Personality and Individual Differences 50 (2011) 538–541

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Personality and Individual Differences

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate /paid

People or profiles: Individual differences in online social networking use

Jordan M. Carpenter ⇑, Melanie C. Green, Jeff LaFlamUniversity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 16 September 2010Accepted 2 November 2010Available online 17 December 2010

Keywords:Online social networkingOpenness to experienceMind-readingIndividual differences

0191-8869/$ - see front matter � 2010 Elsevier Ltd. Adoi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.11.006

⇑ Corresponding author. Address: Department of PsCarolina, Chapel Hill, CB 3270, NC 27599, USA. Tel.: +962 2537.

E-mail address: carp@email.unc.edu (J.M. Carpente

a b s t r a c t

Scholars have debated whether social networking websites provide valuable social connections or dis-tract individuals from more rewarding real-life relationships. We propose that examining individual dif-ferences in one’s tendency to approach versus avoid the perspectives of other people can help resolve thisissue: perspective curiosity and perspective defensiveness may predict different patterns of online behav-iors. The present study uses a trait measure of Mind-Reading Motivation to assess the relationship ofthese tendencies with different categories of behaviors on Facebook. Results revealed that certain aspectsof Facebook behavior (direct interactions with others over Facebook; Facebook as Real-life Supplement)were associated with approach motivation, a willingness to seek out others’ perspectives, while otheraspects of Facebook behavior (Facebook-only Relationships; romantic relationship-seeking) were associ-ated with a tendency to effortfully avoid others’ perspectives. Furthermore, openness to experience, butnot extraversion, predicts Facebook behaviors above and beyond the effect of MRM.

� 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Social networking websites offer a new way to understand,connect with, and learn information about other people. Over500 million people use Facebook alone to create profiles, post up-dates, and leave comments for friends. Perhaps because of thesemyriad uses, there are two cultural and academic narrativesregarding Facebook: some consider it to be a useful, social wayto connect with old acquaintances and keep up with distant friends(e.g., Valkenburg & Peter, 2007), while others believe it to be anisolating distraction from deeper social interactions (e.g., Green &Brock, 2008; Sanders, Field, Diego, & Kaplan, 2000). We proposethat considering the interaction between individual differences(personality traits) and different types of social networkingbehaviors may be a fruitful way of reconciling these positions.Specifically, we propose that individuals’ motivations to eitherapproach or avoid the perspectives of others may lead to distinctpatterns of social networking activity.

One way of examining individual differences in approaching oravoiding others’ perspectives comes from the study of theory ofmind (mind-reading), which is defined as the ability to understandand speculate about the thoughts and motivations of others(Premack & Woodruff, 1978). Mind-reading requires both theunderstanding that everyone has unique perspectives and the abil-ity to infer inner states from observable phenomena. Throughout a

ll rights reserved.

ychology, University of North1 919 843 9113; fax: +1 919

r).

lifetime, theory of mind is engaged often enough to become auto-matic, which results in efficient and often accurate assessments. Awoman who glowers and speaks curtly is perceived as angry, de-spite the fact that her subjective feeling of anger is, practically bydefinition, unobservable. Because such assessments are madeunconsciously, they allow for proficient socializing.

Unlike face-to-face interactions, where mind-reading is typi-cally automatic and useful, it is unclear to what extent mind-reading is utilized on social networking websites. Given that thesewebsites provide a wealth of information about people’s thoughtsand preferences through profiles, status updates, and pictures,users have the opportunity to form rather full impressions of otherpeople’s perspectives. On the other hand, the disconnected natureof the information may cause people to be less likely to mind-read.

1.1. Mind-Reading Motivation

Importantly, there are individual differences in the ways inwhich people are motivated to engage in mind-reading. Some indi-viduals are fascinated by the mystery of others’ thoughts and feel-ings and get real pleasure when puzzling out other people’sperspectives. Other individuals, however, seem to be motivatedto put energy into outright avoiding exposure to others’ mentalstates.

To address these issues in relation to Facebook use, we exam-ined two aspects of Mind-Reading Motivation (MRM; Carpenter,2008; Carpenter & Green, in preparation), an individual differencein the extent to which a person is willing to expend energy towardsunderstanding the perspectives and mental states of other people.

J.M. Carpenter et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 50 (2011) 538–541 539

We developed a self-report scale to measure MRM. The scale dem-onstrates good reliability and good convergent and divergent valid-ity (Carpenter, 2008). Individuals high in MRM enjoy figuring outwhat other people are thinking, and are willing to exert effort todo so.

