Capturing personality from Facebook photos and photo-related activities: How much exposure do you need?

Abstract

Photo-related activities are noticeably prevalent among social media users. On Facebook, users predominantly communicate visually and manage their self-presentation. Such online behaviours tend to mimic what would be expected of individuals’ offline personalities. This study sought to address the link between Facebook users’ photo-related activities and the Big Five personality traits by encoding basic Facebook visual features. Content analysis on the actual profiles (n = 115) and multiple regression analyses revealed many associations as a manifestation of users’ characteristics. For instance, Neuroticism and Extraversion predicted more photo uploads. Conscientiousness was predictive of more self-generated albums and video uploads and Agreeableness predicted the average number of received ‘likes’ and ‘comments’ on profile pictures. Additionally, the Facebook experience in interaction with the personality factors was found to be influential on the type of photo-related activity and the level of photo participation of users. The findings provide evidence that Facebook users with various personality traits set up albums and upload photos differently. Given the uses and gratification model, users adapt the construction of their profiles and manage their interactions to gratify their psychological needs on Facebook.