Students’ self-presentation on Facebook: An examination of personality and self-construal factors

Self-disclosure, empathy and anxiety in nurses

PURPOSE

This study aimed to examine the relationship between self-disclosure, empathy, and anxiety in nurses.

DESIGN AND METHODS

The study was conducted with 255 nurses working in hospitals in Turkey. Data were collected using a Sociodemographic Form, the Self-Disclosure Scale (SDS), the Basic Empathy Scale (BES), and the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI).

FINDINGS

A statistically significant positive relationship was found among the SDS, BES, and Spielberger STAI.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

Psychiatric nurses should ensure the reduction of nurses' anxiety levels by planning different interventions such as psychotherapy, counseling, and training. They may determine nurses' self-disclosure and empathy skills as well as their needs.

The Moderating Effects of Social Media Activities on the Relationship Between Effort-Reward Imbalance and Health and Wellbeing: A Case Study of the Oil and Gas Industry in Malaysia

Background

Social media activities affect every aspect of human life, be it personal, social or professional. Previous studies have confirmed the role of social media in affecting health in terms of releasing stress and providing social support. Increased occupational health disorders and increased time spent on social media activities motivate us to investigate this phenomenon in the context of occupational health. Therefore, the objective of this study is to measure the effects of social media activities related to personal and social life as well as work-life on health and wellbeing of office employees, on their job efforts and job rewards, and in moderating the effect of effort-reward imbalance on health and wellbeing.

Methods

Initially, to develop constructs related to social media activities, web-based structured interviews were conducted with five office employees working in the oil and gas industry for the last 5 years. Then, using an online questionnaire survey, data was collected from 424 office employees working in the oil and gas industry in Malaysia. Using statistical software for social science (SPSS) and Smart PLS, exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were conducted to identify reliability and validity (discriminant validity, convergent validity and composite validity) of the constructs. Following this, path analysis was conducted and the moderating effects were identified.

Results

Social media activities related to work-life decrease health and wellbeing by 11% and weaken the negative effect of effort-reward-imbalance on health and wellbeing by 17.6% at a 1% level of significance. The results of social media activities related to personal and social life strengthen the negative effect of effort-reward imbalance on health and wellbeing by 12% and negatively affects health and wellbeing and job rewards by 13, 55%, respectively. The direct effect of effort-reward imbalance and job efforts is significantly negative on health and wellbeing by 59 and 10%, respectively.

Conclusion

It is concluded that social media activities of the office employees significantly moderate the effect of effort-reward imbalance on health and wellbeing and intervene in job rewards in the organizations. Hence, the effect of social media activities reduces the health and wellbeing of office employees.

Problematic Smartphone Use and Problematic Social Media Use: The Predictive Role of Self-Construal and the Mediating Effect of Fear Missing Out

Problematic smartphone use (PSU) and problematic social media use (PSMU) are two interrelated constructs which have received significant research attention over the past decade. The present study investigated the relationship between self-construal (distinguished as independent and interdependent), PSU and PSMU with Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) as a mediating variable. The sample comprised 405 Italian students who completed standardized psychometric scales assessing the variables of the study. Bivariate correlations analysis showed that FoMO and independent self-construal was significantly and negatively associated. On the contrary, interdependent self-construal was significantly and positively associated with FoMO, PSU, and PSMU. Mediation analysis showed that FoMO mediated the relationship between self-construal and both PSMU and PSU, but at different levels. The results demonstrated that FoMO full mediated the relationships between interdependent self and PSU, whereas only partial mediation was found between interdependent self and PSMU. Therefore, taking these personality characteristics into account may help reduce dysfunctional behaviour associated with problematic technology use and promote psychological well-being among students. However, it is recommended that further studies replicate the proposed model by including other psychological constructs.

Ephemerality in Social Media: Unpacking the Personal and Social Characteristics of Time Limit Users on WeChat Moments

Social media platforms increasingly give users the option of ephemerality through settings that delete or hide posted content after a set period of time. Many individuals apply these settings to manage their posting history and, in turn, reduce concerns about self-presentation. Despite the growing popularity of this feature, few studies have empirically explored it. This study examines the Time Limit setting on WeChat Moments as an example and investigates how users using the Time Limit setting differ from nonusers in terms of personal characteristics (demographics, personality traits, psychological factors, and previous behavioral patterns) and social characteristics (audience size and audience diversity). Compared with nonusers, users using Time Limit setting scored significantly higher on posting frequency and privacy setting use and scored significantly lower on audience size. We also examine how personal and social characteristics vary between user groups with different degrees of ephemerality (i.e., low, medium, or high). Our findings show that users using the Time Limit setting who scored higher on measures of life changes, self-monitoring, posting frequency, and audience size and lower on perceived stress were more likely to opt for the low (i.e., 6months) rather than the medium (i.e., 1month) or high (i.e., 3days) degree of ephemerality. Our work contributes to the understanding of ephemerality settings on social media platforms and provides insights that help practitioners design more effective platforms.

