performances again suggests some level of extraversion (the theater does rely on human interaction) but not enough to change my previous thoughts. There is again no indication of openness or agreeableness. I conclude with:
Neuroticism: +2
Extraversion: +1
Openness: N/A
Agreeableness: N/A
Conscientiousness: +2
This is in line with the Hyperpersonal model. I can only put my finger on a few traits (really, extraversion could just as well be a N/A) and those that I can I attribute heavily. In other words, my breadth is limited, but the traits I feel I can rate are done so intensely. The Hyperpersonal model would suggest that I react this way because of a limited amount of cues; I'm forced to “fill in the blanks” by overestimating the traits that are hinted at in the text. Also, the fact that my opinion does not change from the first to the second entry may evidence the SIP theory, as I've spent more time with this person yet apparently know nothing new about them.
Entry 1: March 3rd 2008, 1:03 AM
“This past Tuesday night I got sick... when we got seated and started discussing, though, I started to feel really, really nauseaus and dizzy. I excused myself (seriously thinking I had to throw up or faint), sat in the bathroom/called mom (who says more likely a stomach bug than something related to my blood-giving), laid on the floor for a few minutes, nothing happened... got up really slowly, noted how pale/yellow I looked in the mirror, and went back in to class...tried to focus/participate, but had to excuse myself a 2nd time a few minutes later and then decided I was just going to head for McCosh because I was feeling pretty awful.”
“After several training steps (tours, a special training tour, much memorization, etc.) I tried out to be a Princeton Orange Key Tour Guide this Saturday by actually giving a tour (and being graded on it, basically). I just found out about 2 hours ago that they picked me!! I'm officially an Orange Key Tour Guide!!”
“Yes, Mom bought the ticket today. I'm officially going to visit Michigan Boy (aka Israel Boy) and all the other cool people out in Michigan. I'm kind of scared, not gonna lie. Well, excited and scared. (Into the Woods, anyone? Anyone?) EDIT: 1:47 AM: oh my goodness I just realized I told my Mom the wrong dates; I have the wrong date tickets to MI... Shoot... I shouldn't be too worried about it; we'll fix it over lunch tomorrow, but right this second I'm so stressed over it. I'm looking for a replacement flight... the best pair of flights out and back is like twice the price with the change fee in it. CRAP. Mom's not going to be happy with me... And I can't afford to pay any of it right now. ;alkwjflw;ke Shoot.”
Thoughts:
I immediately attribute her a high level of neuroticism from the last paragraph – in this random entry she displays emotional instability, freaking out about a trip to Michigan. She's first anxious about the trip itself and then even more anxious about buying the wrong tickets. The use of the phrase “;alkwjflw;ke Shoot” is particularly effective at conveying her anxiety. Also, her calling her mother from the bathroom in the first excerpt suggests feelings of vulnerability, and again anxiety, which further emphasizes her apparent neuroticism.
Surprisingly, the first excerpt also reveals quite a bit of conscientiousness as well, which is normally harder to detect. She knows she is extremely sick, yet returns to class, trying to focus and participate, which suggests significant dedication to school. Extraversion is hinted at with her happiness at being selected to be a tour guide, and her going to take a trip to visit “Michigan Boy,” but not strongly. There is no suggestion of agreeableness or openness.
Neuroticism: +2
Extraversion: +1
Openness: N/A
Agreeableness: N/A
Conscientiousness: +2
Entry 2: March 6th, 2008, 3:33 AM
“Brief work rant:
AHHH SO MUCH WORK AND SO MUCH FLOOD REHEARSAL/PERFORMANCES AND THEREFORE SO LITTLE TIME TO GET WORK DONE.
Also, I HATE HAVING NO TIME TO DO READINGS. They just take too long. Even/especially when they're interesting (like my Linguistics and Religion readings) or fun/cool (like my Atelier readings)... asd;lfkjawe crabby right at this moment 'cause it's almost 4 AM oops I should have been asleep hours ago.
That is all.”
Thoughts:
This makes two consecutive incoherent text mashings (in this case, an “asd;lfkjawe”). Interestingly, this entry does nothing to change my initial thoughts, and simply reaffirms my previous judgments – this girl is clearly, at least to me, both extremely conscientious and extremely neurotic. The whole entry interrupts work, and is regarding her stress over not being able to do readings, another academic priority. Her abandonment of grammar and words further emphasizes the neuroticism (it conveys anger, stress and anxiety). Her mentioning of theater rehearsal/performances again suggests some level of extraversion (the theater does rely on human interaction) but not enough to change my previous thoughts. There is again no indication of openness or agreeableness. I conclude with:
Neuroticism: +2
Extraversion: +1
Openness: N/A
Agreeableness: N/A
Conscientiousness: +2
This is in line with the Hyperpersonal model. I can only put my finger on a few traits (really, extraversion could just as well be a N/A) and those that I can I attribute heavily. In other words, my breadth is limited, but the traits I feel I can rate are done so intensely. The Hyperpersonal model would suggest that I react this way because of a limited amount of cues; I'm forced to “fill in the blanks” by overestimating the traits that are hinted at in the text. Also, the fact that my opinion does not change from the first to the second entry may evidence the SIP theory, as I've spent more time with this person yet apparently know nothing new about them.
