Tsankova Elena, Tair Ergyul
Personality Psychology and Methodology of Psychological Measurement, Department of Psychology, Institute for Population and Human Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria.
Front Psychol. 2022 Mar 2;13:837931. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.837931. eCollection 2022.
Meta-accuracy (correspondence between how we think others perceive us and how they really perceive us) of first impressions on the Internet has the potential to shape subsequent interactions. Aiming to enhance understanding of the underlying perceptual dimensions, the contribution of social competence, and the existence of positive/negative bias in first impressions' meta-accuracy online, we conducted a study in a simulated asynchronous social-media-type setting. Target participants uploaded a selfie, wrote a short description of themselves, provided estimates of how warm and competent they believed others would find them based on their selfies and texts (metaperception), and completed two social competence questionnaires (general and Internet-specific). Perceiver participants assessed the warmth and competence of the selfies and texts as well (others' perception). Meta-accuracy was measured as the absolute difference between metaperception and others' perception. Through correlational analyses, we confirmed that meta-accuracy of first impressions on the Internet aligned with the universal dimensions of social cognition (warmth and competence), found sporadic evidence for the positive association between meta-accuracy and social competence, and showed that meta-accuracy for specific Internet expressive means varied with varying proficiency in these means. Through -tests, we demonstrated positive meta-accuracy bias for selfies along the warmth dimension and negative bias for text along the competence dimension. Overall, our results suggest the primacy of warmth and uniqueness of the male targets-female perceivers combination for meta-accuracy on the Internet. Our findings expand knowledge about first impressions' meta-accuracy on the Internet.
网络上第一印象的元准确性（即我们认为他人如何看待我们与他人实际如何看待我们之间的对应关系）有可能塑造后续的互动。为了增强对潜在感知维度、社交能力的贡献以及网络上第一印象元准确性中积极/消极偏差的存在的理解，我们在一个模拟的异步社交媒体类型环境中进行了一项研究。目标参与者上传一张自拍照，写一段关于自己的简短描述，根据他们的自拍照和文字提供他们认为他人会觉得他们有多热情和有能力的估计（元感知），并完成两份社交能力问卷（一般问卷和特定于网络的问卷）。感知者参与者也评估了自拍照和文字的热情和能力（他人的感知）。元准确性被测量为元感知与他人感知之间的绝对差异。通过相关分析，我们证实了网络上第一印象的元准确性与社会认知的普遍维度（热情和能力）一致，发现了元准确性与社交能力之间正相关的零星证据，并表明特定网络表达手段的元准确性随着在这些手段上的熟练程度不同而变化。通过t检验，我们证明了自拍照在热情维度上存在正元准确性偏差，而文字在能力维度上存在负偏差。总体而言，我们的结果表明在网络元准确性方面，热情的首要性以及男性目标 - 女性感知者组合的独特性。我们的发现扩展了关于网络上第一印象元准确性的知识。
