KM Viray
Your Facebook posts could be a cyber-mirror for everyone to see who you really are.
Anything and everything we post and share on Facebook is an inside look on who we are in real life. The things we post all build up to who we want to appear as to others. In other words, our posts reflect the persona we want to project to the world.
A recent study in the “Journal of Personality of Individual Differences” explored what something like someone’s choice to post a photo of his or her newborn child versus a poem he or she got published online say about that person and what he or she may be trying to communicate.
Researchers Tara Marshall, Katharina Lefringhausen, and Nelli Ferenczi studied how an individual’s self-esteem, levels of narcissism, and the extent to which the Big Five personality traits (neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) apply to them to predict what someone will post on Facebook. They also studied the purpose of the posts, whether it was to be validated, to self-express, to communicate or connect to others, or to share information.
The researchers began by listing the common categories of topics that people post onto Facebook:
- social activities and everyday life (social activities, something funny that happened to them, everyday activities, pets, sporting events)
- intellectual thoughts (views on politics, current events, research/science)
- achievements (achieving goals, their own creative output, accomplishments, anything work or school related)
- diet and exercise
- children and feelings about one’s romantic partner
The researchers then gave 555 male and female Facebook users tests to determine their levels of self-esteem and narcissism and how neurotic, extroverted, open to experience, agreeable, and conscientious they were. Other factors were their frequency on the social networking site, the number of “likes” they usually got, the frequency of their posts on the abovementioned topics.
Results showed a number of significant correlations arose between certain personality traits and certain topics.
The study revealed that posts about social activities and everyday life and achievements received the most likes and comments, and posts about intellectual thoughts received the least amount. For example, an achievement will most like earn a “congratulations” or “libre!” comment while a strong opinion on a current issue may not be an issue people would want to be involved in.
According to the study, people who have lower self-esteem are more likely to post updates about their romantic partner for the purpose of self-expression. Narcissistic or vain people post about their achievements or their diets to gain attention and receive compliments.
According to writer Alexia LaFata,
Delving into the Big Five revealed even more interesting correlations.
Extroverted people are more likely to post about social activities and everyday life for the purpose of communicating and connecting to others.
Neurotic people are more likely to use Facebook for the purpose of validation and to “seek the attention and support that they lack offline.”
People who are more open to newness are more likely to use Facebook to engage with intellectual topics for the purpose of sharing information.
People who are more conscientious write more frequently about their children for the purpose of sharing information and communicating, perhaps in “an indirect form of competitive parenting.”
Of course, a sampling of little over 500 people isn’t exactly much when compared to the millions of Facebook users. But these results are actually pretty interesting once you get a good look at it.
Take a few minutes to assess yourself. Do your posts and supposedly corresponding personality jive with any of these results?
Banner photo from heraldsun.com.au.
