A few weeks ago, I wrote about Twitter and how I changed my “Twitter behavior” overnight. In the time since that entry, I’ve gone from following just one person on Twitter to following 200+ today.
At the time of that entry, I tried to explain my Twitter behavior in terms of an assessment, the FIRO-B (Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation — Behavior), that I took at least 10 years ago. It was a pretty convoluted explanation; yet it made a certain kind of sense.
Based on some great information from commenter Eric Bolden, I now think I may have been onto something. I’m now speculating that personality assessments may be possible based on the way people interact with social media. I can imagine a whole new research area opening up if it hasn’t already.
First, let’s make the storytelling connection: Anyone who is involved in any kind of social media — or even anyone who simply has a personal Web site — is engaging in constructing his or her identity online. Thus, they are constructing and telling their stories. One’s online identity may not be exactly the same as one’s face-to-face identity or the identity one constructs when writing for print publication; we construct our identities in various media and venues, and while these identities share core elements, they likely vary from medium to medium. If I may quote from a Q&A interview with Michael Margolis that I have not yet published, in the Internet age, “one’s identity is ever morphing and adaptable to the presiding context.”
For example, I put out a lot of information about myself publicly in the online world. I am neither particularly private in my online life nor terribly cautious about sharing information about myself. I share myself in this blog, a personal Web site, a social-media resume, profiles on numerous social-media venues, several online portfolios — and the list goes one. I am far less forthcoming in my offline life.
Now, let’s get back to the FIRO-B and Eric Bolden. My FIRO-B results* reveal certain aspects of my personality that I don’t especially admire but that are probably pretty accurate. They reveal that I am a “loner” but that I cherish a small, close-knit group of friends. That revelation, I believe, aligns with my social-media behavior. I have at least 100 connections on each of the three major social-media venues I use the most — Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Of those, I most cherish the dear friends and family members that I’ve reconnected with. I’m also developed relatively close connections with some folks I’ve never met. If you offered me an opportunity to meet face-to-face with my close-knit group of connections and reconnections, I’d welcome it but feel considerable anxiety. Through online social media, I can interact with these dear ones in my preferred “loner” style.
The preceding behavior is covered by the “Inclusion” dimension of the FIRO-B. Another dimension is Control, where my results indicate that I avoid self-initiated decisions. Guilty as charged. My husband can tell you that I consistently demand that he make the decisions about, for example, when and where we’ll go on our daily bike ride and which Netflix movie we’ll watch in the evening. This aspect of my personality — my story — I’m convinced, explains both my past and current Twitter behavior. I previously did not follow my followers because I did not want to initiate that decision. I am still in the mode of abdicating the “following” decision because I have set up automatic following through a third-party application. Anytime a new person starts following me, I automatically follow that person without making a conscious decision to do so. I behave similarly with the other social-media venues. It’s not unheard of for me to initiate a new connection, but it’s unusual. Typically, I wait for others to connect to me.
So, it seems to me that researchers could develop a personality assessment based on social-media behavior. Questions to reveal one’s social-media personality might include:
- What is your goal in making connections in social-media venues?
- Which is more important to you — quantity of connections or quality?
- To what extent do you initiate connections with others on social-media venues?
- How often do you interact with your online connections?
- To what extent do you accept new connections with people you know?
- To what extent do you accept new connections with strangers?
What other personality-revealing questions can you think of?
As a side note, I have found the criticisms of my Twitter ways interesting. Some have suggested that I will alienate my existing followers by automatically following each new follower. My response: Do my followers really check that closely on how I obtained my follow-ees? I’m also not completely indiscriminate; I’ve unfollowed couple of people whose values severely conflicted with mine or who seemed overly fixated on selling me something. The idea of sending the same “tweet” or status report to multiple social-media venues also has offended some folks. They contend that each social-media audience is different, and messages should be tailored to each audience. I agree only to a certain extent. I feel as though my tweets to Twitter and Facebook are almost always interchangeable. However, if I want to tweet an item that is purely “professional,” I use ping.fm to send it out to a larger group of social-media venues, including LinkedIn, because most of the tweets I send to Twitter and Facebook are not appropriate for my LinkedIn audience.
* Bolden informed me that results from the FIRO-B do not reflect an inborn type and can change. Thus, my results might be different now from the last time I took the assessment. A Christian-based assessment, the Arno Profile System or APS, is based on the FIRO-B and is intended to show one’s inborn temperament. I’d like to take the FIRO-B again and also try the APS (though Bolden says the assessments are exactly the same but are administered differently). Also, based on my FIRO-B results, Bolden guessed my Myers-Briggs type with 75 percent accuracy (He guessed INFJ; it’s actually INFP).
