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Facebook profile reflects the true you
February 18, 2010 | 10:02 am
Online social networking sites have become a huge part of socializing. People 30 and younger, in
particular, use Facebook and My Space to interact with friends throughout the day. However, there
has been very little research on whether the people behind the page are the same people face to face.
One prevailing theory in psychology is that people use their social networking pages to protect an
idealized version of themselves, not the person they really are.
In one of the first studies to look at this question, researchers
found that people's social networking pages seem to match
their authentic personalities. Psychologists at the University of
Texas at Austin and Johannes Gutenberg-University in
Germany recruited 236 female college students in Germany
and the United States ages 17 to 22. Using a number of
psychological measures, the researchers assessed the About the Bloggers
personalities of the participants and had 19 research assistants
then peruse the participants' online social networking pages to Tami Dennis
form impressions on their personality. Melissa Healy
Karen Kaplan
The study, published this week in the journal Psychological Thomas H. Maugh II
Science showed that peoples' profiles really do reflect their true Rosie Mestel
selves. It was easiest to authenticate such personality traits as Shari Roan
extroversion and openness from social networking pages and Jeannine Stein
harder to gauge neuroticism. But, overall, people didn't
idealize their Facebook selves, as some researchers suspected.
Instead, the authors wrote, "Online social networks might be an efficient medium for expressing and
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