Cultural Differences in Self-Expression on Facebook: A Comparison of Facebook Status Updates in Turkey and the U.S.A.

ABSTRACT

Facebook behavior can reflect people’s cultural norms and motivations. Despite being a global platform, there is limited cross-cultural research on self-expression on Facebook. Compared to collectivistic cultures (e.g., Turkey), people from individualistic cultures (e.g., European-Americans) are more likely to have self-enhancement motivation about their internal attributes (e.g., accomplishments, preferences), to emphasize their uniqueness, and to display positivity bias. In this study, we examined people’s actual Facebook status updates and found that European-Americans were more likely than Turkish users to post updates about their personal achievements and positive attitudes. Moreover, Turkish users were more likely to post negative attitudes than positive attitudes. Furthermore, European-Americans’ self-enhancement and uniqueness motivation was positively associated with their likelihood of posting achievement updates, whereas Turkish users’ self-enhancement motivation was positively associated with their likelihood of posting relationship updates. This research is the first to examine actual Facebook status updates in relation to cultural differences in motivations.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2020.1794623.

Notes

1. The European-American sample consisted of participants who identified themselves as non-Hispanic White Americans. The reason for this focus was that the original Günsoy et al. study (Günsoy et al., 2015) compared an honor and a dignity culture, and previous research has shown that European-Americans from the northern states of the U.S. represent a dignity culture (e.g., Leung & Cohen, 2011).

2. Günsoy et al.’s (2015) paper focuses on the relation between profile pictures and honor values rather than status updates and motivations. None of the analyses presented in Günsoy et al. (2015) paper are included here.

3. Surprisingly, Turkish participants (M = 4.58, SD = 1.32) were more likely than European-Americans (M = 3.58, SD = 1.46) to report self-enhancement tendencies, F (1, 98) = 4.67, p <.05, d =.72, and there was no cultural difference in uniqueness motivation (M_Turkey = 5.94, SD =.96; M_US = 5.83, SD =.92), F (1, 98) =.07, p =.79, d =.12. This could be because people tend to compare themselves to others in their society rather than to people from a different culture when they complete Likert scales (the reference group effect; Heine et al., 2002), which may attenuate or reverse expected cultural differences. Alternatively, this could be because the Turkish sample in this study was more urban than the European-American sample. In fact, there was a significant positive correlation between urban upbringing and self-enhancement motive in Turkey (r = .41, p <.01) but not in the U.S.

4. Participants also completed the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965) and indicated how frequently they posted something on Facebook in Günsoy et al.’s study (Günsoy et al., 2015). There was no significant difference in these variables between the two samples, ps >.10, and controlling them in our analyses did not change the results substantially.

5. The sensitivity power analysis for an alpha of .05 (one-tailed), power of .80, two cultural groups, and two covariates revealed a minimum effect size (d) of .56 (Faul et al., 2007).

6. In addition to the analyses reported in this manuscript, we conducted HLM analyses. Results can be found in the Supplementary Materials document.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ceren Günsoy

Ceren Günsoy completed her Ph.D. and post-doctoral research in Social and Cross-Cultural Psychology at Iowa State University. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Clemson University. Her research examines cultural differences in interpersonal conflict, person perception, emotions, and social media behavior.

Irmak Olcaysoy Okten

Irmak Olcaysoy Okten finished her Ph.D. at Lehigh University and is currently a post-doctoral researcher at New York University. Her research examines motivational and cognitive processes underlying person perception, self-perception, and attitudes.

Susan E. Cross

Susan E. Cross is a Professor of Psychology at Iowa State University. Trained in social psychology, she is especially interested in understanding motivation among members of cultures of honor and the dynamics of close relationships in East Asian societies. Her work has been funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

S. Adil Saribay

S. Adil Saribay obtained his Ph.D. (Social/Personality Psychology, 2008) from New York University. He was a post-doctoral researcher at Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (2008-2010). He is currently a Professor at Boğaziçi University’s Psychology Department. His research mostly focuses on political psychology and face perception.