Pena CMN `172 UC Davis Midterm 1

What is uncertainty reduction?

The process of seeking information to reduce uncertainty about another person’s attitudes, behavior, and motives.

When are people more likely to seek information about someone?

When future interaction is likely or the person matters to their goals.

What are the four online information-seeking strategies?

Interactive: ask the person directly. Active: ask a third party. Passive: observe behavior. Extractive: search stored digital records.

What is interactive information seeking?

Communicating directly with the person to learn more about them.

What is active information seeking?

Getting information about someone from a third party without talking to the target.

What is passive information seeking?

Unobtrusively observing someone’s behavior in a social setting.

What is extractive information seeking?

Using technology to retrieve stored, searchable information about someone.

What did Willis and Todorov (2006) find about first impressions?

People form trait impressions from faces in about 100 milliseconds. More exposure increases confidence more than it changes judgments.

Why are speed, confidence, agreement, and accuracy different?

A judgment can be fast and confident without being accurate.

What is social categorization?

Using an accessible social category to interpret someone.

What is individuation?

Incorporating a person’s distinctive attributes rather than relying only on a social category.

What increases individuation?

Motivation, attention, and diagnostic information.

What is visibility as a communication affordance?

Who can see a person, message, or interaction.

What is identifiability?

How easily a message can be linked to a particular person.

What are editability and persistence?

Editability is the ability to revise messages; persistence is the ability to store and search them.

What is synchronous communication?

Communication that occurs in real time.

What is asynchronous communication?

Communication that allows people to respond at different times.

What does the cues-filtered-out perspective predict?

Fewer audiovisual and embodied cues can reduce social presence and make interaction more impersonal.

When might the cues-filtered-out perspective apply most strongly?

During first impressions when time and opportunities to adapt are limited.

What is Social Information Processing Theory (SIP)?

People adapt to mediated communication by using language, timing, and interaction patterns to build relationships over time.

What does SIP predict about online relationships?

With enough interaction and anticipated future contact, online relationships can approach face-to-face relationships.

What is the hyperpersonal model?

A theory proposing that text-based communication can produce more idealized impressions than face-to-face communication.

What are the four components of the hyperpersonal model?

Sender, receiver, channel, and feedback.

How does the sender contribute to hyperpersonal communication?

The sender selectively presents desirable information about themselves.

How does the receiver contribute to hyperpersonal communication?

Limited cues encourage the receiver to form idealized interpretations.

How does the channel contribute to hyperpersonal communication?

Editability and asynchronous communication allow carefully composed messages.

How does feedback contribute to hyperpersonal communication?

Expectations shape responses that reinforce the initial impression, creating a self-fulfilling loop.

What is the SIDE model?

A theory explaining how anonymity and salient social identity can cause people to see themselves and others as group members.

According to SIDE, what happens when social identity is salient?

People act more like group members, and anonymity can strengthen conformity to group norms.

Does anonymity automatically produce antisocial behavior?

No. The relevant group norm determines whether effects are prosocial or antisocial.

What happens when personal identity is salient?

Impressions depend more on individual traits and the developing relationship than on group-category expectations.

What did Schroeder, Kardas, and Epley (2017) find about voice versus text?

People who disagreed with senders viewed them as more human when hearing their voices than when reading transcripts.

What are human uniqueness and human nature in the Schroeder study?

Human uniqueness includes qualities such as rationality and sophistication; human nature includes qualities such as warmth and depth.

What did Kruger et al. (2005) find about emotion over email?

Senders overestimated how accurately receivers could recognize emotions in email. Receivers were more accurate with voice.

Why do senders overestimate how well their emails communicate emotion?

Egocentrism: senders use their own understanding as a reference point and assume receivers have the same information.

What did Walther (1993) find about SIP over time?

Text-based partners initially felt they knew less about each other than face-to-face partners, but the gap narrowed over three weeks.

What did Hancock and Dunham (2001) find about text-based impressions?

Text produced ratings covering fewer personality traits but more intense ratings.

What did Antheunis, Schouten, and Walther (2020) find about text versus video before dating?

Prospective dating partners who chatted by text reported more social attraction than those who used video.

What did Peña et al. (2017) find about SIDE and online games?

Character and social identity cues affected enjoyment through social presence, group identification, and similarity identification.

What did Alvidrez and Peña (2020) find about avatar similarity and mimicry?

Avatar appearance and group cues did not increase mimicry; verbal mimicry was associated with greater closeness and attraction.

What did Peña, Wolff, and Wojcieszak (2021) find about political outgroup contact in VR?

Self-resembling avatars increased identifiability, which indirectly reduced social distance but also had a direct effect that increased social distance.

What is a countervailing or boomerang effect?

When an intervention produces an effect opposite to its intended or indirect effect.

What did Peña et al. (2026) find about intergroup contact in VR?

Positive contact increased self-other overlap regardless of group, while negative contact unexpectedly increased empathy for the virtual human’s group.

What is warranting?

The capacity to connect an online persona to the offline person it describes.

What is warranting value?

How resistant information is to manipulation by the person it describes.

Which generally has higher warranting value: self-generated or other-generated information?

Other-generated information, such as friends’ comments or third-party reviews.

What happens when multiple sources agree about a person?

Observers’ ratings tend to move more strongly in the direction of the shared information.

What did Van der Heide, Johnson, and Vang (2013) find about eBay auctions?

Higher seller reputation scores and actual product photos attracted more bidding interest and higher final prices.

What did Walther et al. (2009) find about Facebook comments?

Friends’ comments influenced perceived extraversion and could outweigh the profile owner’s self-description.

What did Cherney (2023) find about instructor reviews?

Instructor-review comments influenced impressions more than faculty-site information, although warranting value did not consistently explain the difference.