On-line social networking sites (OSNs) gained a great popularity over the last few years. And their popularity continues to increase. As of 2008, over 700 million worldwide were registered on the most popular social networks – Facebook and MySpace. Irrespective the vital role of the social networking in people’s everyday life no studies were conducted to investigate one of the crucial issues of the OSN concept: does the profile information shows accurate data on his/her personality?
There are two main contradictive hypotheses in this respect. The first is called idealized virtual-identity hypothesis. According to it owners of the profiles show idealized characteristics of their personalities. This is widespread assumption, which states that users “dress up” their profile information and that’s why it is not trustworthy. Besides, it means that personal profile shows the ideal-self views of people, so as to say who they want to be not who they are.
On the other hand there is the extended real-life hypothesis. It deals with the notion of the extended social context, which reflects personal information about the user: thoughts, photos and relations with other users. And this data are considered to be valid for the personality evaluation. According to this hypothesis OSNs profiles can hardly be falsified because they contain information about person’s reputation and friends give significant and visible feedback on the profile. The research conducted by a group of scientists tests these two hypotheses.
A total of 236 OSN users took part in the research:
133 students from the USA and 103 from Germany agreed to volunteer in the laboratory-based experiments. All the participants were rewarded somehow for their active help.
Different criteria and ratings were used to measure the results of this research and to evaluate data. First, accuracy criteria were developed on the basis of the Big Five Personality dimensions. The data were gathered through Ten Item Personality Inventory (USA), Big Five Inventory and NEO Five-Factor Inventory (Germany). The ideal-self rating was also developed in the course of the study. Besides, observers monitored each profile without time limitations and then rated their remarks.
In the course of analysis researchers determined accuracy by correlating observer ratings with criterion developed for accurate measurements. The self-idealization effect was calculated by computing partial correlation between observer ratings and users’ ideal-self ratings. Such methods as z-standardization, Fisher’s r-to-z transformation and one-sample t tests were used to evaluate datasets.
The results of the research supported the extended real-life hypothesis. Observers did not find out evidences of self-idealization. Furthermore, even when controlling for ideal-self ratings, the effect of real personality was significant for almost all cases. The highest level of accuracy was detected for extraversion and the lowest for neuroticism. The results of the research prove that people do not use their personal profiles to promote their fake of idealized identities. On the contrary, the OSN are considered to be an efficient tool to express real thoughts and features of personality.
But this is only one of the first studies conducted in this field and researchers suggest several other ideas, which can be implemented to get a broader image of the OSNs and their importance for personality.
References
Back, M.D., Stopfer, J.M., Vazire, S., Gaddis, S., Schmukle, S. C., Egloff, B., Gosling, S.D. (2009). Facebook Profiles Reflect Actual Personality, not Self-Idealization. Retrieved from http://www.simine.com/docs/Back_et_al_PSYCHSCIENCE_2010.pdf
