WATCH ABOVE: Bragging about achievements and postings photos with your partner can say a lot about your personality according to researchers. Peter Kim reports.
Posting a Facebook update about completing a 10-kilometre run, your vegan Thanksgiving or getting promoted at work? British researchers say you’re turning to social media to feed your narcissism.
If you’re posting updates about your significant other or videos of your kids, you’re not off the hook either. Psychologists out of Brunel University say you’re grappling with low self-esteem.
Yet another study is tying our social media habits to a call for attention and validation from our peers. This time around, the researchers zeroed in on what they called the “Big Five” personality traits: extroversion, neuroticism, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness, along with self-esteem and narcissism.
“It might come as little surprise that Facebook status updates reflect people’s personality traits. However, it is important to understand why people write about certain topics on Facebook because their updates may be differentially rewarded with ‘likes’ and comments,” lead researcher, Dr. Tara Marshall, said in a statement.
“People who receive more likes and comments tend to experience the benefits of social inclusion, whereas those who receive none feel ostracised,” she said.
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Marshall and her team worked with 555 Facebook users who filled out online surveys that helped to measure their personality traits.
Some trends were identified – people who didn’t think highly about themselves had a tendency to post updates about their romantic relationships, or lack thereof. Those with neurotic personalities provided personal updates, but they craved validation, the study noted.
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Narcissists loved to provide updates about their diet, physique and exercise routine. The researchers suggest that they used Facebook as a platform to “broadcast” the effort and results they garnered from all of the work they put into their appearance.
Conscientiousness was tied to writing more about family. But if you were posting mostly about your kids, you were taking up an “indirect form of competitive parenting.”
And those who were extroverted used Facebook primarily as a means to communicate for social events and connect with friends.
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Findings from this study – one among droves touching on users’ need for validation and inclusion – are troubling. The researchers guess that “people are more likely to post about their relationships when they feel insecure or lonely.
Last year, a University of Queensland study shed light on how a lack of Facebook ‘likes’ determined a user’s levels of loneliness and even self-worth.
“Our research shows that feelings of belonging are threatened when users stop generating content or participating online, and when information they have posted does not receive a response from others,” the researchers said.
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In one of two experiments, the researchers had some of their volunteers purposely ostracized on Facebook. They were told to post frequently, but only half of the group received feedback while the other half were told to be passive or in “lurk” mode.
Being left out and being an observer led to “lower levels of belonging and meaningful existence.”
What you ‘like’ on Facebook has even been studied. In previous findings, researchers have suggested that you are a sum of what you ‘like.’ You may not be joining your acquaintance on that trip to Bali, or to the free brewery tour, but your ‘likes’ are a collection of what you are or what you’d like to be.
The new study, published in the journal, Personality and Individual Differences, suggests that while some users may be garnering ‘likes,’ they may not be making their audience happy.
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“Although our results suggest that narcissists’ bragging pays off because they receive more likes and comments to their status updates, it could be that their Facebook friends politely offer support while secretly disliking such egotistical displays,” Marshall suggested.
“Greater awareness of how one’s status updates might be perceived by friends could help people to avoid topics that annoy more than they entertain,” she said.
Read the full study here.
carmen.chai@globalnews.ca
Follow @Carmen_Chai
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