Abstract
Clicking the like button following a post on social media has become a common means of expressing and gathering social support online. Little is known about how liking expression is linked and regulated by personality traits and communication motives. Following a preliminary survey (n = 168) about the usage of the like function on WeChat, a Chinese social media platform, we conducted an online study (n = 183) to map the Big-Five personality traits and five communication motives to the frequency (likelihood) of liking expression. The results showed that each user had, on average, 385 WeChat friends and spent 2.2 hours and used the liking function 1.1 times each day on WeChat. The personality trait conscientiousness was negatively related to the liking expression (β = −0.505, p < 0.05). In contrast, agreeableness promoted the expression of liking directly (β = 0.153, p < 0.05) and indirectly via two communication motives, enjoyment (a: β = 0.377, p < 0.01; b: β = 0.433, p < 0.001) and passing time (c: β = 0.578, p < 0.05; d: β = 0.523, p < 0.001). The liking expression may serve as a simple index for understanding dispositional underpinnings of social media networking.
Highlights
Cyber-Personality and Motives of Online CommunicationCyber-personality, human personality in cyberspace, has emerged as a new topic in social and personality psychology
The present study focuses on the link between the like expressions on WeChat and users’ basic personality traits and communication motives
We asked the participants for their basic attitude toward, perception of, and emotional experience with the like function on WeChat
Summary
Cyber-Personality and Motives of Online CommunicationCyber-personality, human personality in cyberspace, has emerged as a new topic in social and personality psychology. The researchers have suggested that people’s online behaviors, including online communication and online self-expression, are regulated by some specific personality traits and motivational factors (e.g., Anolli et al, 2005; Orchard and Fullwood, 2010; Attrill, 2015). In contrast to the vast amount of research on behavioral effects of personality in real life, little is known about how different personality traits manifest in the cyber-environment. The manifestations of personality traits and social motives in the cyber-environment may or may not be consistent with their behavioral effects observed in the actual world. We map the online behavior to motivation constructs that drive and regulate social networking
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