Short Communication
The relationship among individual differences in individualism-collectivism, extraversion, and self-presentation

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.09.034Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Relationships among culture, extraversion, and self-presentation were investigated.

  • Individualism has a significant correlation with extraversion.

  • Extraversion has a significant correlation with self-presentation on social media.

Abstract

Individualism versus collectivism as an aspect of culture and extraversion as an aspect of personality may help explain self-presentation attitudes, intentions, and behaviors on social networking sites. Thus, this study aims to investigate the individual differences and relationships among individualism versus collectivism, extraversion, and self-presentation attitudes, intentions, and behaviors. The Individualism-Collectivism Scale and the Big Five Personality Scale were used to collect the data from 311 college students (75.9% woman, mean age = 20.68). Results show that individualism has a significant positive correlation with extraversion, which has a significant correlation with selfie posting attitudes, intentions and behaviors. Even though the correlation between individualism and attitudes toward self-presentation was statistically significant, the magnitude of the association was small.

Introduction

Chiu, Leung, and Hong (2011) define culture as a network of procedural and declarative knowledge, which answers the fundamental questions in life. Culture is distributed in the society through media messages, language, practices, artifacts, values, and modeling of a behavior (Markus & Kitayama, 2001). On the other hand, personality is “the patterns of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, together with the psychological mechanism -hidden or not- behind those patterns” (Funder, 1997, p. 1). Personality is shaped by genetic dispositions and environmental factors, the most important of which are cultural values. Markus and Kitayama (1998) explain that there is no personality without culture.

McCrae and Terracciano (2005) investigated the relationships between the Big Five personality traits and culture and found that individualistic countries (i.e. North Americans and Europeans) scored higher in extraversion than collectivistic countries (i.e. Africans and Asians). Hutchinson and Gul (1997) examined the impact of extraversion and individualism versus collectivism on students' group learning preferences and found that extraverts with a collectivistic orientation prefer more group learning environments than those with an individualistic orientation. Findings such as these suggest that culture has a significant impact on personality and behavior. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate individual differences in and the relationships among individualism versus collectivism, extraversion and self-presentation attitudes, intentions, and behaviors on social networking sites (SNS).

Section snippets

Individualism versus collectivism

Individualism is “the degree to which a person acts as an individual rather than as a member of a group” (Hofstede, 1994, p. 6). Individualists are more autonomous, independent, self-contained, success-oriented, and calculative (e.g., Chan and Cheung, 2016, Rinne et al., 2013). They place greater value in privacy and personal opinions (Hofstede, 2001). On the other hand, collectivism is “the degree to which individuals are integrated into groups” (Hofstede, 1984, p. 83). Collectivists value

Participants

Through convenience sampling method, 311 students from a state university in Turkey were recruited and willingly participated in the study. An online survey was administered using an Internet-based surveying system in a counterbalanced order. Of the sample, 236 were women (75.9%) and 75 were men (24.1%). Participants' ages ranged from 18 years old to 37 years old (M = 20.68; SD = 3.07). In terms of college status, there were 157 freshmen (50.5%), 83 sophomores (26.7%), 38 juniors (12.2%), and 33

Hypothesis testing results

The results show that individualism has a significant correlation with attitudes toward selfie posting, whereas it has a non-significant correlation with intentions and actual behaviors; therefore, Hypothesis 1 was rejected except for attitudes toward selfie posting. However, collectivism has no significant correlation with selfie posting attitudes, intentions, or behaviors; therefore, Hypothesis 2 was supported. Results also indicate that individualism has a significant correlation with

Discussion and conclusion

The present study focused on gender differences and the relationships among culture, personality, and selfie posting on SNS. Findings suggest that selfie posting is a reflection of personality (i.e., extraversion) but not much of a cultural orientation. Thus, one of the main contributions of the present study is that even though culture (individualism and collectivism) and extraversion are related, culture does not have a strong relationship with selfie posting.