Social Media Use Predicts Greater Liking in In-Person Initial Interactions

Does how people generally engage with their online social networks relate to offline initial social interactions? Using a large-scale study of first impressions (N = 806, N_dyad = 4,565), we examined how different indicators of social media use relate to the positivity of dyadic in-person first impressions, from the perspective of the participants and their interaction partners. Many forms of social media use (e.g., Instagram, Snapchat, passive) were associated with liking and being liked by others more, although some forms of use (e.g., Facebook, active) were not associated with liking others or being liked by others. Furthermore, most associations held controlling for extraversion and narcissism. Thus, while some social media use may be generally beneficial for offline social interactions, some may be unrelated, highlighting the idea that how, rather than how much, people use social media can play a role in their offline social interactions.

Digital Inequality Through the Lens of Self-Disclosure

Recent work has brought to light disparities in privacy-related concerns based on socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity. This paper examines relationships between U.S. based Twitter users’ socio-demographic characteristics and their privacy behaviors. Income, gender, age, race/ethnicity, education level and occupation are correlated with stated and observed privacy preferences of 110 active Twitter users. Contrary to our expectations, analyses suggest that neither socioeconomic status (SES) nor demographics is a significant predictor of the use of account security features. We do find that gender and education predict rate of self-disclosure, or voluntary sharing of personal information. We explore variability in the types of information disclosed amongst socio-demographic groups. Exploratory findings indicate that: 1) participants shared less personal information than they recall having shared in exit surveys; 2) there is no strong correlation between people’s stated attitudes and their observed behaviors.

An Investigation of the Influencing Factors of Chinese WeChat Users’ Environmental Information-Sharing Behavior Based on an Integrated Model of UGT, NAM, and TPB

Sustainable development is a common challenge for all. Under this background, how to promote public participation in environmental communication has become an important topic. The purpose of this study is to understand the motivating mechanism behind Chinese WeChat users’ environmental information-sharing behavior by taking China’s unique social and cultural background into account. A comprehensive theoretical model for this study is constructed based on the uses and gratification theory, the norm activation model, and the theory of planned behavior. Through an online survey, data were collected from 526 participants to test the research model. The research results show that Chinese WeChat users’ environmental information-sharing behavior is motivated by both egoistic factors (self-presentation, information seeking, and socializing) and altruistic factors (awareness of consequences and ascription of responsibility). During the behavioral decision-making process, these motivating factors impact people’s actual sharing behavior via their attitudes toward the behavior, subjective norms, personal norms, and behavioral intention in various patterns. The findings are discussed from an interdisciplinary perspective of media usage, prosocial behavior, and behavioral psychology. This article not only proposes a new conceptual framework to explain social media users’ behavior of sharing environmental information but also provides important theoretical and practical implications regarding motivating public participation in environmental communication on social media.

Uses and Gratifications on Augmented Reality Games: An Examination of Pokémon Go

Users are attracted by augmented reality games to fulfil their needs. Two objectives are proposed: (1) to research the motivations of those using augmented reality mobile games; (2) to define a structural model based on Uses and Gratifications Theory for the adoption of augmented reality mobile games. The present study examines the case of Pokémon Go. The model is composed of eight constructs: enjoyment, fantasy, escapism, social interaction, social presence, achievement, self-presentation and continuance intention. The SEM model was empirically assessed based on 1183 responses from Pokémon Go users around the world. Results clearly confirmed the positive influence of almost all the proposed constructs on continuance intention for Pokémon Go. First, these findings may be helpful for the online gaming industry in identifying the game functions that retain more gamers and improve the user experience. Second, the online gaming industry might use these results in order to classify those players with behaviours that favour the use of online games.

