Personality Traits Predicting Facebook Use
Facebook was originally developed as an online social network to allow students to maintain contact with college friends once they left school. This led to Facebook being the predominant social network used by college students to keep in touch with former school mates after they headed off to college. Facebook is now open to all persons (although use is prohibited or discouraged in some countries) and has become the Internet’s most well-known social networking site with more than one billion active users (Facebook, 2013) who spend anywhere from a few minutes to more than two hours per day on this website (Kalpidou, Costin, & Morris, 2011; Moore & McElroy, 2012; Pempek, Yermolayeva, & Calvert, 2009; Ross, Orr, Sisic, Arseneault, Simmering, & Orr, 2009).
Much of the early research on university students’ Facebook use explored the relationship between traits from five factor personality models (e.g., Costa & McCrae, 1992; Goldberg, 1990) and Facebook use. Results regarding the relationship between broad traits and general use have been equivocal. Some studies have found users high in extraversion spend more time (Wilson, Fornasier, & White, 2010) and have more Facebook friends (Amichai-Hamburger & Vinitzky, 2010) other studies have not found these associations (Ross et al., 2009). Other studies have found relationships between these traits and more specific online behaviours, such as how much personal information users share and which Facebook tools are used (Amichai-Hamburger & Vinitzky, 2010).
Openness has been associated with spending more time on Facebook and having more Facebook friends (Skues, Williams, & Wise, 2012) and using more Facebook features (Amichai-Hamburger & Vinitzky, 2010). Surprisingly, high agreeableness was not associated with having more Facebook friend (Ross et al., 2009) and there is mixed evidence for a negative relationship between conscientiousness and time spent on Facebook (Kalpidou et al., 2011; Wilson et al., 2010). Only a few studies have speculated on relationships between personality traits and social networking on productivity (i.e., study habits and academic performance). Wise, Skues, and Williams (2011) noted that conscientiousness could moderate relationships with time spent on Facebook depending on the motive for using Facebook. If Facebook is a distraction, one might expect low conscientiousness to be associated with more time spent on Facebook; if Facebook is a medium for discussing study material with friends, one might expect the reverse.