Although Facebook profiles are becoming diverse in their complexity and depth with the introduction of third party applications, there remains the standard upon which the basic profiles exists:
* Portrait
* Status
* Personal Info
* Contact Info
* Interests / Favorites Info
* Education / Work
* The Wall
* Photos
* Friends
* Groups
Of these I would suggest that only the Portrait and Photos sections can be categorized as assessment signals, because they directly relate information about the user's appearance and often actions in candid shots. Whereas the rest can be described as conventional signals, because they use text to relate information without any substansive support. E.g. one can say they like listening to Britney Spears; maybe so, but you can see that the person has blonde hair in their photo.
After asking a friend to rate the accuracy of his profile elements, this was the response I recieved:
5 Portrait
X Status
4 Personal Info
4 Contact Info
3 Interests / Favorites Info
4 Education / Work
5 The Wall
4 Photos
4 Friends
4 Groups
Reviewing the results, we see that the user lied frequently but only slightly. The majority of his answers were a 4. I believe this falls in line with the theory that online impression managers will attempt to appear honest by lying but only slightly. In fact, I'm very sure the reason some of his profile is a bit misleading is his fear a job interviewer or professional colleague will see it. This follows closely with Walther's 1996 study that showed anticipated future interaction was a strong motivator for self-presentation maniuplation. This individual is afraid a professional peer will see the profile and think down upon him or not hire him. Therefore, while he tries to present himself "mostly truthfully" he likely lies by ommission more than by changing the accuracy of information.
However, upon analysis of the answers provided and his profile show that in fact a lot of the material is just dated or erronenous not of his fault. For instance, his address is wrong because he moved before the school year started, his education / work information is incorrect because he quit a job over the weekend, and his personal info incorrectly lists him as a Cornell alum because he was supposed to graduate last year but did not and Facebook doesn't have an easy remedy for this. Still there are some things I know to be purposefully dishonest in his profile such as length of employment at certain jobs (he wrote that he worked there longer). Also, I imagine he rates his photo section as innaccurate because I know he has untagged himself from certain pictures. Additionally, he is enrolled in certain Facebook groups of which he has no interest such a political group when he doesn't even vote or a band fan group that he has only listened to a couple songs but has a friend in.
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5 comments:
Hey Mark!
Great post. You did a very thorough job of recounting your steps in this experiment and in interpreting the data to uncover some interesting conclusions.
I think you touched on two very important points in your analysis. First, you mention that a lot of the inaccurate information was not the result of planned deception, but was simply dated, erroneous, or misunderstood. I found this to be the case in my experiment, as well, since keeping a current Facebook profile is not a priority for many people, and since many don’t necessarily spend a lot of time going over their posted information.
Second, you mention Walther's 1996 study which concluded that anticipated future interaction was a strong motivator for self-presentation manipulation. Omitting information from a social networking site and only keeping truthful information can be a form of deception. Many of my friends and I have upped the privacy setting on many of our profile components which may reveal “a little too much” to prospective employers (namely, tagged photos and the Wall).
Mark,
You did a great job analyzing the accuracy of your friend’s profile. It was interesting to see what parts of his profile that he lied on. For the most part, your results followed the idea that online impression managers will lie often but subtly; however, having a 3 in interests and favorites info was rather surprising and not subtle. You did not explain how these categories were altered. These might not support the theory that people try to appear honest as well as lie subtly because he might not be able to engage in a conversation about his “interests,” if someone asks about it. Other than that everything else seems to support the fact that he was lying subtly.
I also liked how you tried to categorize assessment signals and conventional signals. Although Portrait and Photos can be changed/photoshopped/removed/untagged, they are the only part of the profile that even closely resemble assessment traits, since in the online world there are very few things that can not be changed.
Mark,
I think that your post was very insightful. It is interesting how it it confirmed the results of Catalina's study, which found that people lie slightly but frequently in order to balance the competing goals of trying to appear both attractive and honest.
It is alos interesting how you took into account the fact that not all of the deception on the profile was intentional; often times what appeared to be intentional deception could have just been negligence or a failure to update the profile.
Although you talked about the goal of trying to be honest, it would have been interesting if you went into further depth about trying to appear attractive online. You did talk about the fact that your friend lied frequently, but it would have been clearer if you had explictly made the link between that an the attractiveness goal.
Danielle Rosenthal
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