Metaperception in Cyberspace

Abstract

Knowing how others perceive us is an important aspect of social life. "Impression meta-accuracy" is the extent to which we are correct in our assumptions about the impressions others have formed of us. The goal of this study was to compare meta-accuracy of WWW homepage creators to meta-accuracy of people in face-to-face interactions. Because creators of WWW pages have a high degree of control over the information they make available online, they may believe that they accurately know the nature of the impressions they give to other people. However, perceivers of homepages must form impressions without many of the social and context cues that influence judgments in a face-to-face setting, including body language and speaking qualities, and thus their impressions may not match those assumed by the creators of the pages. Our results showed a general tendency for homepage creators to believe the impression they gave to those who viewed their pages was more positive than was actually the case, and this discrepancy was greater than in face-to-face interactions. The source of online inaccuracy seems to lie in people's belief that others develop the same impression of them in both online and offline contexts. In fact, perceivers are significantly influenced by whether the information they are receiving is based on face-to-face interaction or on cues obtained from a WWW homepage. Our data demonstrate that one of the challenges of social life in cyberspace is managing one's online persona to take into account the limitations of metaperception.

Personal Home Pages on the Web: A Review of Research

“…The theory of hyperpersonal interaction (Walther, 1996) even predicts that with a positive attitude on the side of the recipient, the Web site can surpass other types of self‐presentation as an especially rich and evocative source of information. Processes of impression formation during personal home page visits could be compared to impression formation as it occurs in other forms of personal or mediated encounters (Sherman, End, Kraan, Cole, Martin, & Klausner, 1999; Sherman, End, Kraan, Cole, Campbell, Klausner, & Birchmeier, 2001). This is true not only with respect to the amount of information and/or social presence, but also with respect to authenticity.…”

“…Independent of whether people present themselves face‐to‐face or on a personal home page, they overestimate the favorability of the impression they make on others. In the home page situation, however, this discrepancy is clearly larger: Home page creators particularly overestimate how congenial and how similar they are perceived to be by home page visitors (Sherman et al, 1999; Sherman et al, 2001). The lack of direct (and possibly negative) feedback may lead, in the personal home page scenario, to a stronger positivity‐bias serving to protect self‐esteem.…”

The Effect of Image Features on Judgments of Homophily, Credibility, and Intention to Use as Avatars in Future Interactions

“…The Effect of Image Features on Judgments sented (Garau et al, 2003;Koda & Maes, 1996;Nowak, 2004;Nowak & Rauh, 2008;Sherman et al, 2001;Taylor, 2002;Wexelblat, 1998). This is true whether the avatar is an object, animal, or human.…”

A holistic approach to the analysis of online profiles

“…individual blogging episodes) interact with a macro-level frame. Computer-mediated communication theories consider the role of the internet as a communication medium (Sherman et al, 2001). Compared to face-to-face communication, internet appears to be lacking "richness" (Daft and Lengel, 1984).…”