I do not want to be too ordinary, but I was very curious as to how this would turn out if I were to do an analysis of someone I know very well, using, of all things, their facebook profile. To do this, I am going to use the Brunswikian Lens Model and its four mechanisms which I will explain, and to standardize the personality judgments, I will use the Five Factor Model from Hancock and Dunham.
The Brunswikian Lens Model uses four mechanisms to look at cue validity and cue utilization. The idea is very similar to the previous posts in this blog about impression formation and impression management; the key difference is that with the Brunswikian Lens Model, I will be looking at the cues as interactive elements of the profile. This means that her profile is not made of static elements that she produced, but of interactive elements that her social network, including herself, combines to create an impression of her.
The four mechanisms, or categories, that link her to her environment that we will use to analyze are, self-directed identity claims, other-directed identity claims, interior behavioral residue and exterior behavioral residue. The claims are things that she has posted herself about her, and as the name has suggested, are either directed at herself or own group of friends, or are clearly directed at other people. Behavioral residue is evidence of who she is within the space (interior) and outside of the space (exterior) with the space in this case being the facebook environment.
So, on with the analysis. Using the previously mention five factor model, the 5 factors of her personality that I will analyze are neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. These "big five personality traits" are explained Here.
First I'll look at identity claims. Some self-directed identity claims that are on her profile are things like her hometown in all capital letters, or a nickname for the group she went camping with over fall break. These are things that she posted to remind herself and her friends of who they are, and they show her extraversion (energy in the all caps of HONOLULU!!!) and agreeableness (compassion to the group that went camping with her). The other-directed identity claims that I'll pick out are things like it says she is in a relationship. It is a signal to others that says, "I'm taken", or even "He's mine". Others are her listing of where she works, and her education information, which are listed very formally as claims about her conscientiousness, or the some of the quotes like "we are going sane in a crazy world" hinting at some openness.
The other, easier to find connectors to her environments are the behavioral residue. The residue that is easiest to see is what is presented in her "mini news-feed" and the posts friends have put on her wall. The wall shows an example of her agreeableness in other environments with a post of someone saying, "thank you for hosting this weekend and introducing me to everyone!" or in her openness within the environment with the "spells cast" application where she has cast a "hovering charm" on her boyfriend, making him temporarily float.
Her profile seems to be primarily filled with behavioral residue, and most of that is external. It appears that most of her interaction with environments that are shown in her profile are environments outside of facebook. The impressions she gives using the self- and other-directed identity claims do not come out nearly as strong (to me at least) as does the behavioral residue. My analysis of her, primarily using external behavioral residue is that she is very agreeable and conscientious, which can be learned from the compliments and thanks she receives for things she has done. There are no signs of high neuroticism anywhere except one identity claim, which is hard to tell if it is self-directed or other-directed, but it says, "what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger", which on seconds look, could be a more positive outlook and low neuroticism. It is a weaker claim.
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2 comments:
Hey Peter, I enjoyed reading your blog analyzing a close friend on facebook. I thik you did a great job summarizing four mechanisms of the Brunswikian Lens Model. I especially liked how you explained the relationship status can be both self and other-directed. I feel like many information on facebook can be viewed as belonging to multiple categories.
Hey Peter,
Great job on the Brunswikian analysis on your friend's profile. I think you explained all four mechanisms very well. I liked the example you used of your friend's self identity claims in that she wrote Honolulu in capital letters. Although you can argue that she wrote that as an other-directed identity claim, the fact that she wrote that in capital letters shows that she wants to remind herself how proud she is to be from Hawaii and is a good example of a self-identity claim.
I find it interesting that you say that the impressions formed under external residue are stronger than the identity claims made. Is it because she doesn't include much information about herself, and instead is tagged in many photos and has many wall posts? One of my friends refuses to put down any information in her Facebook profile, but her year, e-mail address, and screen name. Despite this, she has many pictures tagged of her, and over a thousand comments on her wall.
I wonder what this says about a person who would rather display behaviors outside of Facebook than give out information explicitly on Facebook. A previous post I read discussed the user's neuroticism in displaying her extraversion through identity claims, but in you friend's case, this seems the opposite.
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