SOCIAL INFORMATION PROCESSING THEORY

1. SOCIAL INFORMATION PROCESSING THEORY Joseph Walther in Griffin’s A first Look at Communication theory

2. CLICKER QUESTION • One of Griffin’s critique points for SIP is as follows: The drive to affiliate may differ between those who typically seek out others online vs. f2f (Griffin 7th ed.. P. 148); This critique is especially important for: A. Doing Research on Online Relationships; B. Deciding how to select subjects to compare online and f2f relationships; C. Both

3. HOW DOES CMC DIFFER FROM FACE-to-FACE COMMUNICATION? • SOCIAL PRESENCE THEORY: • Text-based messages deprive CMC users of the sense other warm bodies are involved in the interaction; • Communication becomes more impersonal and task oriented;

4. HOW DOES CMC DIFFER FROM FACE-to-FACE COMMUNICATION? • Media Richness Theory: • Classifies each communication medium according to the complexity of the messages it can handle; • E.g., face-to-face communication provides a rich mix of verbal and nonverbal cue systems; • By contrast, CMC is limited in the nuanced information that it can carry, presumably, making it harder for social relations;

5. HOW DOES CMC DIFFER FROM FACE-to-FACE COMMUNICATION? • Reduced Social Context Cues: • Lack of social context cues in CMC makes it difficult for users to judge their relative status, norms for interaction are not clear; • People tend to become more self-absorbed and less inhibited; • The result is increased flaming--hostile language;

6. HOW DOES CMC DIFFER FROM FACE-to-FACE COMMUNICATION? • All of these theories share a cues filtered out view of CMC; • They see the absence of nonverbal cues as a flaw which limits its usefulness; • SIP THEORY disagrees and claims that users can adapt to the restricted medium and develop close relationships;

7. SOCIAL INFORMATION PROCESSING (SIP) THEORY • Walther’s theory rests on the idea that relationships grow as people develop impressions of one another--who they are--social information; • SIP theory is consistent with social penetration theory and uncertainty reduction theory; • If the interacting parties like the image of the other that they have formed, they draw closer; • Unlike cues filtered out theorists, SIP does not hold that the loss is injurious to a well-defined impression of the other;

8. Two features of CMC according to SIP: Verbal cues. When motivated to form impressions and develop relationships, communicators use any cue system’s available; Extended time. The communication of social information through CMC is much slower than it is face-to-face, so impressions are formed at a reduced rate; given enough time, CMC relationships can be just as strong as f-to-f; they end up with the same quantity and quality of interpersonal knowledge; SOCIAL INFORMATION PROCESSING (SIP) THEORY

9. SIP vs. GULP .

10. RESEARCH: SOCIAL INFORMATION PROCESSING (SIP) THEORY • A study by Walther et al. tested the idea that CMC vs. face-to-face could produce the same sort of impressions; • Dyads interacted f-to-f or via CMC to discuss moral dilemmas; one member of each dyad was an accomplice who was to act friendly or unfriendly; • Raters categorized behaviors that communicated affect; • Naïve Ss rated the degree of affection expressed by their dyad partner;

11. RESEARCH: SOCIAL INFORMATION PROCESSING (SIP) THEORY • RESULTS: The mode of communication made no difference in the emotional tone perceived by naïve participants; • What verbal behaviors did confederates use in CMC to show that they were friendly? • Self disclosure • Praise • Explicit statements of affection

12. Nonverbal vs. Verbal in Face-to-Face vs. CMC • When face-to-face, participants tended to express warmth (friendliness) nonverbally—facial expression, eye contact, tone of voice, body position, and other nonverbal cues to show how they felt about their partner; • With CMC, the content of what they wrote carried the messages of friendliness and unfriendliness;

13. EXTENDED TIME • The length of time that CMC users have to send their messages is the key to whether or not they can achieve the same level of intimacy as with face-to-face communication; • It takes at least four times longer to send a message through CMC than through face-to-face (e.g., 10 minutes of f2f = 40 minutes of CMC);

14. EXTENDED TIME • Two additional factors affecting interpersonal impressions online: • Anticipation of future interaction motivates greater relational development; • Chronemics refers to the perception and use of time in interaction with others; • Time is the one nonverbal cue that is not filtered out in CMC (E.g., the time of day an email was sent; the time of response; the meaning of time depends on the relationship ;

15. WHY IS IT THAT SOMETIMES CMC SURPASSES F2F IN QUALITY OF RELATIONAL COMMUNICATION? • Hypersonal: Walther uses the term hyperpersonal to label CMC relationships that are more intimate than romances or friendships would be if partners were physically together; • How senders select, receivers magnify, channels promote, and feedback increases selected behaviors in CMC;

16. SENDERS SELECT • Through selective self-presentation, people who meet online have an opportunity to make and sustain an overwhelmingly positive impression; • In the movie YOU’V GOT MAIL, Joe and Kathleen are virtual friends but would have detested one another in f2f life;

17. RECEIVER • OVERATTRIBUTION OF SIMILARITY: • Our tendency is to observe people and to infer from their behavior what type of person they are; • With CMC, we leap from the little bit of information we have to judgments about who they are; • We create an idealized image of the sender;

18. OVERATTRIBUTION OF SIMILARITY In the absence of cues that focus on the individual, we assume that our CMC partner is like us or like the group—group solidarity; Hence, we create an excessively positive, idealized image of the other online (social identity-deindividuation—SIDE); With an excessively positive image of the other, plus anticipation of future interaction, we form a hyperpersonal relationship with our virtual partner;

19. CHANNEL: Communicating on Your Own Time • Some applications of online communication are asynchronous: parties do not have to attend at the same time; • In asynchronous communication, we can feel that the message will be read at a time when the other is receptive to messages; • In asynchronous communication, we can plan, contemplate and edit more mindfully than in spontaneous talk;

20. FEEDBACK: SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY • Self-fulfilling prophecy is the tendency for a person’s expectation of the other to evoke a response from them that confirms what he/she anticipated; • Self-fulfilling prophecy is triggered the hyperpositive image is fed back to the other, creating the CMC equivalent of the looking glass self; • The person perceived to be wonderful, starts acting that way;

21. CRITIQUE • While SIP predicts CMC relationships forming slower than f2f relationships, yet Walther’s studies show that sometimes they develop at the same pace or even faster than f2f; • The drive to affiliate may differ between those who typically seek out others online vs. f2f; • The hypersonal perspective has been less explicit in predicting negative relational outcomes in CMC; • Walther recognizes that his principles of sender-receiver-channel-feedback do not have a unifying driving force;