Self-disclosure on social networks: More than a rational decision-making process

Abstract

Although consequences of sharing personal information can be negative and severe (e.g., identity theft), individuals still engage in extensive self-disclosures on social networks. One commonly applied explanatory approach is the privacy calculus. Following this, self-disclosures can be conceptualized as rational choices resulting from a weighing of risks and benefits. However, this view misses the additional impulsive nature of decisions. The current study therefore takes the lens of dual-process theories and highlights that self-disclosure decisions can also be guided by an impulsive system. To test for the impact of descriptive social norms, a warning message, privacy-related decision-making styles, and perceived benefits and risks on individuals’ self-disclosure decisions, the fictitious social network “AHOY!” was created. It enabled the measurement of participants’ (N = 551; Mage = 40.77, SDage = 13.93) actual self-disclosures on two decision stages: 1) whether or not a post was created, 2) how much information (on a psychological and informational dimension) was provided. Further, descriptive social norms (i.e., the extent of other users’ self-disclosures) and the presence/absence of a warning message were varied. The remaining factors were measured using questionnaires. The results imply that cognitive and affective processes (expected to be triggered by the investigated factors) are involved differently in the two decision stages. While both the reflective and impulsive system may be involved in the first stage, with the reflective system also potentially taking a predominant role, the impulsive system may be predominant when deciding how much to disclose. This highlights the importance of exceeding common assumptions of rationality to better understand and support individuals’ self-disclosure decisions.

Theoretical conceptualization of online privacy-related decision making – Introducing the tripartite self-disclosure decision model

“…Future studies should therefore investigate interactions and interrelations between different features more systematically and also how these are associated with perception processes, neural activations, evaluation processes, and finally the respective decision. Systematic variations of the decision situation and experimentally manipulating different proposed features will help to better understand individuals’ decisions under different circumstances (see also Ostendorf et al, 2022 ). Moreover, by focusing on actual behavior rather than self-disclosure intentions, and by conducting longitudinal investigations by, for instance, applying ambulatory assessment tools, casual relationships can be better understood and protective approaches can be optimized.…”

“…Besides, research has shown that warning messages with information on potential negative consequences can support more deliberate self-disclosure decisions, thus likely triggering reflective processes. For instance, for individuals who received a warning message on a fictitious social network that informed about possible short- and long-term negative consequences, the likelihood of creating a post (rather than not creating a post) was lower compared to those who did not receive a warning message ( Ostendorf et al, 2022 ). For those who proceeded creating a post, however, the presentation of this warning message did not reduce the amount of shared information within the post, thus calling for more research.…”

“…An individual could also generally (meaning in a rather automatic way based on past experiences and negative attitudes) not engage in self-disclosures across various situations. However, we argue that in many cases, the decision not to self-disclose on social networks is probably resulting from mainly reflective processes triggered by specific factors (e.g., the presence of profound skills or a warning message; e.g., Büchi et al, 2017 ; Ostendorf et al, 2022 ) which may lead to a correspondingly strong risk perception, although the impulsive system (and interoceptive processes) can be involved as well.…”

“… Zlatolas et al (2015) , for instance, found that privacy social norms, representing the perception that persons close to oneself expect a specific privacy-enhancing behavior (thus injunctive norms), were significantly related to lower levels of self-disclosure on social networks. In a recent study, Ostendorf et al (2022) further found that being confronted with posts from other users in which much information is shared (i.e., descriptive norms) can lead participants to disclose significantly more than those participants who are confronted with other users’ posts which contain only little personal information, indicating the involvement of intuitive and heuristic processes.…”

“…The level of perceptibility is closely related to design and complexity of the respective service and is likely not balanced in terms of positive/negative and short-/long-term consequences, meaning that long-term (negative) consequences are rather intangible compared to short-term (positive) consequences (e.g., Taddicken and Jers, 2011 ; Efroni et al, 2019 ). However, providing information on possible negative short- and long-term consequences within a warning message was recently shown to be able to reduce the likelihood that a post is created on a (fictitious) social network, indicating the triggering of reflective processes ( Ostendorf et al, 2022 ). In general, a varying amount or kind of information that is provided in a specific decision-situation (for instance, percentages on the likelihood of specific risks when sharing the phone number with different audiences or the potential severity of specific risks when sharing one’s personal address or religious views) can be relevant for individual’s self-disclosure decision making.…”