Investigating Privacy and Information Disclosure Behavior in Social Electronic Commerce

Social e-commerce has steadily emerged as a current trend for an enormous amount of Internet users. Despite the popularity and prevalence of social e-commerce, many users hesitate to disclose their information due to privacy concerns. This resistance from users impedes the development of social e-commerce enterprises. In order to help enterprises collect more user information and establish better development strategies, this research builds on the Privacy Antecedent-Privacy Concern-Outcomes (APCO) model and the theory of privacy calculus. This research investigates how the privacy antecedents of hot topic interactivity and group buying experience influence users’ privacy concerns and perceived benefits as well as how to further influence users’ information disclosure behavior. The results from 406 questionnaire responses indicate that hot topic interactivity and group buying experience have significant negative impacts on privacy concerns and significant positive impacts on perceived benefits. Privacy concerns negatively influence the behavior of information disclosure while perceived benefits positively influence the behavior of information disclosure. Based on these results, social e-commerce enterprises should promote users’ behaviors of hot topic interactivity and group buying to stimulate users’ information disclosure behavior.

Why Do People Experience the Fear of Missing Out (FoMO)? Exposing the Link Between the Self and the FoMO Through Self-Construal

With the advent of social media, it is getting easier to be informed about different aspects of individuals’ lives. Therefore, experiencing fear of missing out (FoMO), which is characterized by the desire to stay continually connected with others, is becoming increasingly widespread among people. The concept of FoMO has drawn considerable attention from researchers; however, past research has yet to expose the link between the self-concept and FoMO. Drawing on the self-construal theory, we argue that the construal of the interdependent self underlies FoMO. In other words, the current article proposes that people with interdependent self-construal are more vulnerable to FoMO. In Study 1, we conducted online survey research with 566 MTurk participants, 287 U.S. participants and 279 Indian participants. In Study 2, we conducted an experiment with two conditions with 188 MTurk participants residing in the United States. The findings from the two studies provide consistent and convergent findings that FoMO is positively associated with interdependent self-construal. Implications are discussed and further research suggestions are provided.

Customer roles from a self-service system perspective

Purpose

This paper aims to develop a theoretical framework of archetypical customer roles in a self-service-based system by applying role theory to understand customers’ resource integration and value co-creation efforts in practice.

Design/methodology/approach

This study is based on a three-phase explorative case study of customers’ experiences of using self-service technologies at a furniture retailer. A total of 90 interviews were conducted.

Findings

Four archetypical enacted customer roles during value co-creation in a self-service-based system are identified: passive non-bothered, passive hesitant, active realist and active independent. Furthermore, it is shown that these roles shape how resources become.

Research limitations/implications

The challenges facing our retail practice bear similarities with those in other contexts, e.g. financial and travel industries, government or public sector service settings, in which self-service technologies are becoming more common. Therefore, this study setting enables some tentative generalizations. The case study approach, however, limits the statistical generalizability of the findings.

Practical implications

The importance of understanding is that not all customers are well-equipped for co-creating value through self-service. By engaging customers and offering them guidance when they encounter difficulties in managing the value co-creation process, as well as viewing them as resource integrators and value co-creators, firms can help them enact more active roles.

Originality/value

The archetypical customer roles contribute theoretically to detailing how resource integration and value co-creation can be shaped by enacted roles, an influence that has not been explicitly proposed in empirical service research.

Examining Self-Disclosure on Social Networking Sites: A Flow Theory and Privacy Perspective

Social media and other web 2.0 tools have provided users with the platform to interact with and also disclose personal information to not only their friends and acquaintances but also relative strangers with unprecedented ease. This has enhanced the ability of people to share more about themselves, their families, and their friends through a variety of media including text, photo, and video, thus developing and sustaining social and business relationships. The purpose of the paper is to identify the factors that predict self-disclosure on social networking sites from the perspective of privacy and flow. Data was collected from 452 students in three leading universities in Ghana and analyzed with Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modeling. Results from the study revealed that privacy risk was the most significant predictor. We also found privacy awareness, privacy concerns, and privacy invasion experience to be significant predictors of self-disclosure. Interaction and perceived control were found to have significant effect on self-disclosure. In all, the model accounted for 54.6 percent of the variance in self-disclosure. The implications and limitations of the current study are discussed, and directions for future research proposed.

