A STUDY ON THE INFLUENCE OF PERSONALITY TRAITS ON SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to establish the relationship between the personality traits of an individual namely extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, openness to experience and the extent to which these individuals use social media. A cross sectional, descriptive and analytical research design was used. A correlation matrix between the constructs of Big Five Framework and Social Media use was carried out to test the direction and strength of relationships between the study variables. Primary data was collected using a questionnaire shared online. A regression analysis focusing on extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, openness to experience was made to establish the extent to which they contribute to the use of Social Media. The findings indicate a positive relationship between Extraversion and Social media use. This implies that more extroverted people tend to use social media more often and people who communicative are also more likely to use social media. Neuroticism and Social Media are also positively related to each other indicating that that people who are more neurotic tend to rely on these social application rather than those who have greater levels of emotional stability. Findings further reveal that there was a negative relationship between agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness with social media use. Also results from regression analysis revealed that these three personality traits do not have much influence on the use of social media. The study concluded that those characteristics rooted in genetics such as people‘s personality traits – extraversion and neuroticism – are related to use of interactive social media.