In addition to measuring general orientation towards people’sperspectives, MRM can be broken into three subscales. The firstis perspective curiosity (an approach orientation), which is interestin seeking out others’ mental states and is measured by items like,‘‘When I see two strangers arguing, I often catch myself speculatingon what their conflict is’’ and ‘‘I like talking to my friends aboutpeople they know, even when I don’t know them myself.’’ The sec-ond subscale is perspective defensiveness (an avoidance orienta-tion), a willingness to effortfully avoid and resist others’ mentalstates. Items include, ‘‘People who disagree with me about impor-tant issues are generally just misinformed’’ and ‘‘It is pointless totry to see things from other people’s points of view.’’ (The final sub-scale, not used in the current study, is perspective engagement, aninterest in understanding the mental states of people in one’s envi-ronment.) The perspective curiosity and the perspective defensive-ness subscales could shed light on the ways perspective approachand avoidance affect computer-mediated social networking.

We were also interested in the relationship between Facebookbehaviors and the more well-established personality variables ofextraversion and openness to experience. Extraversion may be con-sidered as a tendency to approach social interactions, and opennessmay be considered a tendency to approach new situations andinformation (e.g., Elliot & Thrash, 2002). Furthermore, extraversionhas been shown to predict more social media use (Correa, Hinsley, &de Zuñiga, 2010), while openness to experience positively corre-lates with MRM (Carpenter & Green, in preparation).

1.2. Facebook behaviors

Social networking sites allow for a range of behaviors, whichmay involve more or less focus on other people’s perspectives.We examined four broad categories of Facebook use: direct inter-actions, supplements to in-person relationships, romantic relation-ship-seeking and Facebook-only Relationships. The first twocategories are the most ‘‘social’’ use of social networking sites,characterized by exchanging messages with others and using Face-book to coordinate in-person events or gatherings. These behaviorsmay indicate a willingness or eagerness to engage with the per-spective of others. In contrast, Facebook-only Relationships (rela-tionships in which the participants interact exclusively or mostlyvia Facebook), suggest a desire to maintain some distance betweenoneself and others.

Although using Facebook to pursue romantic relationships mayappear on the surface to indicate an eagerness to engage with oth-ers’ perspectives, using Facebook to ask a person out on a date isstill considered a relatively unusual (and occasionally unwelcome)use of Facebook. Therefore, people who use this route rather thanmore personal means of seeking romantic partners may also beless interested in seeing the perspectives of others.

1.3. Hypotheses and research questions

We propose that the first two categories, direct interactions andin-person supplements, will be associated with a desire to under-stand the perspectives of others. Thus, we hypothesize that thesebehaviors will be positively related to the social approach motiva-tions, particularly perspective curiosity and extraversion.

Facebook-only Relationships, in contrast, may be a means ofkeeping others at a distance. We therefore expect them to be pre-dicted by perspective defensiveness and negatively correlated withextraversion and openness.

Using Facebook to seek romantic relationships appears to haveelements of both perspective-seeking and perspective-avoiding. Itmay indicate a desire to interact with others, but is also a relativelyimpersonal way to begin a romantic relationship. We thus pose aresearch question: how will the use of Facebook to seek romanticrelationships be related to personality variables?

2. Methods

2.1. Participants

Psychology students (N = 194, 144 females, M age = 18.7)participated for course credit. Their self-reported average dailyFacebook time ranged from 5 min to 4 h, and their meanself-reported number of Facebook friends was 517 (SD = 263.60).

2.2. Measures

Participants took an online survey which asked about habits onFacebook and included items from the Big Five Inventory measur-ing extraversion (9 items, a = 0.91) and openness to experience (10items, a = 0.81; John & Srivastava, 1999) and Mind-Reading Moti-vation (Carpenter, 2008). The MRM scale (a = 0.82) consists of 15items with which participants rate their agreement on a 1 (not atall) to 7 (very much) scale. The relevant subscales were the 5-itemperspective curiosity scale (a = 0.68) and the 6-item perspectivedefensiveness scale (a = 0.80), which were moderately negativelycorrelated with one another (r = �0.23, p < 0.01).