Running With Injury
For this assignment I sought out a blog of someone who would have interests similar to mine. As a result of a quick google search I found “Run Petra Run” and possibly my twin on the other side of the world. In just the title and heading in her blog, I could tell we have a lot in common right now. She too is a runner who is injured and is training for a Marathon. She’s training for Chicago and made the final commitment to the training after she made the financial decision to book a flight. Similarly I am under a financial commitment to my marathon as I’m running for the charity, A Running Start.
Before I even finished reading one entry of her blog I started to fill in my own ideas about Petra, over-attributing by projecting myself on her. Considering her injury seemed important enough to her to include in the header of her blog, I thought that like me she was forced to temporarily stop training. I just let myself assume that she was in her twenties, unmarried and in the US. One thing that made me think US was that she was tracking her training progress in miles instead of kilometers. After reading a little further I found that she was ten years older than me, had kids and was in Britain (originally from Holland).
One thing that I found particularly interesting was how Petra perceived herself versus what I noticed from her pictures. In her first post on her blog, she described herself as the “fat slow one.” Once I saw a picture of her, “fat” would have been the last word I would have used to describe her, as she’s very thin and fit. Judging from her training times, she’s not “slow” either. In general, I find that selective self-presentation on the Internet is immodest or at least positive; I did not expect that she would be self-deprecating. After reading further on Petra’s blog, I noticed some other incidences where she is trying very hard to be positive about herself and her activity, but she also seems disappointed in her progress or ability compared to others. I’m left with the question; does she do this to seek confirmation from her friends that she is really not fat, slow, etcetera?
Possibly I could have misinterpreted Petra’s insecurities. In which case the social presence theory would hold true as I would have a misrepresented image of her. The lack of face to face and genuine contact with this person could have completely lead me astray as to what she’s really like. I’ll never know for real because I’ll never meet Petra. All I have to go in is her blog, and what she’s presented to the world. The outlet of a blog allows for so many social cues to be quickly made public, especially with a detailed profile. In about twenty five minutes of getting to know Petra I feel pretty confident that I have a good idea about what her life is like right now.
Before I even finished reading one entry of her blog I started to fill in my own ideas about Petra, over-attributing by projecting myself on her. Considering her injury seemed important enough to her to include in the header of her blog, I thought that like me she was forced to temporarily stop training. I just let myself assume that she was in her twenties, unmarried and in the US. One thing that made me think US was that she was tracking her training progress in miles instead of kilometers. After reading a little further I found that she was ten years older than me, had kids and was in Britain (originally from Holland).
One thing that I found particularly interesting was how Petra perceived herself versus what I noticed from her pictures. In her first post on her blog, she described herself as the “fat slow one.” Once I saw a picture of her, “fat” would have been the last word I would have used to describe her, as she’s very thin and fit. Judging from her training times, she’s not “slow” either. In general, I find that selective self-presentation on the Internet is immodest or at least positive; I did not expect that she would be self-deprecating. After reading further on Petra’s blog, I noticed some other incidences where she is trying very hard to be positive about herself and her activity, but she also seems disappointed in her progress or ability compared to others. I’m left with the question; does she do this to seek confirmation from her friends that she is really not fat, slow, etcetera?
Possibly I could have misinterpreted Petra’s insecurities. In which case the social presence theory would hold true as I would have a misrepresented image of her. The lack of face to face and genuine contact with this person could have completely lead me astray as to what she’s really like. I’ll never know for real because I’ll never meet Petra. All I have to go in is her blog, and what she’s presented to the world. The outlet of a blog allows for so many social cues to be quickly made public, especially with a detailed profile. In about twenty five minutes of getting to know Petra I feel pretty confident that I have a good idea about what her life is like right now.
Questing of a Different Sort
For my psychological space, I chose the Online Multiplayer Videogame (OMV), or, more familiarly phrased as, the MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game.) Specifically, I chose the game Final Fantasy XI Online, which has a rather large player-base worldwide (though not nearly as wide in scope as that of World of Warcraft). In order to do this, I had to create an avatar of my own in order to interact with other players’ avatars. I chose to create a character that was a human male warrior (as opposed to female, or another race like elfin, or another profession such as mage.) My reasons for this was based on a 2008 CHI conference paper published by the WoW developers studying the demographic of their character base. Human, male, warriors were the most popular and 'generic' character choices. Being a new character, my avatar was not as advanced as older avatars, which had evolved as their players spent time having them fight monsters to grow stronger. Also being new, I asked for help accomplishing my first objective from a more experienced player.
