Cross-cultural narcissism on Facebook: Relationship between self-presentation, social interaction and the open and covert narcissism on a social networking site in Germany and Russia

• Cross-culturally, narcissism is positively related to online activity on Facebook.
• In Russia and Germany, narcissism values do not differ significantly.
• The general level of self-presentation and interaction on Facebook is also similar.
• German users set more “Likes” and have more online-friends than Russian users.
• Russian members use more applications on Facebook than German members.

The social platform Facebook has more than one billion members in different countries. Cross-culturally, the way users behave on this platform relates to some personality traits. The aim of the present study was to investigate, whether Russian and German Facebook users differ in the extent of open and covert narcissism, self-presentation and social interaction on Facebook. Furthermore, we investigated, whether there is a comparable relationship between narcissism and Facebook use in these countries. To this end, the data of 72 Russian platform members were collected and compared with the data of 122 German members. The narcissism values did not significantly differ between the two samples. This was also the case with the overall self-presentation and interaction. In contrast, some single measures of online behaviour differ. For example, German users set more “Likes” and had more online-friends than Russian users. Russian platform members used more applications than German users. In each group, a positive association between the two forms of narcissism and online activity was found. So far, the positive relations between narcissism and self-presentation and social interaction on Facebook seem to be universal in Western and Eastern countries.