Open AccessShow me your friends and I will tell you what type of person you are: How one's profile, number of friends, and type of friends influence impression formation on social network sites
Author(s) -
Utz Sonja
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
journal of computer‐mediated communication
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.15
H-Index - 119
ISSN - 1083-6101
DOI - 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2010.01522.x
Subject(s) - popularity , impression formation , social psychology , psychology , attractiveness , extraversion and introversion , physical attractiveness , interpersonal communication , interpersonal attraction , social network (sociolinguistics) , attraction , social perception , perception , social media , personality , big five personality traits , computer science , world wide web , linguistics , philosophy , neuroscience , psychoanalysis
This experiment examines how far extraversion of the target (self‐generated information), extraversion of the target's friends (friends‐generated information), and number of friends (system‐generated information) influence the perceived popularity, communal orientation, and social attractiveness of the target. The warranting principle states that judgments rely more heavily on other‐generated than self‐generated information because the former is more immune to manipulation. It is argued that the warranting principle becomes more important when more interpersonal traits have to be judged. In line with the expectations, other‐generated information had only weak impact on the popularity judgments. With regard to communal orientation, other‐generated information had stronger effects and qualified the effects of self‐generated information. Only other‐generated information had an impact on perceived social attraction.