Metaperception in cyberspace

Knowing how others perceive us is an important aspect of social life. "Impr ession meta-accuracy" is the extent to which we are correct in our assumpti ons 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 p eople in face-to-face interactions. Because creators of WWW pages have a hi gh degree of control over the information they make available online, they may believe that they accurately know the nature of the impressions they gi ve to other people. However, perceivers of homepages must form impressions without many of the social and context cues that influence judgments in a f ace-to-face setting, including body language and speaking qualities, and th us their impressions may not match those assumed by the creators of the pag es. 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-t o-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 an d offline contexts. In fact, perceivers are significantly influenced by whe ther the information they are receiving is based on face-to-face interactio n 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 perso na to take into account the limitations of meta-perception.