The Character Ethic

Recently, in a post titled The Amazing Race, Facebook, and Twitter, I spoke about the Personality Ethic and the Character Ethic.

Facebook and Twitter (and some other websites) reveal who we truly are. Sometimes we try to put up a facade (the Personality Ethic), but sooner or later the real you (the Character Ethic) is revealed.

If you want, you can go and read the entire post, but I want to repeat just a few lines from Covey which is in that post.

He says:

Many people with secondary greatness – that is, social recognition for their talents – lack primary greatness or goodness in their character. Sooner or later, you’ll see this is every long term relationship they have, whether it is with a business associate, a spouse, a friend, or a teenage child going through an identity crisis. It is character that communicates most eloquently. As Emerson once put it, “What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.”

I truly believe that people’s characters are revealed online. Sometimes that may be good, other times not, but it happens nonetheless. Now this has been proven…

A recent study was conducted to ascertain whether people are their true selves online, or if it’s all just idealism. The study disproves a widely held assumption that online profiles are used to create idealistic images of ourselves. Participants for the study included 236 Facebook users – 133 from the United States, and 103 from Germany. Participants ranged from 17 to 22 years of age.

I’ve always maintained that Facebook and other websites are not popular because of fancy technology and fancy websites. No. It’s because Web 2.0 principles are in alignment with human principles. Trust, sharing, transparency, etc – these principles are what make the Internet work today. The study says, “OSNs [on-line social networking sites] might be an efficient medium for expressing and communicating real personality, which may help explain their popularity.”

Furthermore, it explains:

Our results were consistent with the extended real-life hypothesis and contrary to the idealized virtual-identity hypothesis. Observer accuracy was found, but there was no evidence of self-idealization, and ideal-self ratings did not predict observer impressions above and beyond actual personality. In contrast, even when controlling for ideal-self ratings, the effect of actual personality on OSN impressions remained significant for nearly all analyses. Accuracy was strongest for extraversion (paralleling results from face-to-face encounters) and openness (similar to research on personal environments). These results suggest that people are not using their OSN profiles to promote an idealized virtual identity.

This is just the beginning of this type of research (and this fact excites me!). More in-depth research is planned, and explained as follows:

Our findings represent a first look at the accuracy of people’s self-portrayals on OSNs. To clarify the processes and moderating factors involved, future research should investigate (a) older users and other OSNs, (b) other personality traits, (c) other forms of impression management, (d) the role of specific profile components (e.g., photos, preferences), and (e) individual differences among targets (e.g., self-monitoring) and observers (e.g., OSN experience).

I hope this post intrigues you as much as it intrigues me. You can find the complete details of the study here.

Photo credit: massimobarbieri