Personality and Culture Influence Self-presentation and Self-disclosure on SNSs

Baiyun Chen and Justin Marcus conducted a non-experimental study to investigate how university students (N = 463) use Facebook, and examined the roles that personality and culture play in disclosure of information in online SNS-based environments. The research seeked to extend existing theory on self-disclosure to the online arena in higher educational institutions and contribute to the knowledge base and understanding about the use of a popular social networking site (SNS), Facebook, by college students.

Results showed that individuals do disclose differently online vs. in-person, and that both culture and personality matter. Specifically, it was found that collectivistic individuals low on extraversion and interacting in an online environment disclosed the least honest and the most audience-relevant information, as compared to others. Exploratory analyses also indicate that students use sites such as Facebook primarily to maintain existing personal relationships and selectively used privacy settings to control their self-presentation on SNSs.

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Chen, B., & Marcus, J. (2012). Students’ self-presentation on Facebook: An examination of personality and self-construal factors. Computers in Human Behavior, 28 (6),  2091–2099. Google Scholar