Finally, it’s appropriate to be writing about online social-identity construction today because this is my 16th anniversary of the day I first went on the Internet.
If you’re interested in learning more about the FIRO-B, you can download a PowerPoint presentation here and see a 9-minute video here. I have not seen clear evidence that one can take the FIRO-B online, but it’s probably available.
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Hi Katherine,
Thanks for the shout out, and the relevant post on social media.
I equally have taken the plunge in the last couple weeks with twitter, blogging, etc...Sure I have accounts in all of these various tools, but wasn't really using them that much.
I had an aha that made me get it -
web 1.0 - hyperlinks = information flow
web 2.0 - connections = relationship flow
web 3.0 - semantics = meaning flow
The real potential of twitterverse and other tools is in the "semantic web" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web.
For me, semantic web really means, exploring the narrative construction of reality as mirrored and projected by us individually and as a collective. The storytelling and identity implications are profound, even if we are all just barely wrapping our hands around it.
I'm the sort of person who lives life at the intersections and edges (branding, anthropology, culture change, leadership, myth, etc...). With social media tools I can start to externalize my filtering and sense-making process, and offer my personal curation of life, instead of keeping it trapped in my noggin or on my computer. So it becomes a repository for my knowledge processing, and as a service to others (and in support of relationship building), I then also make a form of it accessible for anybody who might be interested in some of the threads or nodes that matter in my life. Hopefully, I have something interesting enough to share.
This one meta-realization, has given me a sense of purpose and passion towards playing in the blogosphere and twitterverse. Whereas before I viewed with wonderment, but not motivation. I look forward to sharing more of this journey with you.
I'd be curious to hear your own evolution in learning and thinking as you've become a prolific blog node in the storytelling arena.
Cheers,
Michael Margolis
Brand Storyteller
www.thirsty-fish.com
Michael, you've really gotten my juices flowing with this comment.
First, apparently Wikipedia took down the Semantic Web page you linked to.
I love your phrase "my personal curation of life." Yes! I feel like that's why I'm doing, too. Ditto for "externaliz[ing] my filtering and sense-making process."
Social media as "a repository for my knowledge processing, and as a service to others (and in support of relationship building." Yes again! That's EXACTLY what I think of as the purpose of A Storied Career.
As someone fascinated by the connections and intersections, you're probably familiar with the work of Jonathan Harris and his technologically stunning work with "storytelling platforms" that depict these connections and intersections in highly visual ways. I've blogged about his We Feel Fine project and next week will discuss his Universeproject.
I've been participating in online communities for over a decade now, so I'm well aware of the opportunities to construct real or fictitious identities for oneself on the Web ("On the internet, no one knows you're a dog!")
But I don't see anything new in social media when it comes to the stories we tell about ourselves. It gives us a new platform on which to hang an identity, and shape our own self-narrative.
The fact that you, like many of us, present a difference face to the world on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook is simply a case of adapting to context.
You've got an interesting take on reverse-engineering a description of personality based on social media behavior. We certainly could use that information to understand ourselves.
But while your behavior online on different Web 2.0 sites tells me about you, as does your description above about your relationship with your husband, I don't see a story yet.
I see a character... a protagonist... certainly one that plays a role in a story... but in and of itself, neither the behavior nor a description of the behavior is a story.
Necessary to tell a story, yes, but not sufficient.
Thanks, Tim, for sharing your perspective. I've found that some of the differences in viewpoints that come from various practitioners center around definition of "story" and the importance to each practitioner of working within that definition. I've found in my Q&A interviews that defining story is very important to some, not at all important to others. Or some hold a very broad definition of "story." You can probably tell that I'm among the latter.
Great discussion points! Thanks again for commenting.
Glad to be of assistance with this.
As for "social media", it probably is implied in the FIRO/APS scores. Low Expressed Inclusion is driven by a fear of rejection. So in person, I'm less likely to initiate to others, but online I do not have that 'fear' at all. I do have the high expressed Control (where you do not), which does drive me towards people where Inclusion does not. So my enthusiasm on this subject, for instance, has made people think I am an extravert! I have seen MBTI-related discussions that have touched upon this, and it seems that introverts tend to be more drawn to the internet, where extraverts prefer face-to-face contact.
Thanks, Eric:
All of this rings true for me. Fear of rejection, yes. In high school, we had an event during which I operated a Reject Room for people (like me) who felt rejected or feared rejection.
In one sense, the Internet is the best thing that ever happened to my introversion. On the other hand, it reinforced and exacerbated my phone phobia because I began to be able to exist virtually without ever having to make a phone call.
Once again, thanks for all your insights throughout this thread. Very self-actualizing for me!