Facebook Profiles Reveal Accurate Personality Portraits

Tuesday, December 1, 2009 - 14:14 in Psychology & Sociology

Contrary to the widely held assumption that people use facebook and other social networking sites to make idealized impressions of themselves, a new psychology study suggests that facebook and myspace profiles are actually utilized for genuine social interaction and portray accurate personality images as a result. To conduct the study, the researchers collected 236 profiles of college-aged people from the United States (facebook) and Germany (StudiVZ, SchuelerVZ). The researchers used questionnaires to assess the profile owners' actual personality characteristics as well as theirideal-personality traits (how they wished to be). The personality traits included: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness. read more

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