How Do Facebook Users Believe They Come Across in Their Profiles?: A Meta-Perception Approach to Investigating Facebook Self-Presentation

Abstract

The present study examines Facebook self-presentation from the perspective of the self-presenters themselves: How do Facebook users believe they come across in their profiles? A sample of undergraduate students (N = 212) rated their Facebook self-presentations as highly positive, although not so positive as to communicate an idealized version of self. Additionally, self-presenters believed that their profiles portrayed them as better than reality on certain dimensions of self (e.g., “funny,” “adventurous,” “outgoing”), accurately on other dimensions (e.g., “physically attractive,” “creative”), and worse than reality on yet other dimensions (“intelligent,” “polite,” “reliable”). Participants believed that their own profile postings made them come across more positively than reality, but Friends' postings made them come across more negatively than reality. The results are generally consistent with the Hyperpersonal model's notion of selective self-presentation.

Keywords:

• Accuracy
• Facebook
• Meta-Perception
• Self-Presentation

The authors are grateful to Peter Sengstock for technical support, and to Kelsey Douglass-White, Leora Goldblatt, Gavin Jacobs, and Emily Sperka for their help with data collection.

Notes

Half of the participants were randomly assigned to examine their Facebook profiles for 5 minutes prior to rating their meta-perceptions, while the other half did not have profile access. No differences between the two groups emerged, and therefore we do not report this variable.

We attempted data reduction on the personality dimensions included in this study. Although several factors emerged for the items measuring actual self-views, they did not emerge for ideal self-views and meta-perception, making it impossible to run comparisons between these three aspects of self. We then report data for the original dimensions separately.Participants were given the option to select “I can't tell” if they were unable to rate their meta-perception on any of the dimensions. Over 95% of the participants reported being aware of how they come across on all the dimensions, with the exception of “relaxed” (91.6% of the participants), “ambitious” (85%), and “reliable” (62.6%). In particular, meta-perceptions of outgoingness, friendliness, and likeability were evident to over 99% of the participants.

Conceptualizing the midpoint of a scale as a neutral assessment is a widely used procedure in the communication and social psychology literature (e.g., Klar & Giladi, 1997; Kruger, 1999).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Catalina L. Toma

Catalina L. Toma (PhD, Cornell University, 2010) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Cassandra L. Carlson

Cassandra L. Carlson (MA, California State University–Fullerton, 2010) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.