Honors Program Theses

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Open Access Honors Program Thesis

First Advisor

Sundé Nesbit

Keywords

Online social networks; Friendship; Personality;

Abstract

Because the internet is a relatively new technology, few studies have researched the correlations between online behavior and personality. As such, this study set out to determine if online friendships and personality are related. In this study differences in personality were examined between individuals who have met their online friends face-to-face and those who have not. A survey was distributed online using the Five Factor Model to measure personality. Participants in this study were recruited from an online community called Nerdfighteria. The results found that the facets of the Five Factor Model of personality were largely found not to be predictors of whether or not individuals will meet their online friends in an offline setting. Of the five personality factors measured, extraversion was the only one that had statistically significant differences in mean scores between individuals who chose to meet their online friends offline and those chose not to. Individuals with higher scores of extraversion are more likely to meet their online friends face-to-face than those with lower scores of extraversion. Because the difference in mean scores of these two groups was so small, it is possible extraversion does not truly have an effect. As such, it is difficult to determine if personality truly has a relationship to this online behavior.

Year of Submission

2013

Department

Department of Psychology

University Honors Designation

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the designation University Honors

Date Original

2013

Object Description

1 PDF file (31 pages)

Language

EN

File Format

application/pdf

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