The Facebook survey asked about a wide variety of Facebookuses. The items used here were scored on five-point responsescales. For ease of analysis, we condensed the questions into fourface-valid categories:

(1) Facebook as Romantic Tool (Romance; 8 items, a = 0.86):willingness to use Facebook to find or court new romanticor sexual partners. Example items asked how importantthe participants found using Facebook to find dates andhow often they had used Facebook to ask someone on a date.

(2) Facebook-only Relationships (8 items, a = 0.86): readiness tofind or have relationships with people with whom one onlyinteracts through Facebook. Example items asked about howoften participants communicate with, and how likely theyare to be friends with, people they only know throughFacebook.

(3) Facebook as Interactive Tool (11 items, a = 0.78): how mucha person uses Facebook to directly interact with people theyknow in-person. Items asked the extent to which Facebookhad increased the quantity and quality of social interactionswith friends and how likely participants were to post statusupdates intended to get others to ask questions.

(4) Facebook as Real-life Supplement (6 items, a = 0.68):willingness to use Facebook to schedule or find out aboutactivities or real-life social interactions. Example itemsasked about how likely a participant was to use Facebookto find more information about someone they met onceand how much they used Facebook to find out abouton-campus events.

3. Results

3.1. Facebook as Romantic Tool

The extent to which individuals use Facebook to form romanticrelationships was unrelated to perspective curiosity (r = �0.07,p = 0.37), but it was positively correlated with perspective defen-

540 J.M. Carpenter et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 50 (2011) 538–541

siveness (r = 0.25, p < 0.01). This behavior was not correlated withopenness to experience (r = �0.01, p = 0.88) or extraversion(r = 0.04, p = 0.57).

3.2. Facebook-only Relationships

As predicted, Facebook-only Relationships did not correlatewith perspective curiosity (r = �0.03, p = 0.70) but was predictedby perspective defensiveness (r = 0.25, p < 0.01); individuals whowere more defensive were more likely to have relationships onlythrough Facebook. However, this category of behavior was unre-lated to openness to experience (r = 0.03, p = 0.67) or extraversion(r = �0.04, p = 0.63).

3.3. Facebook as Interactive Tool

As expected, using Facebook to interact with others waspredicted by a higher level of perspective curiosity (r = 0.20,p < 0.01) but showed no relationship with perspective defensive-ness (r = 0.01, p = 0.86). This behavior was positively predicted byopenness (r = 0.19, p < 0.01) but not extraversion (r = 0.09, p =0.23).

3.4. Facebook as Real-Life Supplement

People who used Facebook as a Real-Life Supplement weremore likely to demonstrate perspective curiosity (r = 0.20,p < 0.01), but there was no relationship between this behaviorand perspective defensiveness (r = 0.10, p = 0.17). Real-Life Supple-ment was positively predicted by both openness to experience(r = 0.28, p < 0.01) and, uniquely among the four types of behavior,by extraversion (r = 0.16, p = 0.03).

3.5. Openness to experience and extraversion

Participants higher in openness were also higher in perspectivecuriosity (r = 0.34, p < 0.01) and lower in perspective defensiveness(r = �0.24, p < 0.01). Meanwhile, participants who were moreextraverted scored lower on perspective defensiveness (r = �0.18,p = 0.01) but extraversion showed no relation to perspective curi-osity (r = 0.07, p = 0.34).

3.6. Regression analyses

To determine the effect of the MRM subscales on the Facebookvariables above and beyond the effects of extraversion and open-ness, we included all four variables in regression equations predict-ing each category of behavior.

Entering both extraversion and openness to experience into theequation did not change perspective defensiveness’s significancelevel when predicting Romance (b = 0.27, p < 0.01) or Facebook-only Relationships (b = 0.19, p < 0.01), and no other variables weresignificant predictors. Perspective defensiveness therefore predictsthese two Facebook behaviors above and beyond the effects ofextraversion, openness, and perspective curiosity.

For Interactive Tool, openness was the strongest (but marginallysignificant) predictor (b = 0.15, p < 0.06), and perspective curiosityfell to marginal significance (b = 0.13, p < 0.10). Similarly, perspec-tive curiosity falls to nonsignificance (b = 0.12, p < 0.11) whenopenness (b = 0.21, p < 0.01) is included in an equation predictingReal-Life Supplement. Therefore, perspective curiosity does notseem to predict these Facebook behaviors above and beyond theeffect of openness to experience. Finally, the effect of extraversionfell to nonsignificance predicting Real-Life Supplement in this anal-ysis (b = 0.10, p = 0.18), indicating that extraversion predicts noneof the Facebook behaviors when controlling for openness.