I automatically assumed the advanced player (whose avatar name was Enaan) was male, around my age if not a few years younger, most likely a student at some university or at some high school. I made these assumptions simply based on what I knew about MMO’s in general. The player-base is largely male, despite being female myself, and knowing a good number of other females who played on the game. His character was also male. Since he agreed to help an inexperienced player like myself, I considered him very amiable and easy-to-talk to, as well as generous enough to waste time on answering my questions instead of playing himself. He was open about questions, friendly, careful about not losing my character while we ran around in the game, and seemed to be confident in what he was doing. The player did continuously ask me if I understood the directions, if my character was in danger, etc. which gave me the impression of his being very careful.
MMOs are different from chats in the fact that most players only talk about the game, and very little chat outside of what to do next in the game actually occurs. Therefore, no interpersonal probes actually occurred. Our interaction was limited to task-oriented verbal cues. Being that most other players ignore your requests for help, the fact that he agreed struck me as significant over everything else, and I felt compelled to like him, perhaps out of gratitude. Our limited communication exaggerated that point to me the most, such as discussed in the Hyperpersonal Model. I technically knew very little about him (if it was a ‘him’ at all), but I felt very strongly that he was a nice person, because of one thing he did for me, despite the fact that it was a task-oriented impression. The few traits he presented to me were positive, very likely an aspect of selective self-representation, so I may have very well filled in the rest of the blanks with positive things as well, to envision him as a likeable person.
My impression followed the Hyperpersonal Model the most. Unlike the CFO model, my impression was not ‘cool’, nor negative. In fact, it was a strong urge to like the player because they were helping me, despite not knowing much about him at all. This was the exaggerated over-attribution component of the Hyperpersonal Model, as well as the fact that I knew very little, but felt strongly about the one facet of his personality that I was able to observe (small breadth, huge intensity.) I did not have much time to interact with him, so the interaction did not follow the SIP model, which is based on how much slower CMC impressions are formed. (My impression was formed within a few minutes of interacting with the player.) Since the player was represented by an avatar, it would also not be out-of-the-ballpark to think that he was being nice to a new player for the reason of forming a good impression, as a sort of admirable senior figure. After all, it is called a Role-Playing Game for a reason.
Saakara Meets CafeiMemory
I chose the psychological space IMVU, an online multiplayer video, because I have had previous experience with that space. Although primarily a synchronous text based channel, IMVU utilizes a video mode of communication that allows limited nonverbal cues through a humanoid character, an Avatar. The three main attractions of this psychological space are that the communicators remain anonymous, the program randomly assigns the communicators, and the communicators have the freedom to design rooms, websites, and outdoor locations that reflect a communicator’s personality and tastes. My first attempt led me to a twenty-year-old man who wore purple boxers on his head and called himself a superhero. Because I did not know how to factor insanity into my analysis, I logged on at another time.
Next, I communicated with an eighteen-year-old girl from Macau, China. I was able to see her Avatar, CafeiMEmory, but as with most electronically simulated programs, the Avatar doesn’t change facial expression. Due to this fact, I evaluated our conversation primarily on the text of our dialogue and the space and clothing that her Avatar possessed. Because I did not want to be immediately influenced by CafeiMEmory’s choice of clothing and choice of room, I chose to meet her in one of my areas, a rather plain coffeehouse. Since it took five minutes for her Avatar to load her choice of clothing, I only saw her in the IMVU standard clothing of plain green shorts and green top. With her in this unadorned outfit, I introduced myself as my Avatar name “Saakara” and she responded accordingly. From there on the conversation was pretty mundane, and I learned that she was my polar opposite when it came to hobbies and physical activities. She wrote, “I hate the sun,” and she thrives on shopping, which I despise. However, within fifteen minutes, we found a common viewpoint that “[…] men only want sex, not love.” Although she typed in faulty English at times, which I attribute to the fact that English is her second language, I found her entertaining. Soon we went to her spacious and well furnished establishment, and I saw her expensive looking, all-white clothing. I got the general impression that she was a very elegant person.
Although, I was probably the victim of selective self-presentation, due to the fact that she draped herself in diamonds and her house in silk, I felt that it did not affect the intensity of my impression formation. Before I even saw her place, I would rate her personality either strongly agree or strongly disagree to the questions in the NEO-Five Factor Inventory (Costa &Mc Crae 1991) used by Hancock and Dunham 1991. In other words, I felt that I had formulated an “intense” reading of her personality within fifteen minutes, and I had, via overattribution, created an embellished persona of CafeiMemory. As both selective self- presentation and overattribution fall under the category of the hyperpersonal model, my initial impression was consistent with the results presented by Hancock and Dunham in 2001.
