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Extraversion and facebook use psychology essay

Facebook is a massive social networking site for communication with friends, family and colleagues, facebook is different to other social networking sites as it allows us to establish an offline to online trend. This research investigates to see if there is a correlation between extraversion and hours spend on facebook each week, the research shows that there is a positive correlation between the two variables and that the hypothesis supported is correct.

Introduction

Internet is becoming a major part of our everyday life while facebook launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerbergand currently has more than 400 million users and is becoming one of the most popular social network sites in the world today, It has a massive range of features that allow people to share feelings, thoughts, photos, add and search for current and new friends and also communicate with their online and offline friends easily, as often or as little as they like.

The purpose of this report is to examine if there is a correlation between extraversion and facebook use (hours per week), weather that be a positive, negative or no correlation. I will be using the spss system to analysis the data.

So does this mean the more extravert you are the more you use facebook rather than if your personality is introvert?, Extravert being someone who is friendly and outgoing and enjoys social situation and introvert being someone who enjoys spending time thinking, exploring thoughts and feeling and prefers to be on their own instead of being in social situations.

Previous studies have showed us that there is a link between extraversion and facebook use in different form other than just comparing how many hours per week they use facebook but also which way they use facebook functions and tools.

There are previous studies to support that “ Extraversion is another trait that has been shown to be associated with online use” (Ross, C, Orr, E, Sisic, M, Arseneault, J, Simmering, M and Orr, R (2009).

As cited by (Borkenaue & Liebler in Personality impressions from identity claims on facebook by Ivcevic Z & Ambady, N 2012) “ strangers are accurately able to judge traits related to extraversion and conscientiousness based on still photographs”, also that “ extraversion reflects a person’s tendency to be sociable and able to experience positive emotions” (Ross, C, et,. al 2009). These studies show us that there is a link between the way people act can give us a clear view if they are extravert and how they experience positive emotions, which then gives us the idea that if people that use facebook and receive positive emotions, they will use facebook more often to meet their social and emotional needs.

Hypothesis – the more extravert someone is the more hours they spend on facebook each week. This theory has been made and the results will show a variance between extraversion and hours been spent on facebook each week.

Methods

Participants

A study was advertised on the University EMS system inviting students who were enrolled on the Psychology joint honours component to take part in the non-experimental study. The participants were aged between 19-56 with a mean age of (m= 21. 4) years with the standard deviation of (sd= 6. 85) results are in descriptive statistics (appendix 1) , there is an 8: 54 (male: female) ratio In this experiment.

The experiment was counterbalanced across participants, half completed a) then b) and the other half completed b) then a) there were no differences found across the counterbalance so the data was analysed as one group.

Design

The design of the study is a non-experimental correlation design, which includes two independent variables one facebook hours used per week and the other extraversion. To calculate the results a scatterplot graph was used using the spss system. The researcher counterbalanced the questionnaires across the group and then analysed all the data as one group data collected was quantitative data.

materials

The study involves two questionnaires one questionnaire contains 10 questions (adapted form Goldberg, 1992, Goldberg et al., 2006) based around how extravert they are while using facebook with answers varying between very much so to not at all. The second 7 answer questionnaire is a measure of facebook use (hours per week) created for the experiment, this questionnaire is assessing the use of facebook functions and applications with answers varying from more than once a day to never.

Procedure

Participants were recruited through the universities Psychology participation pool participants who confirmed their interest in the study were then signed up for individual time slots, upon arrival were given a consent for to fill in before the study could take place. Participants were asked to fill in a two questioners as part of the study.

Extroversion questionnaire 10-item IPIP (adapted from Goldberg, 1992; Goldberg et al., 2006).

A measure of facebook use created for the experiment.

Participants were given a consent form at the start of study and debrief form at the end of study with full details of the experiment.

The participants were told that the experiment would take around 15 minutes to complete, and that the information they provided by filling out the questionnaires would be anonymous, also that the data will be stored indefinitely. There was no parental consent needed as all participants were aged over 18.

When each questionnaire was completed they were placed into an envelope and passed back to the researcher the participants were then thanked and given their debrief form.

In this study the ethical issues were dealt with in the correct manner a consent for was handed out at the start of the experiment and a full debrief form explaining the experiment and the rite to withdraw, also explaining that with the right to withdraw had to be done at this pacific point as it would not be possible to do so afterwards. Researcher also explained what their data would be used for in the future (journal articals) and that they would be able to access the journals online through the library website.

Results

The Scatterplot graph above shows the relationship between extraversion (m= 27. 23, sd= 5. 433) and facebook hours (m= 12. 81, sd= 12. 136) was explored using a correlation analysis using spss. The result of a Pearson product-moment correlation indicated that there was a medium positive correlation between the two variables used in this experiment (r=. 36, n= 62, p <. 05) as showed in the correlation table is listed in (appendix 2), along with the descriptive statistics table (appendix 3) which shows mean and the standard deviation of facebook hours and extroversion. The results of the study were significant and support the hypothesis - the more extravert a person is the more hours he/she will spent on facebook each week. (results shown in scatterplot). All participants completed both questionnaires.

Discussion

In this study the hypothesis is supported after completing the research, results show that there is a medium positive correlation between extroversion and hours spent on facebook each week.

The more extravert an individual is the more time they spend on facebook each week weather that be looking at updates, updating statuses, looking at photos or uploading their own photos. Also “ individuals high on the trait of extraversion were found to belong to significantly more facebook groups, since extraverts are more likely to engage in social activities” (Costa & McCrae, 1992a, 1992b), this also shows that they interact with their friends on a regular basis through facebook via a wide variety of groups but the evidence from the research does not fully support the results from this study as it also says the extraverts are more likely to engage in social activities rather than just spending time on facebook.

This study has limitations, this study was primarily limited by its small number of participant and the ratio of male compared to female, a larger and even ratio of male and female sample of participants would have benefited the results.

As this study includes psychology students from a joint degree also raises the problem does this represent the general population.

Problems with the questionnaire that was created for the purpose for this experiment are that it does not state that it is related to facebook and participants may feel more at ease doing questions asked on facebook rather than face to face especially if they have and introvert personality.

This study gives a base for further research to take place in the future and explore personality traits compared to facebook use and use of functions, and also other social networking sites to give us greater knowledge and overview of the subject personality traits as a whole.

Appendices

Appendix 1 =

Descriptive Statistics

N

Range

Minimum

Maximum

Mean

Std. Deviation

participant age

62

38

18

56

21. 40

6. 853

Valid N (listwise)

62

Appendix 2 =

Correlations

Extraversion

facebook use

extraversion

Pearson Correlation

1

. 357**

Sig. (2-tailed)

. 004

N

62

62

facebook use

Pearson Correlation

. 357**

1

Sig. (2-tailed)

. 004

N

62

62

**. Correlation is significant at the 0. 01 level (2-tailed).

Appendix = 3

Descriptive Statistics

Mean

Std. Deviation

N

extraversion

27. 23

5. 433

62

facebook use

12. 81

12. 136

62

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