How is extraversion related to social media use? A literature review

Bowden-Green, Thomas; Hinds, Joanne; Joinson, Adam

Abstract

With nearly 3.5 billion people now using some form of social media, understanding its relationship with personality has become a crucial focus of psychological research. As such, research linking personality traits to social media behaviour has proliferated in recent years, resulting in a disparate set of literature that is rarely synthesised. To address this, we performed a systematic search that identified 182 studies relating extraversion to social media behaviour. Our findings highlight that extraversion and social media are studied across six areas: 1) content creation, 2) content reaction, 3) user profile characteristics, 4) patterns of use, 5) perceptions of social media, and 6) aggression, trolling, and excessive use. We compare these findings to offline behaviour and identify parallels such as extraverts' desire for social attention and their tendency to display positivity. Extraverts are also likely to use social media, spend more time using one or more social media platforms, and regularly create content. We discuss how this evidence will support the future development and design of social media platforms, and its application across a variety of disciplines such as marketing and human-computer interaction.

• Journal Article Type: Review
• Acceptance Date: Apr 2, 2020
• Online Publication Date: May 8, 2020
• Publication Date: Oct 1, 2020
• Deposit Date: Dec 7, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: May 9, 2022
• Journal: Personality and Individual Differences
• Print ISSN: 0191-8869
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 164
• Article Number: 110040
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110040
• Keywords: General Psychology
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/8185248
• Additional Information: This article is maintained by: Elsevier; Article Title: How is extraversion related to social media use? A literature review; Journal Title: Personality and Individual Differences; CrossRef DOI link to publisher maintained version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110040; Content Type: article; Copyright: © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.