When It Comes To Social Networks, The Truth Draws People In

Frequent YouJustGetMe collaborator Sam Gosling PhD. is in the papers again - this time, for a study that will sound very familiar to YJGM users.

This attention comes after the publication of a joint German-American study by researchers Mitja D. Back, Juliane M. Stopfer, Simine Vazire, Sam Gaddis, Stefan C. Schmukle, Boris Egloff and Samuel D. Gosling. The study set out to understand the same effect that YouJustGetMe looks at - where other people see you the way you see yourself. More specifically, though, the study looked at whether people were presenting an honest or idealized vision of themselves through their social media profiles.

It's an important question, because the commonly-held conceit amongst crotchety old people and jaded hipsters alike is that nobody is trustworthy. When it comes to the Internet, many think this is doubly true - that every Facebook profile is a exquisitely-crafted lie, that honesty disappeared right about the same time that ARPAnet appeared.

The study's findings directly contradicted this commonly-held belief. People were much more likely to display their real personality on the social networking sites rather than their idealised selves. This was uniform across the 5 qualities that YJGM tests, with dramatically higher accuracy for openness and extraversion and somewhat lower scores for neuroticism. Overall, though, people were remarkably honest in representing themselves and in discerning other people's personalities. In other words, people were honest!

"This study is another blow for that old stereotype that the web is some kind of scary hinterland, an untrustworthy place where anything goes and nothing is what it appears, peopled by adolescent boys pretending to be anything but adolescent boys," eloquently states PsyBlog. "Contrary to the received wisdom, as well as academic theorising that the internet encourages people to project an idealised self, this research suggests that people are remarkably honest in displaying their true personalities online.Whatever the cause, this fact may help to explain the phenomenal popularity of social networking sites: the truth draws people in."