Associations of Self-Presentation on Facebook with Mental Health and Personality Variables: A Systematic Review

Many investigations of the associations of self-presentation on Facebook with mental health and personality variables exist, but their findings have not yet been synthetized. We therefore carried out a narrative synthesis of 21 observational studies (combined N = 7,573) obtained from a systematic search of four academic databases. Significant self-presentation associations were yielded for self-esteem, perceived social support, social anxiety, well-being, depression, bipolar/mania, stress, self-consciousness, and insecure attachment. Significant associations were also yielded for all of the big five personality variables and narcissism. The clearest trends-based on the number of times significant associations were yielded across included studies-were as follows: (1) inauthentic self-presentation was consistently associated with low self-esteem and elevated levels of social anxiety; (2) inauthentic self-presentation was consistently more likely to occur in people high in neuroticism and narcissism; and (3) authentic/positive self-presentation was consistently associated with increased levels of self-esteem and perceived social support. The assessment of online self-presentation may offer clinicians important insights into how clients are functioning in relation to various domains of mental health and personality. For example, clients who present inauthentic versions of themselves on Facebook could be experiencing social anxiety or have maladaptive personality traits such as neuroticism and narcissism, all of which could be targeted in intervention.

Exploring educational interventions to facilitate health professional students' professionally safe online presence

OBJECTIVE

To establish the most effective approach and type of educational intervention for health professional students, to enable them to maintain a professionally safe online presence.

METHOD

This was a qualitative, multinational, multi-institutional, multiprofessional study. Practical considerations (availability of participants) led us to use a combination of focus groups and individual interviews, strengthening our findings by triangulating our method of data collection. The study gathered data from 57 nursing, medical and paramedical students across four sites in three countries (Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia and Wales). A content analysis was conducted to clarify how and why students used Facebook and what strategies they thought might be useful to ensure professional usage. A series of emergent codes were examined and a thematic analysis undertaken from which key themes were crystallized.

RESULTS

The results illuminated the ways in which students use social networking sites (SNS). The three key themes to emerge from the data analysis were negotiating identities, distancing and risks. Students expressed the wish to have material about professional safety on SNS taught to them by authoritative figures to explain "the rules" as well as by peers to assist with practicalities. Our interactive research method demonstrated the transformative capacity of the students working in groups.

CONCLUSIONS

Our study supports the need for an educational intervention to assist health professional students to navigate SNS safely and in a manner appropriate to their future roles as health professionals. Because health professional students develop their professional identity throughout their training, we suggest that the most appropriate intervention incorporate small group interactive sessions from those in authority, and from peers, combined with group work that facilitates and enhances the students' development of a professional identity.

Digital Student Leadership Development

Social media tools are ubiquitous throughout the college student experience, particularly for students who hold leadership positions on campus. A research study on junior and senior student leaders' social media use and experience led to a number of findings that inform leadership education practice.

A Cross-Cultural Examination of SNS Usage Intensity and Managing Interpersonal Relationships Online: The Role of Culture and the Autonomous-Related Self-Construal

Perception of the autonomy and relatedness of the self may be influenced by one's experiences and social expectations within a particular cultural setting. The present research examined the role of culture and the Autonomous-Related self-construal in predicting for different aspects of Social Networking Sites (SNS) usage in three Asian countries, especially focusing on those aspects serving interpersonal goals. Participants in this cross-cultural study included 305 university students from Malaysia (n = 105), South Korea (n = 113), and China (n = 87). The study explored specific social and interpersonal behaviors on SNS, such as browsing the contacts' profiles, checking for updates, and improving contact with SNS contacts, as well as the intensity of SNS use, hypothesizing that those with high intensity of use in the Asian context may be doing so to achieve the social goal of maintaining contact and keeping updated with friends. Two scales measuring activities on other users' profiles and contact with friends' profiles were developed and validated. As predicted, some cross-cultural differences were found. Koreans were more likely to use SNS to increase contact but tended to spend less time browsing contacts' profiles than the Malaysians and Chinese. The intensity of SNS use differed between the countries as well, where Malaysians reported higher intensity than Koreans and Chinese. Consistent with study predictions, Koreans were found with the highest Autonomous-Related self-construal scores. The Autonomous-Related self-construal predicted SNS intensity. The findings suggest that cultural contexts, along with the way the self is construed in different cultures, may encourage different types of SNS usage. The authors discuss study implications and suggest future research directions.

The role of self-construal in predicting self-presentational motives for online social network use in the UK and Japan

Self-presentational motives underlying online social network (OSN) use were explored in samples of British and Japanese users. Self-expression, maintaining privacy, and attention seeking were strong motives in both samples; impression management and modesty were less strongly endorsed. Measures of independent and interdependent self-construal, as well as narcissism and modesty, were investigated as potential predictors of these motivations. Independent self-construal emerged as the most important predictor across both samples, with less independent participants showing more concern with image management and modesty. Participants with more interdependent self-construals were more concerned about maintaining privacy. There were some differences in the patterns of prediction between the samples, but overall self-construal measures contributed to the explanation of the majority of the motivations, whereas narcissistic or modest personality variables did not.