2008/01/01 by Nicole C. Krämer, Stephan Winter · 2 citations
Social Sciences · Psychology · #Impact of Technology on Adolescents #Digital Marketing and Social Media #Personality Traits and Psychology #Impression management #Psychology #Extraversion and introversion #Impression formation #Personality #German #Social psychology #Big Five personality traits #Impression #The Internet #Self-disclosure #Presentation (obstetrics) #Exploratory research #World Wide Web #Social perception #Perception #Computer science
paper · doi:10.1027/1864-1105.20.3.106
openalex publication_date 2008/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
Social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and StudiVZ are popular means of communicating personality. Recent theoretical and empirical considerations of homepages and Web 2.0 platforms show that impression management is a major motive for actively participating in social networking sites. However, the factors that determine the specific form of self-presentation and the extent of self-disclosure on the Internet have not been analyzed. In an exploratory study, we investigated the relationship between self-reported (offline) personality traits and (online) self-presentation in social networking profiles. A survey among 58 users of the German Web 2.0 site, StudiVZ.net, and a content analysis of the respondents’ profiles showed that self-efficacy with regard to impression management is strongly related to the number of virtual friends, the level of profile detail, and the style of the personal photo. The results also indicate a slight influence of extraversion, whereas there was no significant effect for self-esteem.