4. Discussion

The Facebook behaviors measured seem to fall into two distinctareas, each predicted by different personality traits. Facebook asReal-life Supplement and Interactive Tool are both positively re-lated to perspective curiosity and to openness to experience (ap-proach motivations). These two categories of behavior are similarin that they involve active use of Facebook in ways that are incor-porated into a person’s larger social life: they are ways to use on-line social networking to enhance one’s real-life activities andrelationships.

Meanwhile, Romance and Facebook-only Relationships are bothcorrelated positively with perspective defensiveness and seem tofall within a similar theoretical area (avoidance motivations). Bothinvolve people having on-line interactions that are not meant tofacilitate existing relationships.

Considering that these two ways of using Facebook seem to bedistinct, the next question is what might lead a person to engage inone or the other. Counter to earlier findings that extraversion is apredictor of online social network use specifically (e.g., Correaet al., 2010), or goal-directed Internet use more generally (Armiel& Sargent, 2004), we found that it largely does not positively ornegatively predict either type of behavior beyond the effect ofopenness to experience.

On the other hand, openness to experience has far more predic-tive power regarding Facebook behaviors: it predicts Real-life Sup-plement and Interactive Tool above and beyond the effect of anyother measured trait. Therefore, it may not be appropriate to char-acterize these as gregarious behaviors, but rather as socially flexi-ble ones: individuals high in openness have sufficient creativity tosee Facebook as just another social tool like the telephone or in-stant messaging. Perspective curiosity also predicted the Real-LifeSupplement and Interactive Tool categories, but not beyond the ef-fect of openness, perhaps due to the high correlation betweenthese traits.

Perspective defensiveness positively correlated with the Ro-mance and Facebook-only Relationships categories; that is, partic-ipants who indicated a willingness to invest energy in avoidingworking with the mental states of others were more likely to useFacebook for its own sake. It may be surprising that interactingwith others is positively associated with a trait indicating a certaindegree of hostility towards other people’s perspectives. However,given that extraversion was not correlated with these behaviors,it may be that these perspective-defensive individuals specificallyvalue the fact that social networking websites let them engagewith people socially while still controlling the amount of socialinformation they receive: the people with whom they interactcan just remain ‘‘profiles.’’

These data suggest two distinct patterns of behavior on Face-book, each motivated by distinct desires and personality traits.One, associated with curiosity about other people’s minds andopenness to experience, consists of people using Facebook to man-age their real-life social lives and directly communicate withfriends. The other, associated with an overt defensiveness towardsother people’s perspectives, consists of people forming and main-taining romantic or platonic relationships solely over Facebook.For now, it seems that perhaps both lay theories regarding Face-book are true: people can use it to embrace their friends or keepothers at a distance.

References

Armiel, T., & Sargent, S. (2004). Individual differences in Internet usage motivations.Computers in Human Behavior, 20, 711–726.

Carpenter, J. (2008). Need for social cognition: Devising and testing a measurementscale. Unpublished Masters Thesis.

J.M. Carpenter et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 50 (2011) 538–541 541

Carpenter, J., & Green, M. C. (2010). Mind-Reading Motivation. UnpublishedManuscript.

Correa, T., Hinsley, A., & de Zuñiga, H. (2010). Who interacts on the web? Theintersection of users’ personality and social media use. Computers in HumanBehavior, 26, 247–253.

Elliot, A. J., & Thrash, T. M. (2002). Approach–avoidance motivation in personality:Approach and avoidance temperaments and goals. Journal of Personality andSocial Psychology, 5, 804–818.

Green, M. C., & Brock, T. C. (2008). Antecedents and civic consequences of choosingreal versus ersatz social activities. Media Psychology, 11(4), 566–592.

John, O. P., & Srivastava, S. (1999). The big five trait taxonomy: History, measurement,and theoretical perspectives. In L. A. Pervin & O. P. John (Eds.), Handbook ofpersonality: Theory and research (pp. 102–138). New York, NY, USA: Guilford Press.

Premack, D., & Woodruff, G. (1978). Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1, 515–526.

Sanders, C., Field, T., Diego, M., & Kaplan, M. (2000). The relationship of internet useto depression and social isolation among adolescents. Adolescence, 35, 237–242.

Valkenburg, P. M., & Peter, J. (2007). Internet communication and its relation towell-being: Identifying some underlying mechanisms. Media Psychology, 9,43–58.