Consumer Buyer Behaviour
ETH Zurich Sociology Working Paper No. 7
Personality on Social Network Sites: An Application of the Five Factor Model
Stefan Wehrli
September 2008
ETH Zurich, Chair of Sociology SEW E 21, Scheuchzerstrasse 70 8092 Zurich, Switzerland Tel. +41 44 632 55 56 Fax +41 44 632 10 54 info@soz.gess.ethz.ch www.socio.ethz.ch
Personality on Social Network Sites: An Application of the Five Factor Model ∗
Stefan Wehrli ETH Zürich wehrlist@ethz.ch September 5, 2008
Abstract: In this paper we explore how individual personality characteristics influence online social networking behavior. We use data from an online survey with 1560 respondents from a major Swiss technical university and their corresponding online profiles and friendship networks on a popular Social Network Site (SNS). Apart from sociodemographic variables and questions about SNS usage, we collected survey data on personality traits with a short question inventory of the Five Factor Personality Model (BFI-15). We show how these psychological network antecedents influence participation, adoption time, nodal degree and ego-network growth over a period of 4 months on the networking platform. Statistical analysis with overdispersed degree distribution models identifies extraversion as a major driving force in the tie formation process. We find a counter-intuitive positive effect for neuroticism, a negative influence for conscientiousness and no effects for openness and agreeableness. Keywords: Online social networks, personality, Big Five, degree distributions
1 Introduction
How does an individual set of attributes like personality affect the formation of relationships and individuals’ positions in social networks? Some people seem to accumulate a large number of acquaintances while others have close circles. High variability in the number of contacts is a frequently observed feature of social networks. Especially in the recent network literature, empirical estimation of the exact functional form of such...
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