If the Mask Fits: Psychological Correlates with Online Self-Presentation Experimentation in Adults

Abstract

Online self-presentation refers to the ways in which individuals share aspects of the self to portray a particular image. Being online presents opportunities for individuals to experiment with different versions of the self as part of identity development, but also to manage how others perceive them. Research has shown that personality can influence online selfpresentation behaviours, but these studies have chiefly focused on internal characteristics, and more research is needed exploring the relational facets of personality. This study aims to investigate the extent to which an individual's self-concept clarity, self-monitoring tendency, self-esteem, and social anxiety predict different presentations of the online self. A crosssectional online survey was conducted with 405 adult participants from Australia, the UK, and USA. Results show that individuals with higher self-concept clarity and self-monitoring are more likely to present a single consistent online and offline self. Younger adults and those with greater social anxiety are more likely to present idealised self-images online, and participants with higher social anxiety and lower self-esteem are more likely to prefer online, rather than offline, communication. Findings are broadly consistent with the literature, and suggest the need for more systematic investigation into a variety of personality variables that take into account the relational nature of identity formation and impression management. This research emphasises the multi-faceted nature of online self-presentation behaviours, and the ways in which they are differentially influenced by personality variables.

What Is the Psychological Role of the Virtual Self in Online Worlds? A Scoping Review

“…Refs. [10,11,21] observed the exploration of alternative possible selves that are not necessarily an idealized version of the person's self. This refers to what Taylor (2002) [4] named "identity tourism", the idea that people can experience satisfaction just by taking on a different identity, expanding the self rather than compensating for perceived lacks [4,44].…”

“…It must be said, however, that this difference could be affected by a bias regarding the objectives of the studies that explored them. Except for a few studies, such as the ones by Fullwood et al (2016Fullwood et al ( , 2020 and Hu et al (2020) [10,11,42], research focused on social media has rarely assessed virtual identity construal outside of the "accurate vs. idealized" dichotomy. On the other hand, for video games or other avatar-mediated environments, research has adopted a broader approach to virtual self typologies.…”

“…Note that the rubric was not meant to assess the quality of the study designs but the reports. The rubric assigned each article a score between 0 and 40 and classified them in one of four ranks: D (0-10), C (11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20), B (21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30), and A (31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38)(39)(40).…”

“…Most studies agreed that although people tend to construe their virtual self on social media as similar to their actual self, they always had a component of self-enhancement (i.e., Castro and Marquez (2017) [9,11,12,41]. Several identity-related traits were associated with people's virtual identity on social media.…”

“…Some researchers have explored how different variables can lead to different forms of virtual self construal. Studies like the ones conducted by Dengah and Snodgrass (2020), Forest and Wood (2012), and Michikyan et al (2015) [1,3,9] explore the relationship between self-esteem and the way people create their virtual self, but there have also been researches like Fullwood et al (2016Fullwood et al ( , 2020 and Strimbu and O'Connell (2019) [10][11][12], who have explored other personal variables such as self-concept, or Behm-Morawitz (2013), Peng (2020), and Ranzini and Lutz (2017) [13][14][15], who studied the motivations people have for using online platforms. On the other hand, studies like the ones by Leménager et al (2013) and Looy et al (2014) [16,17] have also investigated how the type of virtual self construal could be related to the users' psychological well-being or the excessive usage of the online platform.…”