For me this CMC experience raised several question about CMC impression formation. I felt that within a brief interaction I had formulated strong personality traits for CafeiMEmory; but, with time, I had changed from cold to warm feelings toward her. Granted, we would predictably find a common viewpoint, because this particular OMV is primed and attracts communicators of about my age and CafeiMEmory is my gender. My question is: does CMC communication allow dissimilar personalities to find common interests that would not have occurred FtF or faster than FtF? Also, do the nonverbal cues of a FtF interaction possibly segregate the communicators and present a barrier to further communication?
Next, I communicated with an eighteen-year-old girl from Macau, China. I was able to see her Avatar, CafeiMEmory, but as with most electronically simulated programs, the Avatar doesn’t change facial expression. Due to this fact, I evaluated our conversation primarily on the text of our dialogue and the space and clothing that her Avatar possessed. Because I did not want to be immediately influenced by CafeiMEmory’s choice of clothing and choice of room, I chose to meet her in one of my areas, a rather plain coffeehouse. Since it took five minutes for her Avatar to load her choice of clothing, I only saw her in the IMVU standard clothing of plain green shorts and green top. With her in this unadorned outfit, I introduced myself as my Avatar name “Saakara” and she responded accordingly. From there on the conversation was pretty mundane, and I learned that she was my polar opposite when it came to hobbies and physical activities. She wrote, “I hate the sun,” and she thrives on shopping, which I despise. However, within fifteen minutes, we found a common viewpoint that “[…] men only want sex, not love.” Although she typed in faulty English at times, which I attribute to the fact that English is her second language, I found her entertaining. Soon we went to her spacious and well furnished establishment, and I saw her expensive looking, all-white clothing. I got the general impression that she was a very elegant person.
Although, I was probably the victim of selective self-presentation, due to the fact that she draped herself in diamonds and her house in silk, I felt that it did not affect the intensity of my impression formation. Before I even saw her place, I would rate her personality either strongly agree or strongly disagree to the questions in the NEO-Five Factor Inventory (Costa &Mc Crae 1991) used by Hancock and Dunham 1991. In other words, I felt that I had formulated an “intense” reading of her personality within fifteen minutes, and I had, via overattribution, created an embellished persona of CafeiMemory. As both selective self- presentation and overattribution fall under the category of the hyperpersonal model, my initial impression was consistent with the results presented by Hancock and Dunham in 2001.
For me this CMC experience raised several question about CMC impression formation. I felt that within a brief interaction I had formulated strong personality traits for CafeiMEmory; but, with time, I had changed from cold to warm feelings toward her. Granted, we would predictably find a common viewpoint, because this particular OMV is primed and attracts communicators of about my age and CafeiMEmory is my gender. My question is: does CMC communication allow dissimilar personalities to find common interests that would not have occurred FtF or faster than FtF? Also, do the nonverbal cues of a FtF interaction possibly segregate the communicators and present a barrier to further communication?
Travel to Morocco!...vicariously
I came across Isaac’s blog by accident. I googled “Aiesec
Isaac’s first blog entries show his enthusiasm about the opportunity to travel and to help children of impoverished communities around the world. This made him seem caring and conscientious of world issues. When I finally got to Isaac’s entry upon arriving in
The next entry written apologizes for venting and goes on to describe the amazing people he had already encountered and some fabulous first impressions about
To summarize my impressions of Isaac, he seemed very open, and conscientious, as I initially figured. He seemed agreeable and extraverted, but not to extremes. I really cannot determine his neuroticism to any exact degree just like the experiment by Hancock and Dunham we studied determined that this trait is more difficult to figure out. Looking back at my impressions of Isaac, I notice how much stronger they were in the beginning. After reading his blog which took place over the span of eight weeks, I definitely notice that his personality seemed to average out in my mind over the course of the entries. I saw his ups and downs, his flaws and strengths. This is consistent with the hyperpersonal theory in that my online impressions began with intense judgments, regardless of the fact that I had fewer social cues to deduct them from, until my impressions mellowed out as I heard more about Isaac’s experiences.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Welcome!
Good luck with your first assignment! Please email me if you have any questions, or if you're having any problems dealing with the blog.
For those of you who missed the end of class today, the assignment requires that you either interact with or simply observe a stranger in an online space (of your choice), and then discuss how your experience fits in with the theories we addressed in class. The slides and readings are all online.
Have a great weekend!
-Catalina
For those of you who missed the end of class today, the assignment requires that you either interact with or simply observe a stranger in an online space (of your choice), and then discuss how your experience fits in with the theories we addressed in class. The slides and readings are all online.
Have a great weekend!
-Catalina
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