People today increasingly first meet others in mediated spaces, undergoing impression formation processes where they view information, gain impressions, and make decisions about others. Previous research examines profile information (e.g. name, photo, about me) that people provide about themselves within this process, finding that people try to craft profiles for positive impressions. New location-based social applications (LBSAs), however, supplement profiles with additional pieces of information that the profile owner has no direct control over, such as whether or not they are online, how far away they are, and how many mutual friends they have with the profile viewer. People who use LBSAs make decisions about whether or not to connect with someone based on not only information that someone has provided about him or herself, but also with this new information managed by the system. The evaluation of the self-generated and system-managed information as a whole is especially crucial in the context of LBSAs as people use these apps to pursue dates or casual sexual encounters. This project examines the role of four cues in the impression formation process in the context of LBSAs: a photo, a self-generated cue, and distance, availability, and number of mutual friends, three common system-managed cues. The study analyses cues within the impression formation process through two controlled experimental tasks. In the first task, people assess 24 profiles to test if the cues present on a profile affects the probability of someone being interested in that profile. In the second task, people evaluate three additional profiles to test the relationships among cues, dimensions of impression, and action people take on profiles. While previous research from social psychology and human-computer interaction suggests potential effects from all of the system-generated cues, in fact the only salient predictor of expressing interest in a profile is the self-generated cue, physical attractiveness of the profile photo. The results of the two tasks are discussed in terms of practical and theoretical implications, focusing on reconsidering impression formation as an iterative process and questioning cue stability across contexts.

Last modified

• 03/28/2018

Creator

• Colin Fitzpatrick

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/N2PQ4G

Subject

• Technology and Social Behavior

Keyword

• location-based social application
• human computer interaction
• impression formation
• cues
• computer mediated communication

Date created

• 2017-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright