“I Got the Job!”: An exploratory study examining the psychological factors related to status updates on facebook

- Personality type helps explain the types of status updates made on Facebook.
- Trait affect also helps explain the types of status updates made on Facebook.
- Facebook behavior varied based on age, gender, and education level.
- Personality type and trait affect varied by age, gender, and education level.
- 14 of 16 hypotheses were supported by at least one of the two statistical techniques.

Status updates on Facebook are a common enough phenomenon. When something good happens in one's life, an update may be posted. Conversely, when something isn't going right, a status update to that effect may also be posted. For those of us that use Facebook, we see this every day and may in fact be contributing to it. Nonetheless, the regular sharing of personal information also poses both a security and privacy risk. Thus, it is important that we understand the extent to which people post various types of information on social networking sites, such as Facebook. In this study, we develop an instrument to measure two types of status updates on Facebook: those that are positive in content and those that are negative. We then use this instrument, in conjunction with instruments that measure personality and trait affect, to determine to what extent various psychological factors may help explain the degree and nature of posting status updates on Facebook. This was done by performing two statistical analysis techniques: Pearson correlations and the use of partial-least-squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Overall, 14 out of 16 hypotheses were supported in at least one of the two statistical analysis techniques.