Results suggest that

References (40)

  • R.R. McCrae

    Human nature and culture: A trait perspective

    Journal of Research in Personality

    (2004)
  • L. Qiu et al.

    What does your selfie say about you?

    Computers in Human Behavior

    (2015)
  • T. Ryan et al.

    Who uses Facebook? An investigation into the relationship between the Big Five, shyness, narcissism, loneliness, and Facebook usage

    Computers in Human Behavior

    (2011)
  • G. Seidman

    Self-presentation and belonging on Facebook: How personality influences social media use and motivations

    Personality and Individual Differences

    (2013)
  • A. Sorokowska et al.

    Selfies and personality: Who posts self-portrait photographs?

    Personality and Individual Differences

    (2016)
  • Y. Sung et al.

    Why we post selfies: Understanding motivations for posting pictures of oneself

    Personality and Individual Differences

    (2016)
  • I. Ajzen et al.

    The influence of attitudes on behavior

  • H. Bacanlı et al.

    The development of a personality scale based on the five-factor theory: The adjective-based personality test (ABPT)

    Türk Eğitim Bilimleri Dergisi

    (2009)
  • C.Y. Chiu et al.

    Cultural processes: An overview

  • M. Fishbein et al.

    Belief, attitude, intention and behavior: An introduction to theory and research

    (1975)
  • Cited by (34)

    • Modeling consumers' information acquisition and 5G technology utilization: Is personality relevant?

      2022, Personality and Individual Differences
      Citation Excerpt :

      Conscientiousness positively moderates the IAC–ITU5GT linkage. Extroversion relates to an individual's proclivity for being gregarious and lively (Arpaci et al., 2018). Due to their sociable nature, their capacity for information gathering is unmatched, and they frequently interact with friends, family, and coworkers (Guo et al., 2018).

    • Relating consumers' information and willingness to buy electric vehicles: Does personality matter?

      2021, Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment
      Citation Excerpt :

      Extraversion refers to a person's propensity to be outgoing and energetic. People with high extraversion are sociable, self-confident, and like adventures (Arpaci et al., 2018). Since they are inherently talkative and gregarious, their ability to gather information is irrefutable, resulting in regular contact with friends, relatives, colleagues, and neighbors (Guo et al., 2018).

    • Impact of social economic development on personality traits among Chinese college students: A cross-temporal meta-analysis, 2001–2016

      2021, Personality and Individual Differences
      Citation Excerpt :

      For example, individualism in the Chinese society has increased, as indicated by the social phenomenon of increasing divorce rates and first-marriage ages (China Domestic Statistic Yearbook), as well as empirical findings of decreasing use of frequent characters in newborn Chinese babies' names and increasing usage of singular pronouns instead of plural pronouns in Chinese songs (Zou & Cai, 2016). While studies have found that individualism is often associated with extraversion(Arpaci et al., 2018; Hofstede & McCrae, 2004), we hypothesized that extraversion might have increased over the past decades. Moreover, evaluations of some personality traits have been shifting in recent years; for example, shyness used to be considered a positive trait in traditional beliefs (Liu et al., 2012), but it became less compatible with today's environment, and predicted only negative outcomes such as lower preference by peers and higher loneliness among children (Liu et al., 2012).

    • Cross-cultural equivalence of shortened versions of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire: An application of the alignment method

      2020, Personality and Individual Differences
      Citation Excerpt :

      As incorporating predictors or outcomes was beyond the scope of this research, future research may consider additionally examining predictor or outcome relations using the alignment-within-CFA framework. Further, although we were not able to explore possible mechanisms for non-invariance, future research should consider how external variables might explain non-invariance of personality across cultures (e.g., individualism and collectivism; Arpaci et al., 2018) by using the alignment and/or alignment-within-CFA frameworks. This study presents a unique examination into the cross-cultural comparability of the extraversion, neuroticism, psychoticism, and lie factors from two brief versions of the EPQ (Colledani et al., 2019; Francis et al., 1992).

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text