The following information was published in the conference booklet and summarizes the keynote activity prior to the conference for potential attendees. The information in the conference booklet included my professional profile, but I have excluded it here because it is available elsewhere on my web site. The directions for the activity are below the summary information section.

Title: WYPINWYG: What You Perceive Is Not What You Get

Description
How do we perceive each other? What do our perceptions mean for our interpersonal interactions? What types of expectations do we have of each other based on our subjective perceptions? Why do we form these expectations? What assumptions underlie the formation of our expectations? How can we avoid forming assumptions so that we can improve our ability to differentiate between our own subjective perceptions of other people’s identities and the personal identities that they are trying to portray?

These are just a few of the questions that we will address in this keynote activity. The activity is adapted from The Turing Game experiment that was conducted by Joshua Berman and Amy S. Bruckman at the Georgia Institute of Technology from 1999 to 2000. The original experiment was intended to explore the issues surrounding identity perceptions in indirect communications such as virtual environments, particularly the differences between intended and perceived roles, and this activity has a similar goal.

After the activity is completed, we will discuss the rationale for offering various guesses based on the answers that were provided. We will discuss the potential implications that this reasoning has for our expectations of and assumptions about other people, as well as how we might moderate such reasoning in order to better understand and accept each of our individual identities. Finally, we will discuss how the roles we play in society urge us to meet various expectations.

The directions for the keynote activity are below. These directions were given to participants as a one-page handout so that they could refer to them during the game. As described below, each participant had a set of five question cards. The questions were as follows (the ID numbers and prompts to write answers on the back of the cards have been omitted):

• QUESTION 1: How would you define your occupation?
• QUESTION 2: How would you describe the most noticeable feature of your favorite room?
• QUESTION 3: What are three of your favorite hobbies or interests that you enjoy in your free time?
• QUESTION 4: What are three of your favorite stories from books, movies, games, or other entertainment?
• QUESTION 5: If you are given total freedom of choice, what would you say is your favorite food?

IMPORTANT: Please do not let other participants see your identification number!

Instructions

1. Please take a few minutes to answer the questions on your cards. Write your answers on the back side. Keep the cards together in packs by using the paper clip provided.
2. Participants will divide into groups of about 5-10 people each.
3. Group members will take a few minutes to introduce themselves to each other by listing the following information (do not mention any additional information):

• name,
• age,
• sexual identity (i.e., how you describe your physical sex to others when asked),
• nationality (i.e., country of legal residence), and
• ethnicity (i.e., your ethnic ancestry, at least to the best of your knowledge).

4. Each group will be given a box. Drop the card packs into the box and mix them up.
5. Members will draw a pack from the box. Make sure that you do not have your own!
6. Review the answers to the questions from the pack of cards that you have drawn.
7. Write the name of the person who you think the pack belongs to on the top card.
8. Once all of the group members have finished guessing whose pack they have, all members can reveal their identification numbers by displaying their tickets.
9. The facilitator will check to see how many members of each group guessed correctly, as well as which group(s) had the largest number of winners who guessed correctly.

Discussion