Self-Presentation of Personality During Online Profile Creation

Abstract

When users present themselves in a social networking community, they are called on to create profiles that are representative and portray a desired image. In this paper, we examine the profile creation process. We explore what self-presentations are desired and how these presentations are created by having people rate their profile along personality dimensions after completing each attribute field in a mock social network-like profile. Findings indicate that people hope to convey personality traits through their online profiles and that they are able to create profiles they feel match their desired self-presentation. Free-form profile attributes best enable desired self presentations of traits, and only a few of these attributes are needed for sufficient self presentation online.