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.